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I've been having some serious slowdown in my games lately, and wonder what might be causing it and how I could fix it. I don't really know what might be causing it, but I do know I didn't notice it until my Steam files got corrupted a week or two back and I had to re-install. Just to cover the bases, here's what I've tried since:

- Defragged twice
- Repaired the Registry Twice
- Freed up over 10 gigs of extra space
- lowered all graphical settings on games to the lowest possible (it helps a little, but not much.)

I figured I'd ask here before I go scorched earth on my PC and re-format. Anyone have any ideas for things I can try?

AshburnerX said:

I've been having some serious slowdown in my games lately, and wonder what might be causing it and how I could fix it. I don't really know what might be causing it, but I do know I didn't notice it until my Steam files got corrupted a week or two back and I had to re-install. Just to cover the bases, here's what I've tried since:

- Defragged twice
- Repaired the Registry Twice
- Freed up over 10 gigs of extra space
- lowered all graphical settings on games to the lowest possible (it helps a little, but not much.)

I figured I'd ask here before I go scorched earth on my PC and re-format. Anyone have any ideas for things I can try?

Click to expand...

Best thing to do is to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. And next time stop going to fetish porn sites.

well....... if it is running slow you might want to launch taskmanager and see what is eating up your CPU. (more than likely)

You can sort via CPU and see what is taking up all the CPU power.
If nothing is showing while you are running your game, then the other could be your video card. It could be "dying" I had some died on me starting to go slow cause the processor on the card is dying

Other stuff to try: get spybot search and destroy (free) and check for spyware.

If you are comfortable, you can use hijackthis and see what are loaded when you boot your PC. Many can spot stuff that not suppose to be on there (like spyware) that launches automatically.

Might give this a try -

Uninstall your graphics drivers
Reboot into safe mode
Use driver sweeper while in safe mode to completely exorcise the evil files that won't uninstall
Reboot into normal mode, and install the latest video drivers.

You probably already have done this but I would start with running a virus scan followed by a spyware scan. As for the spyware scan I would recommend Malwarebytes over SpyBot.

- Check your hard drive for errors

If you don't find any spyware or hard drive errors, you've updated your drivers (I'd update motherboard as well as video) and nothing is hogging your CPU cycles, then:

- Open up device manager and see if it reports any errors or conflicts
- Run something like CPU-Z to make sure your processor is still running at the proper speed

Spy bot says I'm clean, which isn't surprising considering I run Firefox with Adblock and NoScript. I'm going to try the CPU-Z next.

AshburnerX said:

I'm going to try the CPU-Z next.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that modern processors throttle themselves automatically if they're not under load. Make sure you're running something stressful while checking CPU-Z, so that you'll see the full clock, and not it's idle speed(s).

figmentPez;297926][quote=AshburnerX said:

I'm going to try the CPU-Z next.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that modern processors throttle themselves automatically if they're not under load. Make sure you're running something stressful while checking CPU-Z, so that you'll see the full clock, and not it's idle speed(s).[/QUOTE]

Yea. If you can run the game in window mode (usually even more processor intensive) it will give you some better read out.

I'm going to try that later on tonight with City of Heroes. Right now I'm updating my drivers. Device Manager says everything is fine. How do I check for errors on my HD? It's been years since I've had to do it... I honestly can't remember what to do

AshburnerX said:

I'm going to try that later on tonight with City of Heroes. Right now I'm updating my drivers. Device Manager says everything is fine. How do I check for errors on my HD? It's been years since I've had to do it... I honestly can't remember what to do

Click to expand...

chkdsk /f via the command line
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

Chibibar;297961][quote=AshburnerX said:

I'm going to try that later on tonight with City of Heroes. Right now I'm updating my drivers. Device Manager says everything is fine. How do I check for errors on my HD? It's been years since I've had to do it... I honestly can't remember what to do

Click to expand...

chkdsk /f via the command line
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true[/QUOTE]

Alright... it's scheduled to run the next time I boot up.

Chibibar said:

chkdsk /f via the command line
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

Click to expand...

Alternately, right click on the drive you want to check and choose Properties -> Tools -> Error Checking -> Check Now -> check both options, and you'll have to restart your computer to let it run the check.

Then, to see the results, go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer -> and I don't remember exactly where after that. I think it varies from XP to Vista. I just ran a quick test, and it's under Windows Logs -> Application -> Source -> Chkdsk

If it is still borking after a chkdsk or 2, then you are undoubtedly losing clusters, and it would be best to backup and by a new hard drive.

