frusttrating performance problems

superwalrus · Post by **superwalrus** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 6:15 pm

defragging made the problem worse.

The only thing that helped was the swap file increase, but now its back to the same old shit. =\

Walrus

Minute · Post by **Minute** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 11:22 pm

I didn't read half the shit you typed but this will help you regardless.

Download this: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freew ... runs.shtml

Run it. Get rid of anything you don't NEED. By need I mean, leave your virus scan intact. Don't get rid of system shit. Etc etc. Btw... reboot after you're done doing this. If some of the shit you just got rid of is still in there it means that that piece of shit has a TSR running and it's putting the registry entry right back in. That means you will have to boot into safemode and do it again to get rid of it.

In addition you should do the following two things as well.

Also I recommend pulling your memory out and reseating it all. (Remember to ground yourself)

Also I recommend that when you go to bed tonight you:
Start - Run - CMD - CHKDSK C: /X /R

If this works, take that 25 bucks and buy some of those pills that Bahd suggested. If it doesn't work, take the 25 bucks and buy some of those pills that Bahd suggested.

Alannia_Raindancer · Post by **Alannia_Raindancer** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 3:14 am

Walrus;

I know this is gonna sound dumb, but it worked for me, so here goes. And no, I'm not a hardware expert...software is my deal.

I had the EXACT same thing happen to me on a laptop that is 10 times the desktop I have. The thing that seemed consistant is that every time I fired off EQ, the fans started running in overdrive. Picked up a "cooling pad" for the laptop for a little under 30 bucks, and it made a world of difference...no more lag spikes in EQ1, and no more lockups in EQ2.

On the off chance that you don't know what I'm talking about, it's nothing more than a plastic pad that plugs into a USB port on the laptop to run additional fans underneath. When it was suggested to me, I was horribly skeptical, but I was amazed at the difference. Near as I can tell, Sony's programs are just SO intense that they burn through the laptop until it doesn't know what to do except lock up...In EQ1 this was manifesting as lag spikes, and in EQ2, it was a complete system lockup.

For the record, the laptop this worked for is a Dell Inspirion XPS, with a 3.4 ghz processor, a gig of ram, with a Radeon 9700 vid card. Even prior to getting the cooling pad, I could walk through the Bazaar with a gazillion people there and look straight ahead, which my desktop won't do. AND my lag spikes started with OoW.

Not sure if this will help you or not. If your laptop is anywhere near as beefy as mine, upgrades seem to be a waste of cash. Besides, a cooling pad is benificial in its own right for laptops, even if it doesn't fix your EQ problem.

superwalrus · Post by **superwalrus** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 4:51 am

how soon upon logging in would your problems start? And would it slow up in all zones, not just OOW ones? Also, when you say lag spike, do you mean an actual lag spike on the f11 meter? Or do you mean it would become sluggish for no reason.

Thanks,

Walrus

ps also, where can I buy a cooling pad?

Post by **Ddrak** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 5:56 am

Definitely sounds like overheating problems. Games can seriously overheat laptops (they just aren't designed to run the CPU at max for long periods). The sluggishness would be the CPU slowing down for a short time to get the temp back under control.

See if you can get a temperature monitor. If it's a Dell, google "i8kfangui", otherwise try out "motherboard monitor" to see if that gives you any decent readings.

Alternately, it could be the vid card swapping textures to and from main memory. Try turning off all the new models, turning texture quality way down and/or dropping your screen resolution.

Lastly, download FRAPS to get a good count of fps to see if you notice anything...

Dd

Bahd Zoolander · Post by **Bahd Zoolander** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 10:17 am

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 850&depa=1

Klast Brell · Post by **Klast Brell** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 10:51 am

A lot of people are suggesting cures, but no one is trying to diagnose the problem in the first place.

1 Hit control-alt-delete and bring up your task manager. Here you can observe what your system load is and what processes are hogging the resources. It floats above all windows by default so you should be able to start EQ and watch the load levels as you play. Run around a bit and switch zones a few times to make the problem manifest itself. Can you see which process is slowing you down?

2 The game will save textures to a cache in order to speed up zoning. The more times you zone the bigger the texture cache becomes. Turning off the texture cache will increase your average zone time, but it will likely help with the performance problems that get worse the more times you zone.

