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I need help!


cjmoore25

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So recently I purchased a refurbished Dell desktop, which I'm pretty pleased with. The only problem is, I'm having a dickens of a time playing Steam games on it. Some work fine, like Surgeon Simulator, but in the case of Sonic Adventure DX, among other games I've tried, all I get is a configuration screen before a window pops up saying "SONICADVENTUREDX.EXE has stopped working". I guess my mentality is that if I can get Sonic Adventure to work, I might be able to find the core problem as to why a lot of my other games won't work.

So, does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks.

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Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz 2.99 GHz

Installed Memory(RAM): 2.00 GB

System type: 32-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

Does that help?

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We need to know the OS and what GPU you're using.

Where did you get that thing and for how much? Because a Pentium D is an old ass CPU, and it's very very slow.

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2 GB of RAM is VERY small for today's gaming scene, even for games that were released 10+ years ago.  It's possible that your computer simply can't handle Sonic Adventure (my old 2 GB eMachines from 2009 certainly couldn't) or indeed most games aside from very low-res games or much, much older titles.  Provided your computer doesn't have the RAM soldered to the motherboard, I would definitely look into getting at least 4 GB of RAM.

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3 minutes ago, Tara said:

2 GB of RAM is VERY small for today's gaming scene, even for games that were released 10+ years ago.  It's possible that your computer simply can't handle Sonic Adventure (my old 2 GB eMachines from 2009 certainly couldn't) or indeed most games aside from very low-res games or much, much older titles.  Provided your computer doesn't have the RAM soldered to the motherboard, I would definitely look into getting at least 4 GB of RAM.

Even then, I doubt the Pentium D is up to the task. Most steam games at the minimum require a Core 2 Duo to run. And if I recall correctly, the Pentium D is a 32-bit CPU, so he's maxed out on 4gb of RAM. It was a bad CPU for the time, and it's a very bad CPU now.

That PC is not going to be good for much of anything aside from typing up documents in Word. We don't even know what GPU he's using, if it's an Intel GMA then he's entirely out of luck from doing ANY form of gaming.

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5 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Even then, I doubt the Pentium D is up to the task. Most steam games at the minimum require a Core 2 Duo to run. And if I recall correctly, the Pentium D is a 32-bit CPU, so he's maxed out on 4gb of RAM. It was a bad CPU for the time, and it's a very bad CPU now.

That PC is not going to be good for much of anything aside from typing up documents in Word. We don't even know what GPU he's using, if it's an Intel GMA then he's entirely out of luck from doing ANY form of gaming.

Very true.  If he has the money and if the retailer will allow it, it would probably be quicker and less expensive to take the computer back to the store and find something at least a little more modern.  As is, the only thing I can think of working with that kind of setup would probably be maybe an older version of a SNES emulator, but even that might run into some performance issues.

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Just now, Tara said:

Very true.  If he has the money and if the retailer will allow it, it would probably be quicker and less expensive to take the computer back to the store and find something at least a little more modern.  As is, the only thing I can think of working with that kind of setup would probably be maybe an older version of a SNES emulator, but even that might run into some performance issues.

There's good deals on eBay going on now for decommissioned workstations. With a bit of spit polish, they'd make damn fine gaming systems with a new GPU.

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5 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

And if I recall correctly, the Pentium D is a 32-bit CPU, so he's maxed out on 4gb of RAM.

According to his specs, he has an x64-based processor.

That said, refurbished computers I've dealt with were all carrying Windows 7. A computer shipped with a 32-bit OS and 2 GB RAM sounds very Windows Vista era, if not Windows XP, something which suggests that the computer is very dated (most software do not support Vista/XP anymore, and thus you might also experience problems with many games).

If this is the case, then I would have wanted Windows 7 at minimum for a refurbished computer, as many computers certified for Vista/XP usually have older hardware in order to meet absolute minimum requirements for those systems, and investing in upgrades for outdated hardware in a refurbished computer is not something I would personally do with gaming in mind.

