Unplayably slow performance.

[Becket]

Hi all.

I have a 2 Ghz PIV, 40 meg hard drive w/ 3 megs free space, Win XP, GeForce 3 with updated drivers.

The game boots up fine, and scenarios start fine, but a few seconds into the first replay to begin any scenario, the game begins to run slower, and slower, and slower. Within a few minutes, I can't close combat windows (I click them, but they won't disappear for a minute or more -- just stay on the screen while nothing happens).

The music stays constant for a bit, but then it too breaks down as the slowdown becomes intense.

Any ideas? UV runs fine for me.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Becket
I have a 2 Ghz PIV, 40 meg hard drive w/ 3 megs free space, Win XP, GeForce 3 with updated drivers.

I assume you mean 3 gigs free, otherwise, that's the problem.

WitP should have no issues running on such a system and I haven't received any other similar reports. We're working to get the 772 patch out ASAP, so I will have to do further troubleshooting on this tomorrow, or perhaps Marc will help you when he logs on for the night shift.

The game boots up fine, and scenarios start fine, but a few seconds into the first replay to begin any scenario, the game begins to run slower, and slower, and slower. Within a few minutes, I can't close combat windows (I click them, but they won't disappear for a minute or more -- just stay on the screen while nothing happens).

I would advise of course turning off all background applets, checking all drivers for updates, including chipset, checking drive for errors, defragmenting, delete and re-create swap file, see if that helps. Sorry for the lack of detailed instructions, but I'm in the midst of final patch testing.

Regards,

- Erik

[Bane_MatrixForum]

Do you have any other programs running the background. Have you scheduled any system tasks to be run?

[Becket]

Sorry, I meant 3 gigs free, correct. 512 Megs RAM. Nothing running in the background.

Once air ops start up, the replay turns into a quagmire. =/

Some of the suggested changes are a bit advanced for me -- how does one refresh the swap file?

[Erik Rutins]

Hm, could be some version of the sound issue. Try updating sound drivers, last resort rename sound subdirectory of WitP to "nosound" and see if that speeds up game. Thanks.

Regards,

- Erik

[Becket]

I'll try that. I've got it running CHKDSK right now and will probably defrag overnight as well.

[bradfordkay]

It wasn't all that long ago that we used to talk about keeping 10% of your hard drive free, even though 4 gigs seems to be an awful lot of space for swap files. Could it be that his computer still wants 4 gigs free?

[freeboy]

I know this sounds funny, but my systems maker, hp put background programs I could only find by going to the windows task manager.. also.. set up your file sharing to 100% playability as oposed to sharing between programs.. next deleat contents of the Prefetch folder in windows.. system uses this as a type of filing drawer and looks for these pages.. next
well prayer might help.. lol
that stuff has seen my 1.5 p4 go from sloggie to fast, plays witp like a beauty.. I have the same 512 mem and a ati vid card.. again... trying to help.. as I know this can be very irritating... I took a lot of these tips from a specialized web pag for video guys... article was intitled tweeking xp performance.. good luck

[Becket]

Update:

I managed to free up more space, so I have 8 gigs free on the hard drive. Complete defrag of the drive has been done. Swap file increased to 4000 MB maximum.

This did not solve the problem -- by the second or third airstrike, the game is once again running like molasses.

I tried Eric's other suggestion and renamed the SOUND folder to NOSOUND.

This fixed the problem -- everything runs smoothly, but, of course, there's no sound. [:(]

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Becket

Update:

I managed to free up more space, so I have 8 gigs free on the hard drive. Complete defrag of the drive has been done. Swap file increased to 4000 MB maximum.

This did not solve the problem -- by the second or third airstrike, the game is once again running like molasses.

I tried Eric's other suggestion and renamed the SOUND folder to NOSOUND.

This fixed the problem -- everything runs smoothly, but, of course, there's no sound. [:(]

Hi, we´re working on the sound problem, expect patch soon.

[Ivanmoe]

Hi Becket,

First, I just got the game Thursday and have only completed the Coral Sea scenario. It took about two hours from start to finish (15 turns). So, something else is going on. I'm not associated with Matrix, BTW, as a playtester or anything, I mean.

Do you play other games on your computer? If so, are you experiencing any other slowdowns or performance issues?

If so, you might run the Spybot Search and Destroy (freeware) and Ad-aware (freeware) programs to check for trojans that are sucking up your system resources.

After that, you might want to launch the game, then tab-alt out of it to the desktop and check Task-Manager to see what programs are REALLY running in the background.

There are some pretty nasty little critters infecting folks computers these days and there are other utilities available to clean out your system if you're infected. But, I wouldn't run some of them until I was better informed of what I was up against.

Anyway, let us know what happens,

Moe

[Becket]

ORIGINAL: Ivanmoe

Hi Becket,

First, I just got the game Thursday and have only completed the Coral Sea scenario. It took about two hours from start to finish (15 turns). So, something else is going on. I'm not associated with Matrix, BTW, as a playtester or anything, I mean.

Do you play other games on your computer? If so, are you experiencing any other slowdowns or performance issues?

If so, you might run the Spybot Search and Destroy (freeware) and Ad-aware (freeware) programs to check for trojans that are sucking up your system resources.

After that, you might want to launch the game, then tab-alt out of it to the desktop and check Task-Manager to see what programs are REALLY running in the background.

There are some pretty nasty little critters infecting folks computers these days and there are other utilities available to clean out your system if you're infected. But, I wouldn't run some of them until I was better informed of what I was up against.

Anyway, let us know what happens,

Moe

Testing World at War and getting great performance; also getting great performance on Combat Mission and Knights of the Old Republic (the latter being incredibly graphic and sound intensive).

[freeboy]

Glad you where able to get some progress of sorts..

[Caltone]

Even if this is not Becket's problem I second the notion to run Adaware and Spybot on a regular basis. Both are free and have regular web updates. I run these two and am a firm believer, amazing the garbage you pick up surfing the web.


Adaware Free Download

Spybot Free Downlaod

[Becket]

Just checking in -- any progress on the sound bug patch? I haven't played much because I don't really like playing in silence.

[Erik Rutins]

Becket,

We're hoping by the end of the week. We'll keep everyone posted.

Regards,

- Erik

[Becket]

Thanks, Eric.

[joey]

One quick question: how long should it take for a turn to play out (from pressing end turn and saying "yes" to again having control of the computer? It usually takes 45 minutes to an hour for the computer to do its thing and to play out the combat on a single day on my computer. I was just curious if this is normal?

[jhdeerslayer]

That doesn't seem normal at all but some depends on the inter message delays set up. My delays are like 0.1 sec and takes me 10 minutes to get through # 15 first turn. Curious what answers we'll see now. I have combat summaries on also.

[Nomad]

I run with no combat summaries and no animations. Takes about 3-4 min to run senario 15 first turn.