[PSHYCHEDELISHHH]

Hey guys, I've recently been having this problem mentioned in the thread title. I was wondering it anyone could shed a little insight onto it?

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop with:

• Intel®Core™ i5 - 430M processor
  
• 64 bit Windows 7
  
• 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 memory at 1066MHz
  
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 gfx card

You can see that it's not a gaming laptop, but I have been playing smoothly on it for the past year until late September. Before that time, I could run S4 and open up multiple tabs in Mozilla Firefox without a cinch. Also, I am able to play Vindictus on normal to high graphical settings, but that now gets fps laggy in certain maps. Currently, I find that sometimes my CPU usage goes insanely high--even all the way up too 100%!--when I'm running S4 (and nothing else), thus rendering my fps rates to poop. It goes away after I restart the computer. I believe that my list of running processes has not changed much over this period of time, and I'm sure that my antivirus was not scanning during these instances of CPU overload.

For a while, I would use the hibernate mode a lot, but I made sure to shut it down completely before going to sleep each night. I heard after some googling that it wasn't really good for computers. Would that have somehow damaged my laptop's processor/whatever's the source?

Do you think the system is simply getting old (it's been a little over a year)?

Any input would be much appreciated! ;w;

This post has been edited by PSHYCHEDELISHHH: 09 October 2011 - 09:41 AM

[SinnersAngel]

The problem could be several things, unfortunately it can be hard to tell what is causing the problem. For now try running spybot, and malware bytes. do a full system scan and I always just start it before I go to bed.

as far as age: the age and performance should not matter for a game like s4.
If you plan on playing something like battlefield 3 then you may need to upgrade.

This post has been edited by SinnersAngel: 09 October 2011 - 11:00 AM

[Noll]

PSHYCHEDELISHHH, on 09 October 2011 - 09:39 AM, said:

Hey guys, I've recently been having this problem mentioned in the thread title. I was wondering it anyone could shed a little insight onto it?

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop with:

• Intel®Core™ i5 - 430M processor
• 64 bit Windows 7
• 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 memory at 1066MHz
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 gfx card

You can see that it's not a gaming laptop, but I have been playing smoothly on it for the past year until late September. Before that time, I could run S4 and open up multiple tabs in Mozilla Firefox without a cinch. Also, I am able to play Vindictus on normal to high graphical settings, but that now gets fps laggy in certain maps. Currently, I find that sometimes my CPU usage goes insanely high--even all the way up too 100%!--when I'm running S4 (and nothing else), thus rendering my fps rates to poop. It goes away after I restart the computer. I believe that my list of running processes has not changed much over this period of time, and I'm sure that my antivirus was not scanning during these instances of CPU overload.

For a while, I would use the hibernate mode a lot, but I made sure to shut it down completely before going to sleep each night. I heard after some googling that it wasn't really good for computers. Would that have somehow damaged my laptop's processor/whatever's the source?

Do you think the system is simply getting old (it's been a little over a year)?

Any input would be much appreciated! ;w;

Did this start happening out of the blue or did you something that update a driver and it started happening then?

[SinnersAngel]

Gunstar, on 09 October 2011 - 12:57 PM, said:

Did this start happening out of the blue or did you something that update a driver and it started happening then?

Also what bios are you using?

[Kapitan]

If you could at any point grab a screenshot of your Task Manager (sorted preferably by Memory Usage) while this is happening or even just while S4 is open that'd be super helpful. So.. this never happens while playing Vindictus but only S4.. It could be S4 is a shottily built game with potential memory leaks in it. The problem could simply be that over time your memory has too much currently cached and your computer is having to reallocate too much too often.

But, checking your task manager while this is happening and seeing what is spiking as far as CPU Usage is concerned would be spectacular information to have.

Edit: In response to hibernation. The difference between Hibernation and Sleep mode is that Hibernation literally writes your memory to your Hard Drive so your system can basically turn off and just pull everything back from your HD into your memory. It's unrelateable to a fresh boot and for the time it takes I feel shutting down is a bit simpler and nicer to your system. Sleep mode simply leaves power to your memory while turning most everything else off. Very fast and convenient.

Coming back from hibernation can put a lot of random junk back into your memory that you would certainly not need had you just reboot. But, maybe I'm wrong and your system does take long to come back from Hibernation. I feel my system starts up very fast from a restart so I don't like to bother with it. If you think this could be the issue you could try not allowing your system to Hibernate for a week and see how things go. Have it set only to sleep instead.

You can turn hibernation off buy going to Run.. (or Windows+R keys) and typing 'cmd' then entering 'powercfg -h off' this disables hibernation in your system and the opposite to turn it on is obviously 'powercfg -h on'. Or you could just go to your advanced power options in the Control Panel and I believe Hibernation is default set to happen after 360 minutes. But you can enter 'Never' into that spot to disable it as well.

This post has been edited by Kapitan: 09 October 2011 - 06:59 PM

[PSHYCHEDELISHHH]

Sinners--My laptop's clean, but thanks for the tidbit on the age of the computer. My BIOS version is Dell Inc. A08 Ver. 1.00.

Gunstar--This just started happening out of the blue. I haven't updated any drivers.

