Tech help

[nadriel]

Okay, I've been poking at this on and off for a while now, and it's got to the point where I'm stumped.

Several of my games are unplayable (examples include Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Witcher (although I don't care so much about the latter, as it wasn't that good).

Whilst the sound is fine, the animation is jerky, and the response to mouse clicks slow. And cut-scenes are a nightmare.

As far as I'm able to tell, all drivers, particularly sound and graphics are up to date, and my DirectX is the latest version I can run on XP.

So, any suggestions/solutions?

Comments

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem with Doom 3 on my machine. I assume you have craploads of RAM? You are Mike after all.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

Also...have you defragged recently?

[pmp.livejournal.com]

Ok, what is your system spec?
Were these games previously playable and this has since changed? If so, did you load any software in the mean time?

[seidhepriest.livejournal.com]

Looks like an I/O problem. Is this still the dual-processor system with the 24-bit Soundblaster?

This is usually a sign of a process hogging all CPU quantums and/or disk I/O. But it could also be broken PCI timing (PCI Creative cards love to hog the bus all to themselves; also, on an SMP box the affinity/IRQ will have to be set manually to ensure the Creative card is being driven by only one CPU). A "legacy" driver in slow timing mode (virtual ISA or non-busmastering PCI), such as an unidentified PCI busmastering device, might also be causing this. The general description of the problem is - a background process interfering with PCI and/or filesystem I/O or CPU scheduling (usually all at once).