Ultima IX Starter
Version 0.02b - Freeware - (c) Meschiari Stefano.

Ultima IX : Ascension is (c) 1999 Origin Systems, Electronic Arts.

This help file is only a preview version, and thus will contain only the essential notes about the program. If you need any clarification wait next release or write me at silmesc@tin.it. Thanks for your patience.

 


Introduction & how it works

The box of Ultima IX :Ascension says that the minimal amount of RAM required to play is 64 mb. Well, just try to play it ! The game is VERY slow, because it has to use virtual memory and page out to the hard disk (Ascension is a very memory hungry program). The only way to make it playable is to run it alone, without any program eating up resources in the background. You should thus close all the programs : but many services, such as Explorer, Systray exc.cannot be closed.

Ultima IX Starter accomplishes this reliably by rebooting Windows and making Ultima IX the default program (the 'shell') after restart.

(without Explorer.exe running you can gain up to 20 mb of free memory. Especially after Windows 98 Explorer in fact uses a lot of system resources : this because Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer were made a sole program.)

Simply launch the program, set the location of the game and press "Start". You will be asked if you want to reboot : you should press "Yes". Your computer will be halted and restarted. After bootup, UltimaIX will be automatically launched and it will have almost all the system resources for its pleasure :-D . After you close Ascension, just reboot and -voila- Windows will be launched normally.