Alright, I looked at the event log... it says it had some serious problems when i ran chkdisk on my D: drive earlier. I'll run it again in the morning. If I get the same problems, I'll back-up and reformat. If THAT doesn't work, I'm kinda shit out of luck... don't have the money to buy a new HD.

I swear, hard drive reliability over the past 5 years has turned to complete shit. I've gone through 2 brand new drives from Seagate and Western Digital this year, and 2 last year.

Cuyval Dar said:

I swear, hard drive reliability over the past 5 years has turned to complete shit. I've gone through 2 brand new drives from Seagate and Western Digital this year, and 2 last year.

Click to expand...

I wonder if it is the RPM or the sheer size.

I have an OLD OLD PC with 20GB drive (seagate) and still humming last time I boot.

AshburnerX said:

Alright, I looked at the event log... it says it had some serious problems when i ran chkdisk on my D: drive earlier. I'll run it again in the morning. If I get the same problems, I'll back-up and reformat. If THAT doesn't work, I'm kinda shit out of luck... don't have the money to buy a new HD.

Click to expand...

You can get a decent HD for like 30 bucks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152106

Unexplainable 'slow' game performance with no software changes could also be due to either your CPU or your GPU overheating and automatically throttling back. This could be due to dust buildup, the heatsink starting to come off the processor, a dead fan, etc.

Yes, something like that is usually software, but it doesn't hurt to check your hardware. Probably time for a cleaning anyway.

--Patrick

Can air is your best friend. Make sure you are static free when opening and touching the stuff inside your case (you shouldn't be if you are using can air) also wear a dust mask cause it is going to be blowing IN YOUR face when you start blasting. It is not pretty.

Alright... just got done formatting my D: drive. Going to re-install a game and see if the problem is fixed. If not, I'm going to do a total re-format and re-install windows. I am REALLY pissed this happened right after I pre-loaded L4D2.

I recommend running GameBooster whenever you play a game. Shuts down all running programs and unnecessary services. It's pretty damn nice, even though it kinda looks like spyware. Spoilers:

Looks like the format fixed whatever the problem was! Time to reload everything on my D: Drive!

Cuyval Dar said:

I swear, hard drive reliability over the past 5 years has turned to complete shit. I've gone through 2 brand new drives from Seagate and Western Digital this year, and 2 last year.

Click to expand...

I've had similar experience as of late. My 'ancient' 20gb WD disk is still running fine, while a very recent 500gb Samsung died after a month, a 1tb WD started chocking itself to death just recently and another 400gb just gave up the ghost and became inaccessible.

May just be a case of bad luck, but still.

Seraphyn;299615][quote=Cuyval Dar said:

I swear, hard drive reliability over the past 5 years has turned to complete shit. I've gone through 2 brand new drives from Seagate and Western Digital this year, and 2 last year.

Click to expand...

I've had similar experience as of late. My 'ancient' 20gb WD disk is still running fine, while a very recent 500gb Samsung died after a month, a 1tb WD started chocking itself to death just recently and another 400gb just gave up the ghost and became inaccessible.

May just be a case of bad luck, but still.[/QUOTE]


What kind of technology do they use in Laptop HDs that make them able to withstand moving around so much? Seems like that's what they should be using in regular drives.

Some facts:

Older hard drives have lower areal density and bigger, chunkier internal parts. So if a square millimeter of HDD dies on a modern 500GB drive, you lose 100GB. On an older 20GB drive, you only lose 400MB or so (numbers pulled out of the air for illustrative purposes only).

Laptop drives are usually made with systems that try to make sure to slam the read/write head out of the way before any sort of catastrophic impact (See Apple's SMS technology for one example). Portable drives also usually have fewer platters, lighter components, etc. and so aren't as affected by vibration as larger drives with larger, more massive parts. Because they're designed to be used in portable computers, they also have hardware systems designed to better survive these things (better bushings, etc). This is also one of the reasons they are so much more expensive than equivalent desktop drives.

You can get desktop drives that are beefed up for rougher and/or heavier use. Look for so-called 'enterprise' or 'RAID-optimized' or 'military grade drives.' Keep in mind that many searches for 'rugged HDD' will end up pointing you to solid state drives.

Any HDD can be made more reliable by keeping it cool, mounting it with bushings to cut down on internal/external vibration, not beating the crap out of it with constant defrags and 24/7 operation, etc. Just remember that, in consumer-level drives, speed/size usually is inversely proportional to reliability.

--Patrick

Chibibar said:

I wonder if it is the RPM or the sheer size.

Click to expand...

It's the profit margins.