Catching up to speed... up to today...

So before I tell you the latest problems I've had with my computer, let me catch you up to speed.

Built a computer a while back for around $340... A 7600 for around $130, a motherboard/cpu combo special for around $100, 1gb of memory for I'd guess around $50, bought a friends case for $60 (with power supply), friend gave me the cpu fan, borrowed the hard drive from work... had a monitor, had a cd burner.

Added 1gb of ram a few months later for I'd guess around $50 ($390).

Fan went out on my 7600 so I bought a custom fan for it, probably around $50 ($440)

Bought an 8800 gt/oc. wouldn't work with the motherboard I bought so I had to buy another motherboard. And another I'd guess $340 for that ($780).

Hard drive I borrowed from work crashed. So I bought a sata hard drive (complete guess probably around $60 - so $840 now).

Bought Vista Home Premium for around $300 ($1140). My friends then told me I was eligible for a $130 OEM copy since I built my machine. Live and learn. Originally installed it on my laptop, but it was sluggish so I installed it on my gaming machine. had to contact microsoft cause despite the fact I paid full price for it, I could only use it once.

Bought Halo 2 since I now had Vista. It was fairly sluggish, I wasn't pleased but I still played through the campaign.

Bought Crysis since I had a dx10 compatible graphics card. The people looked like they had light shining through their armor. It too was sluggish. But I played through the campaign.

Bought Call of Duty 4. It was sluggish and locked up periodically. But as with the others I fought through the campaign this way. Also got into the multiplayer for a short time.

Got the work hard drive back up and running long enough to install COD4 on it (XP). It surprisingly worked well in it, which led me to believe the problem was with Vista. But when I had the 7600 in it, the problem didn't exist in Vista, making me think it could be the 8800.

Bought Gears of War, it too was sluggish and had the light shining through the armor. This was more or less the last straw.

Bought a Gateway PC-7811fx gaming laptop for $1240 ($2380). No more light shining through the armor!!!! But Any game newer than 2007 would lock up anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes from starting the game.

Bought a laptop cooler because I had heard the gaming laptops ran hot and hoped that was the problem. It wasn't.

Bought an ATI 4870 512mb. It looked good but a friend of mine bought a 4870 1gb through newegg for less than I paid for this. And Far Cry 2 had rainbow mountains. Returned.

Bought an XBox 360 Arcade for $200. Bought the refurb'd hard drive for $30. So far it has worked perfectly (knock on wood). and around $2000 cheaper! This has been my primary gaming machine for I'd say the last 6 to 8 months. Everything just works, I'm fairly pleased overall with this decision!!!

Fast Forward to Yesterday...

I decided I wanted a game I could play on my laptop, some casual gaming without having to move from my desk when I get bored. I bought Medal of Honor Airborne cause it's a little older so I figured it would be more compatible. It wouldn't even install, would quit shortly after starting the install process. After googling the problem found out I had to uninstall a previously installed version of Nvidia Physx to get it to install. It installed. But locked up after 2 minutes of starting the game. So over it at this point.

Bought a 4890 1gb today.

Installed it in my gaming machine. No Rainbow Mountains in Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 played for more than 20 minutes without sluggishness (no more than is caused by my now outdated hardware) now for the real test...

Went to install Medal of Honor Airborne... same problem, quit installing about the same place as the last time. Except this time - no Nvidia physx to be found in the uninstall options. I found files in system32 (per a forum post), deleted them. Found registry entries, deleted them. Found files in program files, deleted them. But it still caused problems. Eventually I found a copy of Nvidia physx and tried to install it, sure nuff even though I had deleted all that stuff it still said a newer version of physx was installed.

I found the absolute newest version of physx and installed it on the machine. there was then an entry in the uninstall options! I then uninstalled it... and the game installed finally.

I then played through the game for about 20 minutes. No abnormal sluggishness, no odd colors, no lock ups. Do I finally have a solution that's going to work? Well, I now plan on upgrading to a micro motherboard (so I can put it in a smaller case to make it more portable to replace my laptop) and a newer cpu, which I'm sure I'll need to get different ram for, I think everything else is ok. I'm sure Vista will quit working again. I'd like to add more ram anyway but last time I was at fry's they said they weren't carrying 64-bit vista anymore, probably getting ready for version 7. So at some point I'll need to get a 64-bit of some version of windows. So stay tuned! :)