OK, so AoC is a new virtual world, and it relies on beefy hardware. That's not how I would have done it, but I'm not funcom. Anyway, although I can run it on my own PC, it won't run on my daughter's laptop (the video card is too puny) and it won't run on my younger daughter's PC (not enough memory and the video card is too puny). Faffing around with laptop video cards can only ever end in pain, but upgrading daughter #2's PC so daughter #1 can play on it for 3 months does make sense. Hence, I extracted 1Mb from daughter #2's old PC (her current PC used to be daughter #1's PC) and moved the graphics card from my PC to her PC. As a result, her PC is now above the minimum specification for AoC.
Of course, this meant my own PC was now somewhat lacking in its ability to display anything, so I went out and bought a new card (a GeForce 9600 GT).
I was not amused to read step 1 of the installation instructions:
