If you are having trouble installing a games software, the steps listed below may help you determine the cause and help you finish the installation.

1. Be sure that the Windows version that you are trying to install on is supported by the game.
2. Check to make sure that you have enough Hard Disk space available to load the software.
3. Check to make sure that your PC meets the minimum system requirements to run the game.
4. Turn off DMA:

Some game manufactures use a copy protection verification test. But with high-speed drives, the disc may spin so quickly that the test fails. If the test does not pass, the software will not install. Do get around this issue, try turning off DMA (Direct Memory Access) in your Device Manager. Here’s how: (more…)

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As with XP, in Vista you can speed up performance by sacrificing the visual effects. Go to the Control Panel, System and Maintenance, System Properties, Advanced (Tab) and settings. Set the radio button in ‘Adjust for best performance’.

This may produce a marginal improvement on a low spec machine, but it I could not detect a faster response on a machine with a 1.2 Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM. In truth, I was under-whelmed by this Adjust for best performance. A better way to truly speed up your Vista machine is to buy a 1GB USB RAM stick and use Vista’s ReadyBoost feature. (more…)

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