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2 hours ago, Diz said:

According to his specs, he has an x64-based processor.

Then why would he have a 32-bit OS, that makes no damn sense. *looks up* Well, I'll be. I guess Prescott wasn't completely terrible. Most of the Pentium 4 family from what I remember was 32-bit. Still have no damn clue as to why it would ship with a 32-bit OS other than stupidity.

2 hours ago, Diz said:

That said, refurbished computers I've dealt with were all carrying Windows 7. A computer shipped with a 32-bit OS and 2 GB RAM sounds very Windows Vista era, if not Windows XP, something which suggests that the computer is very dated (most software do not support Vista/XP anymore, and thus you might also experience problems with many games).

If it reports back a 64-bit Processor, I'm willing to bet Vista. Either way, it's an unsupported OS, and not something I would want to be running any more. If I was absolutely stuck with this machine, I would install Linux instead.

2 hours ago, Diz said:

If this is the case, then I would have wanted Windows 7 at minimum for a refurbished computer, as many computers certified for Vista/XP usually have older hardware in order to meet absolute minimum requirements for those systems, and investing in upgrades for outdated hardware in a refurbished computer is not something I would personally do with gaming in mind.

I would seriously recommend returning this thing if it costed anything over $50. It's old enough to border on useless if you don't want to fight to get it usable. I couldn't imagine just having 2gb of RAM any more, I'm choking on 8gb as-is.

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Just now, cjmoore25 said:

I upgraded it to Windows 10. Just sayin'.

Is it 64-bit Windows 10? And that doesn't really solve your dilemma of only having 2gb of RAM and using what is mostly likely an Intel GMA.

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...I just don't get computers sometimes.

Also, I ordered a 2gb RAM module to boost it up to 4gb, so we'll see where that takes me.

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Just now, cjmoore25 said:

...I just don't get computers sometimes.

Also, I ordered a 2gb RAM module to boost it up to 4gb, so we'll see where that takes me.

Are you sure it's compatible? You're looking for DDR2, and even then it might not post. 

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3 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Are you sure it's compatible? You're looking for DDR2, and even then it might not post. 

I'm almost certain it's compatible. Though I will admit it's a guess as the hard drive didn't even come with RAM modules to compare it with.

I do most of my shopping on Amazon, just to be clear.

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11 minutes ago, cjmoore25 said:

I'm almost certain it's compatible. Though I will admit it's a guess as the hard drive didn't even come with RAM modules to compare it with.

I do most of my shopping on Amazon, just to be clear.

Wait, what does the Hard Drive have to do with this? You're shopping for RAM. Did you look inside your computer to actually look at the RAM modules you have to be sure that what you bought is like what you're getting?

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2 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Wait, what does the Hard Drive have to do with this? You're shopping for RAM. Did you look inside your computer to actually look at the RAM modules you have to be sure that what you bought is like what you're getting?

More like my lack of RAM modules, but yeah, there's a tab on it you pull to open it up, so it's not much of a hassle.

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Just now, cjmoore25 said:

More like my lack of RAM modules, but yeah, there's a tab on it you pull to open it up, so it's not much of a hassle.

So it's soldered on then? Do you have RAM slots available on your motherboard?

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3 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

So it's soldered on then? Do you have RAM slots available on your motherboard?

Like I said, it didn't come with ANY modules. I guess the 2gb are just the default minimum for the thing.

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Just now, cjmoore25 said:

Like I said, it didn't come with ANY modules. I guess the 2gb are just the default minimum for the thing.

It's likely soldered on to the motherboard. Did you check if your motherboard also had slots available so you could put in more RAM? And have you found out what GPU you have?

I would also suggest looking into if you have any PCI-e slots you have so you could maybe put in a graphics card, but I doubt that your Pentium D is good enough for any gaming at all. If your lucky, maybe you could put in a Core 2 Duo, but I really do think you should just return your computer and use the money to buy something else.