Alannia_Raindancer · Post by **Alannia_Raindancer** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 12:46 pm

superwalrus wrote:how soon upon logging in would your problems start? And would it slow up in all zones, not just OOW ones? Also, when you say lag spike, do you mean an actual lag spike on the f11 meter? Or do you mean it would become sluggish for no reason.

Thanks,

Walrus

ps also, where can I buy a cooling pad?

It would really depend on what I was doing. I could typically go for about 45 minutes without any issue. And yes, it would slow up in all zones, not just OOW, and got worse the more I zoned. When I say it started with OOW, I simply mean that I didn't notice too many issues prior to the expansion coming out. And no, not a lag spike on the F11 meter, I mean choppy slow, "WTF, why can't I move, my connection is crystal clear!"

http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=PA248U

That's the one I have. Hubby got it for me from Newegg, so I'm not sure what else is out there. I know that Best Buy has some (saw them while Christmas shopping), although I don't know what brand. I'm pretty sure you can find one in any computer accessories store.

Bahd Zoolander · Post by **Bahd Zoolander** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 2:19 pm

Admittedly I haven't played in a few months, but as of the DX9 upgrade the texture caching was no longer working. Even so it didn't use any extra ram, it just saved the zone textures in pre-swizzled format in a single <zonename>.txc file.

EQ was written in such a way that it will always use all available CPU time. There was a program that helped this by limiting the frame rate but I don't remember what it was called. I think it was from the same guy that made EQWindows. It might help a bit. You could also try motherboard monitor and have it log out the temperature and CPU speed while you play. If the CPU is throttling down you would see it.

I think all the coolers with fans are basically the same. Some come with extra features like a USB hub if that is something you might find useful.

Riggen · Post by **Riggen** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:36 pm

As of the Omens of War expansion Everquest plays a lot more nicely with other programs. If you set your video driver to force vsync to be enabled you can further limit the CPU/video resources EQ will occupy.

A couple months ago a friend of mine started experiencing a problem similar to what walrus is describing. Every now and then the machine will momentarily stutter to a virtual halt with performance being more accurately described by "seconds per frame" than "frames per second." There is no visible disk access during this period, it simply appears that something else is occupying nearly all of the CPU's attention.

However, his situation is complicated by the fact that his computer's motherboard is known to have been damaged by a lightning strike. My friend is further posessed of a somewhat volatile temper, so I can't be sure exactly how many times he has punched, kicked, or shot his computer at the firing range. He rarely performs software updates and has a particular talent for infecting his system with spyware. He's not too bad with viruses since that one time I cleaned 17 of them from his system in front of his eyes.

The last time I went over to his place to slog out the thing I performed various cleanings, installed service pack 2/direct 9.0c, checked system settings including virtual memory, updated his motherboard's BIOS, and pretty much everything else that could possibly be done in a three hour period except reinstall the OS from scratch.

Sadly, while EQ ran fine for me the whole time I was watching it, he called me back a few days later complaining that it was worse than ever for him.

/shrug

I'm tempted at this point to tell him just to melt the thing down and get a new one.

superwalrus · Post by **superwalrus** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 10:07 pm

well, the cooling pad didn't help the problem. I'm just going to give up and play all gimpy =\ Oh well.... thats 600 bucks worth of upgrades down the drain.

Walrus

Bahd Zoolander · Post by **Bahd Zoolander** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 8:45 am

flatten and reinstall

Surlley · Post by **Surlley** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 5:02 am

Anyone Find it ironic that in the other thread walrus was bragging about how much ass he gets, and now in this thread he is whining about performance problems.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I hope they have viagra for E-penis' is still working fine

Surlley · Post by **Surlley** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:31 pm

im suprised you are able to type raistle. I mean with your keyboard being glued down by all of your man goo as you furiously beat off to pictures of XIL.

Thanks for taking the time to post though, i appreciate it more than you will ever know.

WIth Love,
Surlley

-=Xilanthanax=- · Post by **-=Xilanthanax=-** » Sat Jan 01, 2005 12:36 pm

Nah, that's not Raistle, that's Muzukh_The_Goth_Fag.

Muzukh_the_Depraved · Post by **Muzukh_the_Depraved** » Sat Jan 01, 2005 7:22 pm

Now who has an obsession with who?

-=Xilanthanax=- · Post by **-=Xilanthanax=-** » Sat Jan 01, 2005 8:27 pm

Your name isn't in my sig, fagbox.

Brell Rants

frusttrating performance problems

hmmm

hmmm

Re: hmmm

hmmmm