Jump To Lightspeed Archive

Basically anything that takes away from your processing power or bandwith is going to cause the "drunken bee" syndrome.

Good heads up Mr. Smoke.

Obvious suggestions:

a) Make sure you aren't running any P2P programs in the background while playing (Kazaa, BearShare, Limewire, etc)
b) Don't stream music from an internet service while playing (Itunes, Rhapsody, etc)

Not so obvious suggestion:

WARNING!!! IF YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT EDITING YOUR REGISTRY, THEN DON'T DO THIS!! If you do anything wrong in there, you could seriously HOSE, LIQUIDATE, SPINDLE, and MUTILATE your computer. I'm not responsible for you messing anything up.....you were warned!

This tweak is for anyone using broadband and Windows XP (should be most of you). After you back up your registry go to regedit and look for this key....

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Create the following DWORD values, as most of these values will not already exist you will need to create them by clicking on 'Edit -> New -> DWORD Value' and then set the value as shown below.

DefaultTTL = "80" hex (or 128 decimal)
Specifies the default time to live (TTL) for TCP/IP packets. The default is 32.

EnablePMTUBHDetect = "0"
Specifies whether the stack will attempt to detect Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) routers that do not send back ICMP fragmentation-needed messages. The default is 0.

EnablePMTUDiscovery = "1"
Specifies whether the TCP/IP stack will attempt to perform path MTU discovery as specified in RFC 1191. The default is 1.

GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize = "7FFF" hex (or 32767 decimal)
Specifies the system maximum receive window size advertised by the TCP/IP stack.

TcpMaxDupAcks = "2"
Determines the number of duplicate ACKs that must be received for the same sequence number of sent data before "fast retransmit" is triggered.

SackOpts = "1"
Enables support for selective acknowledgements as documented by Request for Comment (RFC) 2018. Default is 0.

Tcp1323Opts = "1"
Controls RFC 1323 time stamps and window scaling options. Possible values are: "0" = disable RFC 1323 options, "1" = window scale enabled only, "2" = time stamps enabled only and "3" = both options enabled.

TcpWindowSize = "7FFF" hex (or 32767 decimal)
Specifies the receive window size advertised by the TCP/IP stack. If you have a latent network you can try increasing the value to 93440, 186880, or 372300.

Exit your registry and restart Windows for the changes to take effect.

Like I said, if you are not familiar with editing your registry, then don't do this. Don't bother messaging me for further details either because if you are unfamiliar with what I just posted, you shouldn't be doing this.

Obvious suggestion:

1) Go to Run, type in msconfig, and hit enter...or ok. Hit the tab that says Startup. Look in there and view all the things that have a checkbox next to their names. You can expand the list to see where everything is coming from. If you don't understand what you are looking at, leave things like they are. For those of you who understand executable pathways, look at those. Basically anything that isn't your anti-virus program or possibly a software firewall should be unchecked. I honestly can't think of anything else that absolutely has to be running in the background at all times. Things I usually see checked on peeps computers: Instant messengers, p2p software, weather reporters, drag to disc (roxio) or nero, graphic card support tools, etc,....none of this needs to run in the background of your computer. When you are done unchecking things, hit OK, then restart your computer (it will ask you about this anyway). When the computer comes back up, a window will pop up. Checkmark the box and hit OK.

Not so obvious suggestion:

2) Frequently I'll find spyware/adware progs running in msconfig, unbeknownst to the customer. Adaware and Spybot are both fine, and free, tools out there on the internet, but they are very limited on what they find and what they do. However, at least they will give you a good idea of what is on the system. If either of them keep on finding 50+ critical items on your computer, then that's just the tip of the iceberg. Spysweeper by Webroot is the best program out there to clean most of this stuff up and prevent it in the future. If you have some not-legit alternate data streams running (ADS), then use Hijack This to clean them up. Hijack this is good for BHO's as well.....and of course, hijackers. Make sure to get a good VX2 transponder cleaner as well - you can download one to plugin to Adaware on their site.

