A Real Stumper of a Problem

[slimcooper]

   Hi everyone, Someone I know is having problems with CFS2. It works fine offline, but when he plays online he starts out at 90-110 fps but within 5 minutes hes down to 3 fps. then if he goes to ready room, when he tries to re-enter game it kicks him back to RR and he has to unready and ready up again. If he goes to another room the same thing happens. He has uninstalled and reinstalled zone files, deleted cookies, checked for shadow drivers, reinstalled CFS2, and he is on cable with 2.6mb download speed and 366kb upload. He has tried turning sound off and is trying to get to sysops at the zone.
    Seems he installed CFS3 and had problems, wasn't happy with it, whatever, so he uninstalled it. He is running win 98se and has reformatted the computer twice. Defraged and ran skandisk, he only has CFS2 and Age of Mythology installed. His computer worked fine before the CFS3 install. could there be remnants of dx8.2 even after reformatting? Does he have to run DxBuster or something? We are all stumped. He has checked with M$ and has the latest drivers in.
   Any ideas would be very appreciated. Thx and ~S~

[Scorpiоn]

The Ready Room problem isn't fixable.

[congo]

DirectX won't survive a full format.

I had the framerate problem when i had addon effects installed like Scorpion said above.

The Ready Room problem: Has said friend got a firewall up? I know of an addon plane that will wreak havoc with game and RR. There are addon Object DP's that will kill my game completely.

I take it he is doing a full install of cfs2, and trying it "out of the box" first? He's keen enough to format to solve the problem, did he install just a basic system and try cfs2? This is one way to narrow down a potential hardware problem, even though that is less likely than software.

Has the problem begun after installing all the new drivers? If so, try the old ones again.

Is the cable / ISP to blame? He could try the machine on another connection or modem.

[slimcooper]

   thanks for the reply's. He said he has no addons and is trying it straight out of the box. His cable speed test showed good speed, no firewall, and the RR problem happens when he is not a host. Says something just sucks the framerates down and the more peeps in the room the faster it dies. and no recovery. Has to leave game and rejoin. Was going to do another reformat this morn and I will see if that helped.
 He's been playing online for along time and never had this problem before.I will mention rolling back the drivers to the ones he had before the fatal install of CFS3. lol. and thx again.

[Scorpiоn]

Oh yeah, make sure sure he has no background applications running.

[_526th_Fireman]

    Howdy Slim. I can think of three things that might be possible causes. First, you didn't mention how much RAM your friend has. Might not have enough. Second, might be a memory leak. Third, HD on the way out. Making any funny noises? Ask him if when he is playing and starts loosing the FPS, is the hard drive light flickering more and more?

[slimcooper]

Well once again thanks for the replies, seems the ladt reformat did the trick, he's up and running with no problems. Gonna have to teach him to read one of these days so he can come here himself, hehe. ty again.

[A_and_P]

OK try this for a test,

I agree you may have a problem with the ram leaking.  Have you changed any hardware configurations? Have you recently installed new ram? If so Is it the same MFG, Part Number and Nanao Seconds the same including the lot number? Was it all purchased together out of the same box?

If you add ram I suggest you purchase all new ram do not add to existing ram. Could cause problems.

Start the computer, Let it boot to the windows operating system.

Check your system resources. you should be about 86 percent free or better.

Start a program, how ever do not fly or run the program.

OK minimize the program, Check your system resources and see how much it dropped.

If you dropped very much you probably have a bad stick of ram.

Try pulling out one stick of ram and re run the test, remove that stick of ram and install the second stick of ram and run the test.

install both sticks into diffrent slots and run the test.

Be sure and take a marker and write number one A on the first stick of ram for the first slot (call that slot A), 2B second stick of ram 2nd slot (call that B). That way you will no what your original configuration was on the ram and slots.

When it comes to hardware often it is a process of ilimination.

If you are running a Pentium 4 board you will have to have blanks to install where the ram goes that you pull out. You can get these at any computer place that does repair. They should be free, they come with new boards and when you install a new board you have to remove the approrpiate number.

If that doesnt work Try increasing the memory stored on the hard drive. Should be 8 percent of the amount of ram you have,

The only other thing I could think of, but probably not would be the video card? Or the Mother Board has a weak thread from heat.

Have you cleaned the computer and fans with Oxygen? What is the internal case tempreture? Should be under 98 F or 38 Celsius

Is your power adequate and working properly?

Is cooling your problem?

Are all your fans working properly?

Power could be the problem?

Check your power supply, add up the number of watts reguired if every thing in the computer was running at the same time, Then you will need a minimum of another 45 percent over that number.

If you are running a Pentium 4 you have to have a minimum of 12 amps to the processor.

Check Intels web sight www.intel.com

Just a few Ideas

A and P