Need Some Help

[ahayek]

I have currently simmed 3 years, playing my 5th. I have game logs turned off and I erase the alminac at the end of every year.

Problem is the more I play the more my computer slows down and I have problems with programs saying I dont have enough memorey. It seems the game is taking up a ton of memory.

How much memory should the game take up and is there any way to minimize it or anything I can do?

[Steve Kuffrey]

Running OOTP requires a lot of your pc resources but there are things you can do to boost your pc's performance, and thus, handle OOTP much more efficiently.

1. Hit CTRL/ALT/DEL and write down the numbers. (i.e. 56380K / 479864K) The bigger the difference between these numbers, the better! To increase this difference follow the next steps:

2. Click START, RUN and then type "msconfig" and write down what you see. Then go to http://www.answersthatwork.com/Task...es/tasklist.htm and see what they are. If there are processes you don't need, remove the check from the box and restart your pc. Remember, these are programs that are starting when you start your computer and chances are you don't need them all to start EVERY time you start up. This is NOT uninstalling! You have normal access to all of these programs via START, ALL PROGRAMS.

3. Go to http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html and download Spybot. Then run it and delete anything it finds(as long as it's not something you wanted). Chances are, everything on this list is unnecessary. Restart your pc.

4. Go to START, CONTROL PANEL, ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMS. Take a look at all the programs that are on you pc. Do you need all of them? Probably not. Uninstall programs you don't need. The fewer programs you have installed, the better! Restart your pc.

5. Go to START, ALL PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES, SYSTEM TOOLS, SYSTEM RESTORE. Click SYSTEM RESTORE SETTINGS and put a check mark in TURN OFF SYSTEM RESTORE ON ALL DRIVES. System Restore is a great idea in theory but the reality is that after returning your system to a previous state, it leaves loose ends in Dynamic Link Library, you won't have use of software installed after that date and it EATS major resources. Restart your pc after this.

6. Go to START, CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM, ADVANCED. click SETTINGS under PERFORMANCE. click custom and remove the check marks from as many as possible. Click APPLY. Then click ADVANCED and under VIRTUAL MEMORY, click CHANGE. Click CUSTOM SIZE and type in the number that is 3X your actual memory on your system (i.e. 512 x 3 = 1536). Restart your pc after this.

7. Go to www.blackviper.com and head to WINDOWS XP SERVICES INFORMATION and then click START, RUN and type "services.msc" and proceed to disable all unecessary services. They are background processes that take up valuable resources that once shut down will add increased performance. Restart your computer after this step.

8. Go to http://www.raxco.co.uk/ and download Perfect Disk. Pay for it. it's worth every penny. Use it to defrag your hard drives. Restart your computer after this step.

9. Do you have any Norton products? Shut them down or disable thier services before running OOTP. You can always enable them after playing your games. Norton products are MAJOR resource hogs. While they do a world of good for internet security, they just bog down things when gaming. If you are paranoid, disconnect from the internet while gaming.

10. Click CTRL/ALT/DEL. You should see a significant difference from where you started.

Enjoy!

Fidel Montoya