 

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Yeah, I'm willing to bet that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard if you can't immediately find it.  Because if it didn't come with any RAM modules at all, your computer wouldn't run.

And yeah, I agree with shdowhunt60.  You should probably look into getting a better system, because the amount of money you're libel to spend upgrading the thing outweighs the amount of utility it would have at this point.

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4 hours ago, Tara said:

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard if you can't immediately find it.  Because if it didn't come with any RAM modules at all, your computer wouldn't run.

And yeah, I agree with shdowhunt60.  You should probably look into getting a better system, because the amount of money you're libel to spend upgrading the thing outweighs the amount of utility it would have at this point.

Yes. Just looking things up, he might get a Q9650, if his motherboard supports it, for $70 and a 750 ti for another $100, and then he might get SOME gaming capability. But that's a big MIGHT.  We just don't know what his PC is even like, if it can even fit a graphics card, he still hasn't said if his version of Windows 10 is 64 bit, and he's still only running 4gb of RAM IF his system can even take it.

I mean, there are good used PC's out there that if you just upgrade the storage and graphics card would be truly excellent gaming systems. But a machine that's running a CPU that's 10 years old is definitely not it.

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Honestly, I'm surprised Windows 10 even runs on that machine at all, especially if it's upgraded from Vista.

One might try downloading CPU-Z and giving us a few screenshots of the different tabs, and that might give us a better picture of what we're dealing with.  I doubt it will change anything, though.

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Oh, sweet topic activity! I wonder why I was never notified of new replies.

On 8.6.2016 at 10:12 AM, shdowhunt60 said:

Then why would he have a 32-bit OS, that makes no damn sense.

In this day and age, then yeah, definitely. Back in the early Vista era (after all, this is merely a refurbished computer), this is debatable. It was not at all uncommon to have computers shipped with a 32-bit OS running on a 64-bit capable CPU. I cannot say why for sure, but what we do know is that a lot of Windows Vista certified computers were simultaneously certified for Windows XP to add backward compatibility, and a very big part of the market wanted Windows XP on their brand new computers. While the computers had the processing power to run Windows Vista 64-bit, the sole stable architecture version of Windows XP was 32-bit. This may have led manufacturers to feel more at ease regarding 32-bit Windows Vista at the time, since driver support etc. have to be rewritten for 64-bit, and at the time they may not have felt it was stable enough.

Another thing which might be worthy of a mention was how RAM was even more delicate and pricey back then, and it was a lot more common to really push the theoretical minimum system requirements. The "real" Windows Vista's minimum requirements for RAM were 2 GB (4 GB recommended). However, for the 32-bit version, the minimum requirements were 1 GB (2 GB recommended). This might be one reason why computers were shipped with a 32-bit OS despite having a 64-bit capable CPU.

On 9.6.2016 at 3:54 AM, shdowhunt60 said:

It's likely soldered on to the motherboard.

According to Intel® ARK, the CPU and motherboard are of the PLGA775 standard, and I have yet to see any of those running on soldered RAM, but it would be interesting to know the exact desktop computer model to research this further.

I definitely agree on the part about RAM not always being compatible. Certain motherboards have a whitelist of manufacturers when it comes to RAM replacement, also not uncommon for refurbished desktop computers from that era.

On 9.6.2016 at 8:56 AM, Tara said:

Honestly, I'm surprised Windows 10 even runs on that machine at all, especially if it's upgraded from Vista.

In theory, Windows 10 (along with 7/8/8.1) carry exactly the same minimum and recommended system requirements as Windows Vista. In truth, as long as driver support is not messing things up badly, the computer is likely to run smoother on Windows 10 compared to Windows Vista, seeing as the latter came first and has terrible resource management, while in more recent versions of Windows, certain issues and unneeded parameters are omitted. Programs and games are a different story though, and need to be tested on each individual computer.

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