Flip a coin.

I only have caps. And caps are biased ;)

You've GOT to have at least one coin somewhere even if it's just a ridiculously small cent. Or maybe you still have some francs in a drawer or something.

Wheel wobble. Apparently two spokes are bent. Yeah, not going to get that fixed myself. Off to the bike shop with that.

EDIT: Okay, it should be pretty inexpensive and I didn't need the bike today anyway, so never mind.

I don't think your decision was bad. All the Total War games so far, have been good or decent. I doubt the coming Rome will be shit and on sale anytime soon.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_bitch_about_life_in_general_thread/post4694

...
The story continues (and hopefully gets a happy ending as well):

First thing is that these "temporary freeze-up" problems seemed to appear only if I used Firefox. For the past few days, I've used Internet Explorer instead, and no problems whatsoever. So it seems they are somehow related to graphics drivers, but also something in Firefox can trigger them?

Anyways: Woohoo! NVidia has just released newer graphics drivers (320.49), and what do they say:

"Fixes stability and game compatibility issues reported with 320.18 drivers."

EXACTLY what I was complaining about. So maybe these new drivers will both stop the freeze-ups (with or without Firefox), but also allow me to play Rayman 2 once again? We'll see...

So it seems now more and more apparent that it wasn't either the CPU/GPU overheating, or my PC (laptop) motherboard dying, but simply due to graphics driver bugs, just as I assumed. Thank god for that. :)

Oh thank god, I can go back to FireFox. Thanks for the update.

My internet service has been beyond bad for the last month. For that month I've been on and off the phone with them trying to figure out a way to fix it, tweeking, buying new equipment to replace the older equipment they said was probably causing the problems.

I find out last night the entire problem has been on their end, and what's more, THEY KNEW IT THE WHOLE TIME!!!!! They decided to switch over their home base setup a month ago and when they did about half of their clients (myself included) suffered severe speed and connection drop offs. Well they don't know why this happened and a month later they are still trying to fix it but instead of admitting it they decided to just lie about it, telling me to keep replacing stuff on my end and to keep changing settings on my end hoping (I guess) that I'd forget the problems were still there and/or they'd have their problems fixed before I realized it was their problem. Being lied to really pisses me off. Begin told to buy expensive equipment that they know I don't need really really pisses me off. Continuing to be charged for services I'm not getting while being lied to and being told to buy shit I don't need REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY FUCKING PISSES ME OFF!!!!!!!!!

That is all. :D

Not sure yet about the stability, but at least Rayman 2 (GOG) still crashes on me even with the latest NVidia drivers, even though they promised better compatibility than the earlier buggy drivers. Oh well.

Since I have both Win7 and Win8 on this PC side by side, maybe I'll install some earlier NVidia drivers on the Win7 partition and keep it as my "more backwards-compatible" Windows gaming installation, and the Win8 partition uses the latest drivers and stuff for the extra performance and whatever that they are supposed to yield on newer games.

That arrangement makes sense also considering that there are now a couple of games that don't work, or work less satisfactorily, on Windows 8. Like Haegemonia Gold.

For the worst cases that would have problems even in Windows 7, naturally I also have my older PCs where to play them.

EDIT: Scratch that for now, I got Rayman 2 to run fine with <span class="bold">these instructions</span>. So maybe I'll hang on to the newest drivers anyway.

Yeah, I've had that a few times. They always say, unplug your router, change filters blah, blah. That's the problem with scripted help centres.

I love a happy ending!

That actually kind of makes me feel better. At least I know I'm not the only one.

Considering you live in the middle of nowhere (based on your posts, that is what I've assumed), I'm surprised you even have internet access. :) Is it satellite?

yes. It's the middle of nowhere relative the U.S. If I lived in Guam it would be considered Atlantic City.

Why can`t people never seem to get that IF someone are going to help you, it does not help to just yell "help, my computer is on fire".

There are many that can help, but please, a least throw out some meaty bones while you`re yelling...!

Not sure if that translates as intended :)