Yeah, that's where I first looked months ago. I would love to get it from NewEgg, but they just don't have any. They do exist though, I managed to find a website in the UK that was selling them for somewhere around 45 pounds. They are also being sold in some new high end laptops, but I don't need a new laptop though.
That's what I'm worried about. The hard drive I already have is in there tightly, so I don't think a bigger one would really fit. I'm still trying to search though, but if I can't find any then I will just get a 320GB. Thanks. 

I love my laptop, it's shiny, the hard drive is getting kind of cramped though. I really don't want to have an external drive, and I can't put a second drive in as there is only one HD bay. There are two sizes I'm looking at right now, a 320GB 5400RPM or a 500GB 5400RPM. I would totally go for the 500GB, but I can't find them anywhere. From what I read they should already have been out months ago. They probably are at a few online shops, but my searchfu fails. Does anyone know where I could get one of these? It would be so awesome to have a drive that large, and then I should be able to comfortably dual boot XP and Vista.

I know it's a huge problem for a lot of people who have nVidia cards, but I've never had any problems with the one that I've had. (GeForce 7600GT desktop, GeForce 8600GT laptop, 6200 laptop). Maybe I'm just lucky.

Try here. That should be what you want. 

It should be quick enough for Sims and most everything else. Since someone built it for you then when you want a nicer video card you should be able to upgrade it easily. How big is the HD?

Then it should totally happen after sims WooHoo. That would probably be the icing on the cake after all the "Honk honk!" noises.

Well, this is just stupid. Would it be safe if I made a new account on my computer and named it after my user name here?

BTW, I'll bet anything that Groups.cache ate itself. That file breaks constantly. Just go into your The Sims 2 folder and delete it, then try starting the game. Since installing Freetime patch 1 I have to delete it almost every other time I start TS2. 

Ack. I'm glad this is still around. I got SuckROM by installing Test Drive Unlimited, and I wasn't paying attention when starting it up. When I saw that spinning cd of doom, I knew I had fuxored up. Fell free to point and laugh.  Anyway, my real point with posting this is, does anyone know where I can find a list of games and what copy protection they use? I want to try to stay away from this nasty thing as much as possible.

Well, I guess I should say that this is resolved more or less. I got Windows XP SP2 reinstalled, got my documents back, and I am going to get Dell to replace the touchpad and latch.

I don't recall having any trouble with Pets (I think it was Pets). Though music titles became a mass of random jumbled letters.

Uhh no? A lot of the plugins that make Firefox for me aren't available for Firefox 3 yet. My mom has no problem with 3 though, and she love how the new features work.

Ooh. I remember ye olde WinAmp. It was indeed quite shiny when I used it, worked well and easy to theme. I have an iPod (read ball and chain), so I probably will have to use the newer one, if it works with it at all.

Is it a desktop? Try taking off the side panel so the computer isn't so stuffy.

Thanks for all the help on this. I think I'm just going to get my stuff off, then format and reinstall Windoze XP SP2. I don't know if I'll put Dell MediaDirect back on. Even though it is not the direct cause of this problem, I never really used it and don't want to put up with it.

Can anyone recommend things I should do this time around? Programs I should have/install things I shouldn't install. Other forms of copy protection I should watch out for (I try to already use a NoCD.) Here is kind of a short list of things that are "must have" for me.

AVG 8 Free, Avast, Windows Defender (?)
DVD playing program (what works well and isn't bloated? I liked WinDVD 5.)
CCleaner
Daemon Tools
Firefox 2 with plugins, Thunderbird
Google Desktop (could live without, but it's nice to have)
iTunes (want to replace with something less bloated at some point)
Various Games 
That's not what Dell MediaDirect is, it's something extra that let's you start your computer up quickly. So without waiting for windows to load you can open files on your hard drive or watch a dvd. It is useful; I had this feature on my Toshiba and I know HP does it too. As far as the restore partition, I don't really know what came on that as I put a bigger hard drive in as soon as I got it.

I kind of knew I was asking for comments like that by going with Dell. I have to say though, the build quality is much better than my old Toshiba.

MEH!
Nope. If it helps my install of Windows is like two months old, it is Windows XP SP3 (slip streamed install).

Please help me, I'm tired, and I at least need to get the files off my laptop. It seems boot.ini ate it's self, and now my laptop is constantly displaying this;

It is also giving me a message when I try to use the windows installer cd by just having the disk in.
"Invalid boot.ini"

I found this article at Microsoft. It's pretty much exactly my problem. I do what it says, but when I try bootcfg /list the disk can't find anything, and bootcfg /rebuild can only find the fucking Dell MediaDirect partition. This is useless. I guess a repair install would help, but I would like to hear what other people have to say about this before I do more stupid things. I'm going to try Dell tech support later.

 

Maybe he has some sliced tomato in his mouth.

There is a way to stop Vista from hiding the toolbar. I can't remember how it's done though. I did unhide it on my laptop and my mom's computer, and it wasn't hidden on my dad's laptop by default.

If you didn't do it yet try going into EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods/ and deleting NeighborhoodManager.package. The game should regenerate that on next run.

Here the weird part. I'm tired. It's like 2 AM here. If I stay up past the time I normally go to sleep, I get really chatty and stop snapping at people. Few more hours and I'll get really hyper, then a few hours later I'll go crazy and start yelling again. It's weird, but I can use it to my advantage. 

Also, are you still running the game with that stupid launcher EA added after Seasons? You might want to disable that too.

K. You want to make sure you have the NoCD for version 1.0 of FreeTime. If Windows isn't copying the file and instead just making a shortcut, I think you hold down shift when dragging the exe. Again, not sure exactly what button it is. 

Yeah, those are the only two versions of FreeTime that you can install a NoCD over right now.