Info: Windows 7 *GUARANTEED* fix

[Nitro Cruiser]

Originally Posted by Render

NC - Did you get the lag effects from full screen?

JUST
CHECKIN,
R

Render, I have had some lag, during the AI's turn prior to them finishing. I must confess I've been playing a campaign with lots of units and build (this was in WinSPWW2 not MBT). I attribute this to the AI moving a ton of infantry (1939). I have not had this issue during my phase. What is your computer spec's?

you can try:

dialing down the animation (preferences)
close any un-needed processes running in the back ground
manually give the game application more of your CPU resources (properties)

See if any of that helps. Also does it seem to worsen as you play?

[Nitro Cruiser]

Guess I should of read down a bit more....

Originally Posted by Render

ok I'm back...

Don - I'm guessing you meant the message delay and/or animation rates? Neither fixed or changed the lag, in either direction. With or without the palette fix in place.

Also the palette fix seems to be crashing sections of Win 7's Explorer (or the whole thing). No toolbars, no icons, no desktop, only the background remains, no way out after game exit except to hard reboot. And it doesn't shut down the DOS window on start up...


I'm more then willing to keep testing...

Especially since my old XP rig just died (multiple hard drive self-immolation). Over 500 saved games lost forever...

DESPERATION
IMPENDS,
R

I have noted the issue with the icon-less screen once that you mention above. I bumped my "Windows key" (on the keyboard), the game was minimized to the task bar (still running). To fix, you can double click on the game tab in the task manager or open task manager and double click on the game there. If you quit the game and your Desktop Icons don't appear do this:

Open Task Manager (Ctrl+ALT+Del)
Click on the "Processes" Tab
Under "File" select and click (New Task (Run)
Type in "explorer.exe" hit return or click OK
This should bring up your Icons again for you.

If the problem is occurring often it could be other issues with your PC.
Make sure you defrag occasionally and clean up your system. I recommend the Free version of "Glary Utilities". This is also a good utility to easily "turn off" those nuisance start up programs!

As far as your crashed hard drive, there is a software cure. It's called Selkie Rescue. It's pricey ($100) but it works. You'll need the dead PC (the crashed hard drive must be in a PC that has a CD ROM drive), a crossover (network cable), and another working laptop or PC with the software installed. I've used it, it's magic! Recovered a HD that quit (grinded to a crash) in its entirety. Of course the information on the crashed drive needs to be worth the cost (I went halves with the person that crashed their drive, provided I could keep the software). Always backup!!

I use the Free versions of SPWW2 and MBT too, retired military pay just don't allow for luxuries such as the upgrade lol. Probably should have purchased it when it was cheaper a few years ago. Anyway, I do try to support Don and Andy's work by word of mouth.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Render

ok I'm back...

Don - I'm guessing you meant the message delay and/or animation rates? Neither fixed or changed the lag, in either direction. With or without the palette fix in place.

I am not refering to message delay or any of the in game Preferences . I am refering to the adjustments that can be made under the MISC tab of game options

Don

[Render]

Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 @ 2.66GHz
Mobo: Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI
RAM: 4 GB
GPU: Single Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra (786GB)(DirectX 10)
Total Disk Space: 1.5 GB (5x250GB RAID config)
OpSys: Win 7 x64 (new install a couple of weeks ago)
PSU: Enermax Galaxy 1000watt (yeah the office lights dim when I turn it on)
Monitor: Samsung 906BW 20-inch

Rig bought used to replace the dead XP rig. No overclocking. Handles COD 4, COD/WAW, and Steam/BF2BC quite well, (or as well as the terminally buggy BF2BC will run on anything).

===

NC: That icon-less crashing on this rig, it won't even ctr-alt-del, just nothing.

oh man I so wish there was some way to save what was on those drives from the old rig, but they've gone to hard drive heaven along with the mobo, cpu, ram, and DVD. Burned silicone smell, scorch marks on the mobo and ram, DVD door jammed by melted plastic (except via the paper clip trick) and non-spinning (never seen that happen before). I saved as much as I could of the important stuff to thumb drives (MyMoney, docs, photos, vids) while it was still cooking itself. And then it was gone with a couple of last beeps...RIP old friend.