Kapitan--Well I sometimes get this in Vindictus as well, but it is hard for me to tell if it's my computer or Nexon's shitty servers (it's been terrible this past month). I also sometimes get this in S4, but in my past years of playing S4, it has never been this hard on my computers. That's why I don't think it's the game. If I have an overloaded memory cache, does this have anything to do with processes? I noticed just now upon opening my laptop and doing nothing my process list says 86, but last night when the CPU was going whack, it was at 94. However, I do not recall opening a bunch of programs last night. I only went on the usual: internet, S4, and Microsoft Word. o_O;;

What do you mean by taking a screenie of Task Manager sorted by Memory Usage? I just have a Performance tab that shows CPU and Memory Usage as percents and then moving graphs of the histories. Right now with Firefox open, my CPU Usage is mostly at 3-5% (but I saw it jump to 20 for a sec) and Physical Memory is 48%.

As for hibernation, I have been staying away from that for a while, but I don't think it had any bearing on the situation.

Another thing I want to add is that I don't believe the problem stems from overheating. My CPU usage flared last night, but my laptop was not hot and I only for played for a couple of minutes. Thanks for the suggestions!

This post has been edited by PSHYCHEDELISHHH: 09 October 2011 - 09:16 PM

[Noll]

PSHYCHEDELISHHH, on 09 October 2011 - 09:11 PM, said:

Sinners--My laptop's clean, but thanks for the tidbit on the age of the computer. My BIOS version is Dell Inc. A08 Ver. 1.00.

Gunstar--This just started happening out of the blue. I haven't updated any drivers.

Kapitan--Well I sometimes get this in Vindictus as well, but it is hard for me to tell if it's my computer or Nexon's shitty servers (it's been terrible this past month). I also sometimes get this in S4, but in my past years of playing S4, it has never been this hard on my computers. That's why I don't think it's the game. If I have an overloaded memory cache, does this have anything to do with processes? I noticed just now upon opening my laptop and doing nothing my process list says 86, but last night when the CPU was going whack, it was at 94. However, I do not recall opening a bunch of programs last night. I only went on the usual: internet, S4, and Microsoft Word. o_O;;

What do you mean by taking a screenie of Task Manager sorted by Memory Usage? I just have a Performance tab that shows CPU and Memory Usage as percents and then moving graphs of the histories. Right now with Firefox open, my CPU Usage is mostly at 3-5% (but I saw it jump to 20 for a sec) and Physical Memory is 48%.

As for hibernation, I have been staying away from that for a while, but I don't think it had any bearing on the situation.

Another thing I want to add is that I don't believe the problem stems from overheating. My CPU usage flared last night, but my laptop was not hot and I only for played for a couple of minutes. Thanks for the suggestions!

Try running something like 3DMark and give us the results. Would help narrow down the possibilities

[PSHYCHEDELISHHH]

Gunstar, on 09 October 2011 - 09:30 PM, said:

Try running something like 3DMark and give us the results. Would help narrow down the possibilities

Is that a good and safe program that you use? :o Should I run it when I have S4 opened/CPU's normal and when S4 is opened/high CPU usage? I'm probably going to have to randomly try to catch the latter.

This post has been edited by PSHYCHEDELISHHH: 09 October 2011 - 10:13 PM

[Noll]

PSHYCHEDELISHHH, on 09 October 2011 - 10:12 PM, said:

Is that a good and safe program that you use? :o Should I run it when I have S4 opened/CPU's normal and when S4 is opened/high CPU usage? I'm probably going to have to randomly try to catch the latter.

Don't bother with it. It's not needed to fix this if you can confirm your graphics card is working normally

Just trying to eliminate the possibility of your laptop using the i5's shared video memory to run games instead of the graphics card

This post has been edited by Gunstar: 09 October 2011 - 11:25 PM

[PSHYCHEDELISHHH]

Oh lol okay I'll google that up later, thanks

[Noll]

PSHYCHEDELISHHH, on 09 October 2011 - 11:35 PM, said:

Oh lol okay I'll google that up later, thanks

The likelihood of that being the problem is very small, I've never really seen a case of it happening before

[Kapitan]

Oh sorry, I mean a PrintScr of your task manager while in the Processes tab and having it sorted by highest memory usage (which is usually in conjunction with high CPU usage).

The problem I usually come across is: After playing Portal and then going to play S4 my likelihood of getting shotty FPS greatens. As apposed to if I just booted my system where my FPS would be perfect. So my memory is still crammed with Portal stuff after I close it and Windows starts to allocate S4 files into current empty memory spots before it tries to remove unused memory. So your files can be really spread out within your memory. For this to really affect performance I can't imagine but there is some conjunction between high memory/cpu using programs and how many you've had open and your system performance.

Though considering this just started happening that would seem strange. That's the hardest part about your problem: It just started recently after a long period with no major changes to your system.

I thought of something new though. Over time Windows preloads programs and other information into your memory based on what you've used and how often you've used it. This is called a Prefetch. In some cases Windows builds up a lot of programs and information that you do not use or access anymore. What you could do is try cleaning this out. It will cause no harm aside from a couple of your more used programs loading slightly slower for a day or two. The folder is located in C:\Windows\Prefetch. You can try deleting EVERYTHING from that folder and let Windows get use to the programs you currently use most often so that right after a fresh boot not so much of your memory is automatically allocated out.

Windows 7 is supposedly set to automatically try to defrag itself. You could try doing a system defrag yourself (Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter). Before that I'd suggest doing a Disk Cleanup first. Just to nullify for-surely unnecessary files. (Also in System Tools).

But I'd really love to see a screencap of your Task Mgr and if you could happen to get one while the problem is happening that'd be bomb =D

[PSHYCHEDELISHHH]

Hmm interesting. Thx Kapitan!

I am listening and appreciate everyone's help, but I might take up to a week to update the thread since I have a midterm coming up next week. D:<