There are several good resources for help that are on the net already to research issues, here are a few of them.

-This is the Sony Online troubleshooting guide, may provide some basic answers and help

- check your system for the appropriate requirements to play the game, update drivers and Direct X components as outlined in the help files.

-This is an excellent site with a great deal of information about DIAL UP CONNECTIVITY and the MODEMs you may be using. Choose the v.Richard's Modem sites and the modemsite link specifically for in depth information about hardware and firmware.

-This is also a great source of information on Modems and different initialization strings (lines of code you can add to a modems advanced settings to change its behavior).

-for high speed access users, this site include everything from information about cable/DSL/ISDN and fractional T-1?s to registry tweaks for increased performance.

Part the first: Why your computer is a lot like a car.

Okay, that may not make sense to you but it will when I am done. Your computer is a lot like your car, it needs regular maintenance in order to function properly. You have an engine (CPU) that is timed and pushed by your cars electric brain (firmware/Drivers) and you are the software (you ARE softer than the car..and can act as unpredictably as windows! J )

The most basic level of your computer is the HARDWARE, which is the physical cards, memory, hard rives, CPU, keyboard and so on. If your hardware is not functioning properly or out of date for the application that you want to run, you may need to update it.

The Highest level is the SOFTWARE, for us the Windows environment. Windows is regularly updated to fix all kinds of issues, from networking to GUI (graphic user interface) issues.

The bridge between HARDWARE and SOFTWARE is called FIRMWARE. Firmware is the ?brain? of your hardware and translates what your software tells your hardware to do into a form that your hardware can understand. Firmware also interacts with the DRIVERS in windows, which are the ?engines? by which windows talks to the physical components of your computer.

So we have this Teeter Totter with firmware as the fulcrum, hardware and software on either side. With me so far?

Making sure that the firmware on a modem is up to date is very important. This is how you manage to avoid buying a new Video/Sound/modem card. At one time there were THREE different languages that a modem could speak:

X2

V.90

K56Flex

Only V.90 survived and is the only real supported protocol on the internet for Dial up connections, though some small ISP?s may still be supporting the other two. If your modem states that it supports two or more of the above, check for firmware updates. Heck, check anyway. If your computer has outdated firmware or drivers, you will get choppy connectivity and bad throughput. An easy way to check if it is the firmware or drivers is to add four commas after the number to be dialed for your ISP. If you get a much more stable connection, look into updating the drivers and the firmware. Each comma acts as a 2 second pause, four act as 8 seconds of pause, enough time to allow the V.90 protocol to be missed and your modem to connect at a slower and more stable speed.

For Cable and DSL services, you should not have to worry about it, since you use an entirely different kind of modem. You can always check the manufacturers website anyway if you so choose.

***only make upgrades and changes that you feel comfortable in doing. If it scares the bajeesus out of you, call a tech and make HIM/HER suffer through it for you.

Is a great site to check out to learn more about your hardware and how a distributed Cable network functions.

Looks great and has a TON of information.

There are several good Windows utilities for doing these ?oil changes? and basic maintnence.

In windows 98 and later there is a tool called "Disk Cleanup" you can find in this path:

START>PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES>SYSTEM TOOLS

You should run this utility regularly and choose to clear out your temp folder for sure. Unless you will never downgrade, leave any windows uninstall information on your machine. I run this utility several times a day. Really.

In this same place you will see SCANDISK and DISK DEFRAGMENTER, I recommend running these apps at least weekly. (I am a bit obsessive on that). Unless you are having real issues with windows, you should only have to run the thorough version of SCANDISK once, then the quick version after that. For both programs, scandisk and defrag, you will want to turn off your screen saver (Win 2K people ignore that..you don?t have to) you can always turn your monitor off and let it defrag as you sleep since it will most likely take quite a while.

Windows also can be updated. Microsoft necer seems to finish the damn thing so it is worthwhile to visit the update site and get any critical updates available, as well as other upgrades of choice. Here is the link to the site:

You will click on "product updates", it will check your computer by sending cheksums back and forth, MS DOES NOT SPY ON YOU WITH THIS FUNCTION! It will then present you with a list of available updates. Not all the updates will be advisable, you will have to read the descriptions and see for yourself.

Tuning up the engine: Hardware dirvers and firmware updates for VIDEO CARDS

Your Video card is going to be the major determining factor in your play of EQ. If you have incorrect or out of date drivers, you will see ghosting, artifacts or any number of strange effects when you play.

I will assume since RAM is so damn inexpensive that you have already hogged all the system memory that you can into your box.

Your Video card is made by SOMEBODY, really! If you don?t remember you can look up your card in the device manager section of the properties of "my Computer" on your desktop. Expand the item by clicking on the + sign, you should see your card displayed under "display adapters". By double clicking on the name of your device you will see another pop up window. This window will have several "tabs".

One of the tabs will be labeled "driver". Write that information down. It will be labeled "file version".

Now, go to the manufacturers website and check the support/downloads section for driver versions, odds are good that if you never have done this there will be an update for you here. Choose the "WHQL" version of the drivers if they are offered. These drivers will be the version that MS has certified.

If your company no longer exists..well..there is hope! The manufacturer used a "chipset" most likely manufactured by yet another company to make the card.

Check here to see if they can help with drivers:

Actually updating drivers is not difficult, most likely they will come in ZIP format, so you will need a decompression utility. MOST but NOT all of these driver updates will come with an executable file that you can run that will update the driver for you.

In the BIOS of your computer you can also affect changes to the video settings, like the arpeture for the memory of the card. I recommend setting it to 2 times the size of the physical ram on your card.