Posted: 1/21/2006 4:26:17 AM EDT
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Wife's computer is really struggling playing the game World of Warcraft. Our computers are only a year apart (mine is new). She has a Dell 3.2 Ghz, 512 RAM, regular hard drive, and a decent video card (same one I have) and yet it seems like it gets really "laggy" and is constantly accessing the hard drive in the more "busy" areas where there are a lot of people and a lot of action going on. What can I do to help her's along? 1 - Hard Drive upgrade (like a SATA drive? My computer has a dual 320 MB SATA drive that is smooth, quiet, and very fast.) 2 - RAM upgrade? Like to 1 or 2 GB? Mine has 2GB. Anything that can be done right now to the system (software, removal of certain things in the background, recalibration, etc.?) that might help in the short term? |
Even though it seems that whenever this major slowdown/stuttering of her ingame character occurs, the hard drive being accessed sounds like a gravel truck dumping its load? I mean, it is downright annoying how much the hard drive is being accessed. Could that be because I don't have enough memory? I'm looking at about $200 from crucial.com for 2 GB of memory. |
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First try shutting down all programs running in the background you don't need,by doing this you will free up RAM usage by Windoze,therfore freeing up RAM for the game.DeFrag and optimize your HD. Those are the free things you can do to speed up your system. If it is too slow after doing that,the next cheapest thing to do is get more RAM.IIRC Windoze uses almost 300MB of RAM just to operate,so having more than 512MB of RAM when running Windoze is pretty much mandatory.Check to make sure that the Dell isn't using some sort of proprietary shit RAM.Also see how many RAM slots you have available and the BUS speed so you don't buy the wrong shit. Dude,you have a Dell and they suck for upgrades. ETA:If your HD is making sounds like that,I suggest you start backing some shit up you want to keep.The HD will go kaput sooner or later if it is making grinding sounds. |
What are the few absolutely essential things that I must have running? |
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AV protection is one of the things you can turn off.It sounds like the AV is scanning the incoming data during game play. Let me try to find the list of non-essential programs you can turn off.... ETA:The website which lists all the tasks is offline,looking at mine,this is what I have running during games: taskmgr.exe explorer.exe svchost.exe - a few spoolsv.exe lsass.exe services.exe winlogon.exe csrss.exe smss.exe System Idle Process Everything else but those could most likely be shut down.As usual,just create a restore point before you start turning off programs/processes. |
HERE is a decent site that list thousands of processes.Basically what you need to do is look at your running processes,referance them to this site,then shut down/leave alone as needed.It is time consuming,but it is cheap This is the way I do things.I hate throwing money at problems if I can somehow fix them for free.More RAM is really encouraged though,512MB really isn't enough to play games. ETA: Spyware is major also,I forgot about that shit.Download ADAWARE from the linki below if you don't already have it.It is a mandatory program to have. |
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CHECK FOR SPYWARE heres a link to some of my favorite anti-spyware programs Spybot SD Ad-AWare Those are to remove the spyware This one is to keep it off Spyware Blaster |
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When your harddrive is being constantly accessed, it means that Windows is using the swap file on the hard drive to simulate RAM. While this *works*, your hard drive is a hundred times (or more) slower than actual RAM is, so there is a noticable performance impact. Adding the RAM will fix most or all of the problem. -Troy |