Well, that was an exercise in futility. *sigh*

*uses remarkably appropriate "Harper inside a VR Brain" icon and wishes she had a Harper*

If you read this, and have any ideas, let me know. I've already:

-updated my driver
-tried reinstalling game AND DirectX, with updated driver
-run a complete virus scan, just in case (came up clean, with an up-to-date as of this morning Norton)
-downdated my driver to the one Faramir came with (with help from Boris the Indian Tech Support Guy, who walked me through it - even though that one I could have done on my own quite easily.)

( Em's Adventures in Dell Tech Support )

More computer stuff.

(In

A-HA!

I have succeeded in elimintating the problem which resulted from trying to fix the first problem, so in physics terms:

Distance travelled - a long way
Displacement - zero.


I am now back at being able to get through all the menus, with a ten percent chance of success at actually being able to play the game. This is an improvement, at least.

What I did was futz around with the hardware acceleration settings - I noticed there was a setting which said "DirectDraw disabled", which sounded like it might be relevant, so I upped the acceleration so that nothing was disabled, and that seems to have solved the "not compatible with DirectX 9.0c" problem.

So - currently operating with old video driver (the Dell guy told me to restore original driver settings), new hardware acceleration settings. Am now going to try with full hardware acceleration and new driver, and see if that works :)

(Frustrating as this is, I'm enjoying it. It's a puzzle to solve, and a brain activity which for once doesn't involve soil pH. I have had ENOUGH of soil pH this semester. It's very interesting, and very applicable for forest management especially, but enough, already.)

Signs of possible obsession.

I had a dream last night. I was on a bus (coach-style), along with about twenty elderly people and my little sister. We were on the M1 (for those of you unfamiliar, large English highway), heading north, across featureless Generic English Countryside As Seen In Hollywood Movies, with nary a building to be seen (not consistent with the M1, but it was a dream), and suddenly there was this bookstore, and I could see all the books inside. I asked my sister "hey, isn't it July the sixteenth today?" to which she said yes, so I yelled at the driver to turn around so I could go and buy "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". The elderly people wanted to go to the bookstore as well, so the bus turned around, and we all trucked into the store. There were two copies of the Harry Potter book left, and my sister got one, and so did I, while the old people all wandered around aimlessly for a bit. Got to the cash register and realised I didn't have my credit card, nor any UK currency, and asked if they took debit, to which the cashier (a very pretty blonde lady) replied of course, just input my four-digit PIN to the number pad. I panicked, because I have an eight-digit PIN, and asked my sister if I could borrow fifteen quid. She looked very disapproving, but lent me the money (love you, lifelongmanic! Thanks, even if it was only a dream).

I got back onto the bus, huggling my new book, and realised that there was a concession stand in the back of the bus which was selling books and newspapers, and had many a copy of HBP, so the bus had not in fact needed to stop at all. I sat down in my seat, drank in the cover illustration for a bit (it was in shades of blue and grey, and had a lot of swirly things), opened the book to start reading... and woke up, very frustrated.

I nearly got to read it!