Go to www.ca.com. Go to their top menu about Support, and click on Security Advisor. Click on the Free Spyware scan link. Its totally safe - install the Active X controls they request. It will only scan for spyware - it won't clean anything. Even though their Pest Patrol is kinda crap compared to Spysweeper, at least this will give you a good idea on what's on your system and its fast.

If you have things that keep coming back even after a cleaning, you most likely have a downloader trojan running on your system as an ADS, BHO, or just a plain ol' trojan (Norton's AV doesn't see trojans very well). If you run into this kind of problem, just take your computer in to someone like Geek Squad to have them clean it up (or a friend like me, I guess).

Spyware/adware will definitely cause performance issues in any internet application/game...even just browsing the internet, so getting any cleaned off your system will always be helpful.

Hope this helped someone out there.

Rebooting my computer has solved the problem for me everytime. Perhaps it is related to your upping the priority.

I used to do that on a regular basis.. tab out and up the priority on my MMO games EXE file.. for whatever reason I got out of the habit lol. It does actually work on most computers if there are not other problems causing the "lag"..

Now, if I could find a way for the game shortcut to automatically start the game with high priority that would be great.. but since it uses the "launchpad" to start I dont think thats possible.

---

Orykko wrote:
Rebooting my computer has solved the problem for me everytime. Perhaps it is related to your upping the priority.

---

Well, this could help you too....clearing the page file at shutdown. Also optimizing your page file.

If you have Windows XP, let the OS control your page file. Your page file should be 1.5x your system RAM. So if you have 1.0 GB of RAM, you should have a 1.5 GB page file, for instance.

In Windows XP you can view your page file size by going to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings) -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory (Change) -> System Managed Size, Click "SET", Click "OK", and click "OK" out of the menus.

If you don't have Win XP, join the 20th century, caveman. I've been running Win XP Pro since it came out, have patched it via Windows Update on a regular basis, and have never restored/reinstalled my OS/computer. It runs almost constantly. I restart it about once a week.

I run Trend Anti-Virus. Nortons and Mcafee sucks. I have an adware/spyware free computer. I run a hardware firewall via my router.

With your page file, you may want to edit your registry to clear your page file every time you shutdown. Your computer doesn't do this by default.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'ClearPageFileAtShutdown' using the settings below.

Note: On systems with large amounts of memory, and therefore large swap-file, this tweak could cause a delay at shutdown due to the additional time taken to clear the data from the file.

Settings:
System Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled)

WARNING!!! Edit your registry at your own risk! If you don't know what you are doing, then don't do it! I am not responsible for some newbie going into their registry and ruining their system/OS. You have been warned!!!

With that in mind, I've totally given my registry an overhaul....to editing everthing from the names and menus in Win XP, to optimizing the OS performance, and I've been running a stable XP system since it came out and I started playing with it (what is that....3 or 4 years now since Pro came out?).

Message Edited by Mordib1 on 07-06-2005 12:29 AM

---

Zutan wrote:
I used to do that on a regular basis.. tab out and up the priority on my MMO games EXE file.. for whatever reason I got out of the habit lol. It does actually work on most computers if there are not other problems causing the "lag"..

Now, if I could find a way for the game shortcut to automatically start the game with high priority that would be great.. but since it uses the "launchpad" to start I dont think thats possible.

---

This really isn't needed.

For the most part, the people that have to do this have their priorities set to "Background Tasks" instead of "Programs".

Once again, in Windows XP, go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings) -> Advanced -> Under "Processor Scheduling" and "Memory", make sure both are checked for "Programs" and hit "OK". If you have either switched on for "Background Processes", then that is your problem. The only real reason to use the option for "Background Processes" is if you are primarily using your computer as a desktop - meaning, if you are ALT-TAB'ing quite a lot between different programs and don't wish to dedicate your system RAM to any one program....a very stupid idea if you are a gamer. A very smart idea if your computer is used primarily for business or at the office.

try also lowering the virtual memory xp uses in its temp cache file, found mine was 1.4 GB, made it to 5^2 mb, everything much smoother now...