Curse

Shakkara · Jun 03, 2007, 12:57 PM // 12:57

Allright, I've had some serious performance issues with guildwars the past weeks but the last few days it really became unplayable. I don't have a slow PC or anything, but guildwars just stops and resumes, stops and resumes, over and over and over, 1-2 seconds pause, 5 seconds play. I have no clue what it is, and I'm desperate. Here are my system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 3200+
A7N8X Motherboard
Asus ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256MB
2x 512MB Corsair Memory PC3200 2,3,3,7 timings
Maxtor 120GB harddisk 8mb cache
Maxtor 80GB harddisk 8mb cache
Soundblaster 128 (disabled onboard audio)
Realtek PCI network card (disabled the two onboard ones)

Guildwars has it's own partition private which is completely defragmented which has 6GB left available.

I have both Windows 98 and Windows 2000, each at their own private defragmented partitions, each with plenty of harddrive space left. Windows 98 is a clean install, doesn't have anything on it except the latest drivers, internet explorer, firefox, office and directX.
Windows 2000 is an older installation, but still using latest drivers, and I took out literally everything running in the background, even stripping built-in windows features away. There are several issues, and this happens at both operating systems.

Since a week or two ago, guildwars takes AGES to load. Even at the login screen, with the water, it freezes every few seconds. When loading zones, it just sits there when dropping me in the new zone, and I can't see any characters and my skillbar remains grey, not loading the icons on it. It takes a full minute before the characters appear and the skillbar gets filled. When opening inventory or storage, it takes about 5 seconds before I see items in it, most slots appear to be empty. When opening or closing any menu or changing any settings in the options panel, the whole game just freezes for upto a second. The sound loops as if the computer hangs, and then it all resumes again.

When doing a mission, I have these freezes all the time. Every 5-10 seconds, there is a 1-3 second freeze. I have taken out my soundcard as I was hoping that that would be the problem, but even with no sound the lag is there to stay.

Also, and this has been happening since shortly after nightfall, before the performance problems started, when minimizing guildwars and then going back to it, everything seems to be out of sync. Everything just hops over the screen, you know what I mean. It is in one place at one time, and then at some other place at some other time but you don't see it walking there, only the main character walks. This issue rarely goes away until loading another zone, so it basically means resign when it happens in a mission, very annoying.

Also, and this happens only on Win2000, not on Win98, some ingame items like lava, trees and some weapons like the fiery gladius and colossal scimitar, don't have a texture on them when looked from the east side. When looking from the west side there is a texture. The empty side is just black, blue, yellow, brown, whatever color. Here's a pic.

http://80.60.190.55/pics/gw/buggedtrees.jpg

I don't know how long I've had this issue, somewhere after nightfall it started, but I never complained about it as I don't really care much about graphics.

I've turned down all settings to minium but that doesn't fix it either. Any help would be nice.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Jun 03, 2007, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Uh, might wanna try getting XP there buddy. Anyway, do other games work fine? Sounds either graphics related or you have virus/spyware/etc. eating up resources and/or internet connection.

Shakkara · Jun 03, 2007, 09:39 PM // 21:39

XP is unstable, my pc slows down or crashes if I leave it on for a month or so, which doesnt happen with win98 and 2000. In addition, it has too much integrated bloat that I don't want it anywhere near my computer.

Other games run perfectly fine.

There is no spyware or virus as I know exactly what processes are in the memory at all times and I took out half of windows 2000's resource eating background stuff. I had spybot search and destroy scan my system yesterday just in case (some of them hide in explorer and are hard to detect), but it didn't find anything except some cookies.

Tarun · Jun 03, 2007, 09:57 PM // 21:57

Update your graphic drivers and if all all possible, upgrade from Windows 9x/2000.

Lonesamurai · Jun 03, 2007, 11:05 PM // 23:05

As both are no longer supported, its suprising that any games work aswell as they do...

Bloatware or not, get with the rest of the gaming world or except problems... your versions of windows are niether supported by ANet, ATI (so no graphics driver updates) or Microsoft themselves anymore...

Upgrade time ahoy me hearties!

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Jun 04, 2007, 12:08 AM // 00:08

Yea, you're gonna have to get a new PC and XP/vista if XP won't work on your new computer. Sorry.

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 03:13 AM // 03:13

Just put winXP Pro SP2 on one of my empty partitions and immediately tried to play guildwars after I put my mobo, catalyst drivers and latest directX on it.

Problems stay.

I'm going to switch my GeForce FX 5700 Ultra back, see if my graphics card is broken or something...

It's really crazy, it's just guildwars being totally unplayable and it should run fine at a PC half this speed...

Matsumi · Jun 04, 2007, 03:22 AM // 03:22

What do you have for conflicts/sharing listed in msinfo32 if anything? Have you tried sticking your soundblaster 128 and your network card in different slots? Also, you might wanna check the temps on your system, and check out the dust situation in there.

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 03:52 AM // 03:52

No conflicts/shares according to MSInfo on win2000. No dust in my PC as I clean that every month or so, even pull the videocard from its heatsink to clear out the huge fan. I pulled out the Soundblaster as I thought that was the problem and went without sound, but that didn't do anything either. Not tried the network card yet, I will disable that one now and use one of the mobo's onboard cards.

Temperature at 50-55 for CPU and mobo, 60-65 for videocard.

Matsumi · Jun 04, 2007, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Are those the temps under full load, or just idle? If you're not having any conflicts, then I wouldn't worry about switching around the pci cards. Seems more like a heat issue of some kind. Are you re-applying any thermal paste on the heatsink after you remove it for cleaning?

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 04:31 AM // 04:31

The temperatures are while playing games. Taking out the network card didn't solve the problem either. I use arctic silver as cooling paste on my CPU and graphic card chips.

This whole stuff started at roughly the same time as I installed MS Visual Studio on my 2k installation two weeks ago, it did indeed slow down Guildwars quite a bit after I installed that, but I already shut down all active components and that didn't fix the problem, nor does it explain why it runs like it does on Win98 and now XP. I rebooted the system and it became playable, but not anymore after the patch last thursday, now it lags and freezes all the time even after a fresh start.

I'm going to run Memtest, maybe one of my ram modules dying?

Matsumi · Jun 04, 2007, 04:39 AM // 04:39

Hmm, well, I guess the 3200 would run pretty hot anyways. Are you noticing any graphical problems on other games, or freeze ups of any kind? Might wanna try a fresh install of guild wars also. MS visual studio could have made some alterations to the way the .NET framework operates, which is also used by your catalyst control center. If you plan on reinstalling the .NET framework, I would recommend letting the .NET runtime optimization do it's thing before attempting to play guild wars.

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 06:19 AM // 06:19

Okay I'm onto something here...

I found an old installation of guildwars on another partition, and after patching that one up, it runs with much less lag then the one that has it's own partition, there is still some lag but no long freezes and no sound hanging. They're both at the same drive, just different partition. I can just run the original, and it lags and freezes, and run the other one, and it loads and runs much smoother, and switching back to the original it freezes again.

I don't understand. The original isn't fragmented, and the other one that runs better is fragmented in 383 pieces.

Harddrive problems or somekind of corruption?

EDIT: I do remember that I have had a "repairing data archive" thing shortly after I installed Visual Studio, so that might be it... Going to burn the good .dat to DVD, format the partition, and put it back there. Or just let it download the full GW from Anet once the partition is clean.

Matsumi · Jun 04, 2007, 07:00 AM // 07:00

Sounds like you figured it out on your own then. Perhaps some of the guild wars data got damaged, or maybe cluster it was assigned to has problems on that particular partition.

Lonesamurai · Jun 04, 2007, 05:50 PM // 17:50

sounds more like a dying hard drive issue... maybe a new hard drive and grab an OEM of Vista or XP (if you can find one, although from December 31st, OEM's of XP will no longer be supported by MS according to a recent press release)

fusic · Jun 04, 2007, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Woo Shakkara looks like your finally getting it sorted out which is really cool :P and like Lonesamurai says MS will stop supporting OEMs of XP which in actual fact all major distributors like HP, Dell etc will be as well as from 2008 they are all to support MS Vista oh what joy that will be lol

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 08:54 PM // 20:54

Yeah but windows XP didn't fix this problem, and and windows 98 is the only OS that DOESNT have the strange graphics problem. Oh and it also has 10-15 more FPS then the other two operating systems.

