FPS < 5 , God help me.

I am playing on a laptop so my frames was never awe inspiring to begin with but this recent development is just f***ed up completly.

First off system specs:
Toshiba Sattelite laptop, 17" (Diagonal) screen
1.70Ghz Intel Celeron M Processor
1gb Ram
ATI XPRESS 200M Series
80gb Hard Drive, 40gb available

When I started Guild Wars about 8 months ago I had decent performance, about 15-20 FPS in town and 40 FPS in explorables or missions. Ever since I downloaded Nightfall my gameplay performance drops every time I shut down my laptop but that's easily remedied by hibernating it all the time. My main problem though is with my FPS after the Canthan New Year event. I noticed that no matter what I do to my comp (Delete files, defragment both system and GW.dat, Virus/spyware scan, etc) I can never get my frames past 6 FPS, and it's getting annoying. I used to get 40 fps in UW 4-man trapping groups, now I get 3 at best. PvP is not even an option anymore, halfway through an AB I freeze for 5 minutes before I die multiple times.

Anyone got ideas on what to do? I've nearly done everything but reinstall GW or update my comp to 2gb which would bring about overheating problems on this laptop. I also turned of Vertical Sync on both GW and my ATI card and that helped for a while until the Canthan New Year occured.

It's because your Jeff Highwind.

Hmm...Just try to reinstall, a clean install boosted mine back up...and keep your computer clean, and no other programs running in the background. (Photoshop for example)

running photoshop would kill GW performance.

You don't have to go all the way and uninstall gw. Just delete the .dat file and it will re-download all your files again. It's because after so long the files become messy and take up a lot more space and ram than they should, redownloading is the same as gutting out a drawer, you just rip it all out and put it back neatly, and you'll notice you have a lot more space.

Also, don't forget to defrag, run adaware, run an antivirus, run disk cleanup, and delete your cookies often. Just go to the search in the start menu to find the cookies folder, and just delete everything in it. Your pc needs these refreshments every so often. Make sure you clean out your fan inside your pc tower to prevent any extra heat and fan slowdown.

All this stuff should be pretty routine but most people neglect their pc's care. Your pc does so much for you, least you can do is take an hour every month for it. Should really be every week or every 2 weeks but a month is still safe.

I usually get 0 FPS upon entering an area, then about 10-16, then when I start t to walk it slinks down to 3 FPS.

Yea funny. Did mango put you up to that?

And I'll reinstall tomorrow when I get to my apartment where the Nightfall discs are. I'd rather gut the drawer completly like Dhal said instead of just killing gw.dat JUST to be safe.

He's on a Laptop.

And I don't think reinstalling the game will do much, since it downloads everything again compressed, then it will expand again, so, if he already defragmented, what's the point?

Check for viruses, spywares and useless background processes (these are usually the culprits). For a better performance, turn off your antivirus when playing GW, if you feel it's safe.

Btw, if you use any Norton software, I advise you to "kill it with fire". Norton = Trash.

Use Conjure Fire followed by Immolate.

Bugger that, the safest thing to do with Norton is to take off and nuke it from orbit! It's the only way to be sure!

Just reinstalled it, performance diddn't get better or worse.

I am just utterly lost now. My only options now are either destroy Norton or alter my Virtual Memory options.

Sorry to double post but problem solved. And in solving this problem I am never listening to a guy in my alliance ever again.

I turned on Vert Sync on both my ATI card and GW. My ally recommended that I kill it for better performance about the same time I installed Nightfall.

MODS FEEL FREE TO CAST SPIRIT SHACKLES ON THIS TRAVESTY.

Better yet, nuke the thread from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Sorry to bump, but it's back and more bipolar than ever. Now I can get anywhere between 1-17 fps in town and 0-30 in explorables depending on the camera angle.

I have norton but it's going to expire soon so I'll jsut uninstall it then. Tried a defrag of gw.dat and went from 8 files to 1 but it diddn't do much, so any tips would help alot.

Why not just uninstall it now and see what happens?

Haha Linoud.

For the record, he already reinstalled it.

If you have mozilla running with an asston of tabs: it eats fps. Also, teambuilder for some reason eats a bit of the graphical resources for some odd reason. Ctrl alt delete, check your running procs.

1) kill norton, uninstall it and microwave the disc.
2) NO ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES PLEASE Purchase another AV package.


Sorry for editing your post, but there will be no talk of torrents

cannonfodder

Did you try lowering the resolution to mayhe 1024x768 or even 800x600? Unfortunately, with integrated graphics, the performance further dwindle. I get about 10 fps when I use my centrino 1.6ghz with ati radeon 7500 with 32mb ram.