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Geek Culture / Preventing freezing

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Ian T
22
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Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: Around
Posted: 22nd Jan 2005 13:59 Edited at: 22nd Jan 2005 14:01
Hi guys.

I'm looking for some advice as to preventing freezing when gaming here. What it boils down to is that several games which run poorly will ultimatly just freeze my computer dead in its tracks, with the music generally still playing, and I really can't figure out why. Having changed video and sound drivers a good deal I'm fairly sure that's not the issue; my page file is 384 min, 512 max megabytes in size (256mb RAM); no background tasks and minimum Microsoft services; and most strangely, they're not really pushing my video card.

Morrowind, for example, runs just as sluggishly at 10-20 FPS with minimum view distance and app controlled FSAA and ASF as it does with maximum view distance, 2xQ FSAA and 4x ASF. Gothic and Unreal Tournament 2004 (with a lot of bots) are other games that have issues.

I believe the fault is somehow with my RAM, as it's much lower respective to system requirments than my 1.2ghz (1500mhz equiv) CPU, but I can't determine exactly how. I'm well above the minimum requirments for all these games, I very rarely experience similar freezes in Windows, and running with RAM optimizers in the background seems to make no difference whatsoever.

None of these games are known to have memory leaks patched (which they are) either.

I'm at the end of my rope here... any ideas ?

indi
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 22nd Jan 2005 14:19
check to see that you dont have any rogue drivers still in your system if you have changed them a lot.
have u rolled back one driver in case the latest is causing issues?
have u upgraded your mobo firmware?
has a game changed your directx settings?
I had a mouse that used to freeze an older machine, changing to usb from ps2 fixed that issue.
remove as much as you can from your pc in regards to peripherals and try it again eliminating things as you go.
try one ram stick at a time.
its a process of elimination.
in the old macos extensions would crash your mac and to find it easily you would remove a few and restart.
the process of elimination eventually finds the rogue extension.
do u have temperature software?, perhaps its over heating and locking up.

If no-one gives your an answer to a question you have asked, consider:- Is your question clear.- Did you ask nicely.- Are you showing any effort to solve the problem yourself
Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 22nd Jan 2005 21:37
What Windows are your Running?
What is the speed of the Ram and the FSB of your Processor?
Have you changed any hardware (i.e. Processor) recently?
What is your AGP Apature set to?
etc...

While I do think your right, cause it sounds to me like your Ram has corrupt, because Windows works around it to prevent data corruption. There isn't really anyway to prove this without swapping out the ram though.

Have you had any IRQ / Non-Paged File BSOD Errors? If your not using Windows NT 5.x (2000/XP/2003) you won't have, but if you are then it'll bring up a few of them and try to blame your graphics hardware. (Ram is alot like a Women, nothing is ever it's fault and it can't admit when it can no longer multi-task)

System hangs can often be caused by over-heating, so be sure to check your Processor and GPU fan. Cheap Radeon/GeForce are notorious for over-heating and hanging the computer.

Also there is a possibility you have a worm / spyware of some sort, so do a quick system scan with AdAware to check to see if there is anything.
BiggAdd
Retired Moderator
20
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Joined: 6th Aug 2004
Location: != null
Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 04:21
Put Salt on your game, it lowers the freezing point of it... oops, thats water

Neofish
20
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Joined: 7th Apr 2004
Location: A swimming pool of coke
Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 05:24
Quote: "Put Salt on your game, it lowers the freezing point of it... oops, thats water"

I thought he meant water when I saw the thread title

stupid kid
20
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Joined: 16th Sep 2004
Location: at my house
Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 12:03 Edited at: 24th Jan 2005 04:31
U could try upgrading the ram, but if u dont want to do that u can put the setting in the options menu of the game to as low as it will go so that it will run faster. Make sure the game is the only thing running on your computer, if u have something like a anti-viruse program or something else that is running in the background that isnt completely necessary, u should shut it off before playing a game. Make sure u have the newest graphics drivers and the newest version of direct x. Download all the windows updates.

Omega drivers run faster than regular drivers. http://www.omegadrivers.net/

You should make sure your computer is almost double the minimum requirements for the game too, if your computer is just the minimum requirements the game will run slowly.

If you can still hear the music and move the mouse but just the game is frozen you should try control+alt+delete or alt-f4 before just turning off your computer by pressing the power button.

Press control alt delete and look at the performance thing and see the cpu usage and stuff, under processes u can see what programs use how much memory.

If u have an intel processor use the intel application accelerator, i never used this because i have an amd processor.

I read a book along time ago called Hacking Windows Xp and it had a section on increasing system performance, i dont remember too much from it but maybe u should read that to learn how to increase your computers performance. I mostly did the things in that book that made my computer more secure, made my internet faster, and made my computer look cooler, i didnt really care about making my computer faster because it is already fast enough.
Ian T
22
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Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: Around
Posted: 24th Jan 2005 03:56
Hi, thanks guys .

Made some optimizations and tweaks based on your suggestions. The Omega drivers are fantastic, much, much faster here, and Windows is being a bit less of a memory hog now. I haven't had a lockup since

Robin
21
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Joined: 22nd Feb 2003
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jan 2005 00:06
I remember reading somewhere some newbie to computing was trying to sue a computer suppourt company for telling him to spray antifreeze in his computer as a joke to stop it freezing (Yes, he had actually sprayed antifreeze inside his computer )

http://www.thegameszone.tk | robin@thegameszone.tk

Don't waste paper. It's not like it grows on trees.
Ian T
22
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Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: Around
Posted: 25th Jan 2005 00:09
Ilya
21
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Joined: 10th Aug 2003
Location:
Posted: 25th Jan 2005 09:55
Quote: "
<studdud> what the **** is wtf
"

Lol.
(And lol to most of the other ones on the top 100....)

Quote: "I've seen the word programming and I'm not sure what it means. Anybody please explain?"


Quote: "We shouldn't sacrifice the truth to preserve "balance"."
Ilya
21
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Joined: 10th Aug 2003
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Posted: 25th Jan 2005 11:14
Quote: "<Raven> Come, boy wonder! We shall rid the world of crime!
<monkeymilk> yes! together we will thwart evil-doers and criminals alike!
<Raven> To the batcave!
<monkeymilk> wait, my download just finished
<monkeymilk> 20 minutes of gun point rape
<monkeymilk> or so the description says
* monkeymilk is away - away
<Raven> ...Maybe he's trying to think up ways to save the girl. =/
<Robocop> he never said girl, could be two guys
<Raven> ...
<Raven> So, Robocop, are you prepared to clense the world of evil in the name of justice, as my trusty sidekick?
<Robocop> no i'm busy trying to find a good site for making a pipe-bomb
* Raven is starting to think IRC isn't the best place to start his superhero campaign."


Is that Raven or someone else?

Quote: "I've seen the word programming and I'm not sure what it means. Anybody please explain?"


Quote: "We shouldn't sacrifice the truth to preserve "balance"."

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