As for stability:

Webserver (HTTP/FTP/PHP/MySQL/SSL/IRC/and used as remote desktop when I'm somewhere else and need my programs, generates upstream traffic of 10-25GB per month):

Windows 98SE not even patched: uptime 6-9 months (current run is 6 months and 15 days without reboot)
Windows 2000 SP4: uptimes between 3-6 weeks
Windows XP SP2: Too slow for that computer, didn't bother to try

Ultima Online freeserver (RunUO beta 36, heavy CPU load):
Windows 98: Uptimes of 1-4 months, crashes 3 times a year on average
Windows 2000: Uptimes of 1-2 weeks, slows down too much after that
Windows XP: Crashes within a week

I don't mind upgrading. I do mind downgrading to some half-assed bloatware operating system that crashes and eats my resources. I really had hopes for Vista, being able to turn off the GUI completely and all that (it's an operating system, not a circus, so I only need a command prompt, eh?), but from what I've seen so far at school, it only has more bloat. I'll just wait till I buy a 64-bit PC later this year and decide on the OS by then. Maybe Linux is better for me.

Lonesamurai · Jun 04, 2007, 09:02 PM // 21:02

and that shows how little you've actually looked into the differences...

if your running servers of any description, why in god's name are you using the same computer to play the games as you are hosting servers?

and yes, Linux is better as a server box

Shakkara · Jun 04, 2007, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Where did I say that I use the same machine to play on?

I have 8 computers in this house, you know.

By the way, the problem still isn't solved. Guild Wars runs fine from my cluttered E partition, but it lags like hell on J and K, even after formatting those partitions and getting a fresh install from the -image command.

Damaged harddrive, I bet. Will run powermax tomorrow.

Edit: Just found out that J and K are my second, relatively new 160GB harddrive (partitioned as 125GB, windows 98 is said not to like anything over 128GB), while C, D, E is my old 80GB harddrive. I guess the culprit is found then.

Edit2: PowerMax ran a diagnostic all night and didn't find anything. Will experiment around a bit. Maybe damaged IDE cable or controller...

Matsumi · Jun 05, 2007, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Well, if the newer maxtor drives are anything like the older ones they had out, I would start looking for a replacement drive or firmware update if there is one. Although it could be something else entirely causing problems with performance.

I haven't had very many good experiences with maxtor drives. I've lost lots of data and years of work due to odd mechanical failures and crappy firmware on those things. They're great when they work, but when they start crapping out, it's a bad sign. On the other hand, I've heard from people that say they're great, and use them all the time. But anyways...

If it were me, I'd switch over to a sata drive if it was that size and if your motherboard supports it. Anything over 80gb on an ide transfer rate I wouldn't expect to run very optimally, but that's just me.

Could be other things that are slowing the performance however, such as the placement of the partition and access location to the pagefile (and size) could be causing it to work harder than necessary to run OS services and programs. Changes to the .NET framework can (in some cases) slow performance way down or to a crawl. Too many unnecessary system processes or services running in the background can also slow performance. But, you probably already know most of this stuff. If formating the partition and reloading guild wars on it didn't help, there are some of the above mentioned things in question. If by removing the partition all together, and recreating the partition differently and reformatting it doesn't help either, then I'd say it's pretty much down to software problems. Since powermax didn't detect anything wrong, I'd say the functionality of the drive is fine.

Based on what you have concluded so far, I would look more into the OS installed on the drive, pagefile size and location, partition and format of the drive guild wars is on and where it's being executed from, changes made to the OS services and .NET framework, driver changes or alterations, possible pagefile data corruption, changes made to the way different file types are being read or interpreted by the OS, etc.

Edit: Oh, I forgot something that's somewhat common that might be the cause of your performance loss. Sometimes one or two of the pins on the where the ide cable connects up to get pushed in or bent, and what happens is your drive gets set to a lower transfer rate such as PIO mode or a slower UDMA transfer mode than what it's capable of. So, might want to check out you're ide controllers and inspect the pins as well just to eliminate that out of the way.