What IS my system specs?

[sniper297]

FAQ: "I (my son/my dad) love trains, so I bought a computer and MicroAuran Trainz Simulator. I installed according to the directions and it doesn't work right. What should I do?"

This type of question comes up a lot, and nobody can really guess what the problem is without more info, so the question is always answered with another question, "What are your system specs?"

Computer newbies are usually clueless, if I knew what my system specs were I would have mentioned it, so here's how to find out.

Click on start, run, and in the box type: dxdiag

http://forums.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/40ef7c3235ed938e.jpg

First page tells you your operating system, processor type and speed, how much memory, and your DirectX version. Write those down (or better still type it into wordpad so you can copy and paste the text when you ask for help ;-)) , then click on the Display tab;

http://forums.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/40ef7c3c3618e496.jpg

That gives the name and model of the video card, along with the driver version and the date. Clicking on the Sound1 tab similarly tells you about your sound card or onboard sound chip, altho usually sound isn't as important as the other info when troubleshooting game problems. So with all that:

Windows XP home (the operating system)
Pentium 4 2.66ghz (type, class, and speed of CPU)
1024mb RAM (system memory)
DX 9.0 (DirectX version)
ATI Radeon 9700 (video card) driver 6.14.0010.6541

Armed with that much information, anyone with some technical know-how has a good starting point to help troubleshoot whatever your problem is. :7

[BNSF4723]

I like your creativity with the computer name :P

[robertreedy]

"Write those down (or better still type it into wordpad so you can copy and paste the text when you ask for help"

Sniper, not being critical of the above, but does XP give you the option of saving each (or all) page to file. I know W98 does, and it would save any 'writing or copying' mistakes and allow the direct extraction and pasting into something else. Just wondering ;-)

RobertR .. ADF-M&RM at http://www.adfrr.com

[sniper297]

Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. On the one hand the "Save all information" generates a big text file with all that;

Driver Date/Size: 5/15/2004 22:42:06, 206336 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
Mini VDD Date: 5/15/2004 22:41:40, 745984 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-0D04-11CF-F86A-5900A1C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x4E44
SubSys ID: 0x2053107B
Revision ID: 0x0000
Revision ID: 0x0000
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D
Deinterlace Caps: {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
{335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
{552C0DAD-CCBC-420B-83C8-74943CF9F1A6}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,2) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
{6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
{335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch

Stuff in it, which would possibly overwhelm a newbie trying to hunt for the meat and potatoes in a stew of trivial details.
OTOH, it would prevent ty?pi!!ng mis\*.*teaks!

[robertreedy]

Point well made ;-) I guess sometimes we try to make it hard for ourselves .. make that 'we', 'I' :-)

RobertR .. ADF-M&RM at http://www.adfrr.com