[JocelynMeadows]

As you should know, the Sims 3 came out yesterday. My darling sister adores this game, however, I do not play it and am worried. Our Dell XPS 400 desktop was tremendously slowed down by the Sims 2, along with its various expansion packs.

Now, I am reseting the desktop to factory settings and creating it fresh, adding memory and such.

I am wondering though if I can put all the program/save game/ etc. files from Sim 3 onto the external hard drive I just bought? Its a Western Digital My book home essential 1 tb.
I've never used one before, so this might be a stupid question. ^_^ So thanks in advance for answering, in that case.

And if I can, how do I do it?

Thanks again.

[Couriant]

save game, yes. Actual game, no. You will need to reinstall the game.

As to the problem, it probably would have been a memory issue.

[JocelynMeadows]

That is unfortunate.

And obviously it was a memory issue, there are other issues with it as well, it caught a virus, which would be the point of reboot.

Oh well, thanks though.

[Elvandil]

Installing a game, no matter what it is, can not possibly affect the speed and running of a computer unless the game itself is running. So if your machine slowed down for some reason, it wasn't the game. It had to have been something else (and not memory, either). Possibly an infection or new startups.

In any case, the game will have to be installed, and it will run too slowly from an external drive to be playable with ease.

[Couriant]

no problem. Just a note some Dell machines are not really good since they use integrated graphics and that will also cause slowdowns as integrated uses the physical memory (RAM) to run.