I think you misunderstood what I meant by lag. I'm used to the AI taking a bit of time with the extreme size scenarios I like to play (in both SPWW2 and SPMBT). The AI turns in SPWW2 are (were) sometimes a good time to go out for a smoke break...

What I'm talking about is happening when moving my own units, or just watching the air/artillery and AI phases. Units will move several hexes and then freeze, before moving a few more hexes and freezing again etcetc.

I tend to run defrag and clean-up once a week whether or not it needs it (486 days habit) and I generally turn off all processes not needed prior to gaming (P4/Day of Defeat habit).

===

Don: I set up the Misc tab settings the same way as they were on the old rig. I'll try fiddling with them again tomorrow AM and let you know what happens.

===

NEVER
SAY
DIE,
R

[Nitro Cruiser]

Originally Posted by Render

NC: That icon-less crashing on this rig, it won't even ctr-alt-del, just nothing.

I think you misunderstood what I meant by lag. I'm used to the AI taking a bit of time with the extreme size scenarios I like to play (in both SPWW2 and SPMBT). The AI turns in SPWW2 are (were) sometimes a good time to go out for a smoke break...

What I'm talking about is happening when moving my own units, or just watching the air/artillery and AI phases. Units will move several hexes and then freeze, before moving a few more hexes and freezing again etcetc.

R

Render my bad in Windows 7 the command to bring up the task manager is CTRL + SHIFT + ESC , give that a try.

Your right, I didn't realize the extent of your lag problem!!! I have to say I haven't experienced your issue at all. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it might be a process, something new to Win 7, that is running on your PC. Does it happen every turn you take? Your computer seems quite capable.

Another issue to look at (this is where our PC are different)and probably more to the problem, are the duel cores. The SP games AFAIK are not designed to have their functions shared between the cores (which is basically two computers). The software just doesn't know how to handle it. The only thing I can recommend is check with your PC's manufacturer and see if you can manually assign the game .exe to use only one of the cores excursively. It sounds like this may be the problem. My laptop is one of the last of the single cores, I picked it up because it was cheap.

Also make sure your Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 drivers are current. These often ship with outdated drivers, even in relatively new rigs. An update can improve capability. I would check Intel's website directly as Windows update probably won't have it.

I don't know what else to recommend you try. Good luck

[DRG]

Win 7 allows you to set up applications to "emulate" one of the earlier versions of windows. In this case you need to ensure the GAME exe is the one running emulation NOT game options.

Has this been tried ??

Don

[Render]

Ayup NC, all drivers were updated when this rig was re-built for me three weeks ago. I bought it used, cuz it was cheap and the payment plan was easy.

The dead rig was a single hyper-threaded 3.2GHz CPU with 1.75GHz of RAM and a 7600GT video card running XPPro SP3. Built to play Day of Defeat.

===

First settings (taken from previous XP rig):
Scroll speed: 200
Graphics Delay: 10
Unit Move Delay: 50

Final Settings (long weekend):
Scroll Speed: 125
Graphics Delay: 1000
Unit Move Delay: 25

Ground and air units still hesitate every three hexes on long moves. Direct fire and indirect fire animations are very slow (read the serial numbers on the shells as they go by slow). Reducing the unit move delay below 25 made moving units a little nuts and didn't seem to effect the three hex hesitation. There is also a brief hesitation when clicking on each unit and when hitting spacebar on each unit, sometimes I have to hit the spacebar twice to bring up the unit window.

What's the maximum available graphics delay? That does seem to have helped a bit, but I'm not sure how far to push it...is 99999 a viable number?

I'll try it with the animations turned off tomorrow.

===

The fix file skips the settings screen and goes right to the pre-game splash screen (wasn't that kind of a no-no?). This means loading the game without the fix, changing settings, and then exiting, before loading the game with the fix file for each test run.

===

Don: I had previously tried emulating XP and Win98 without the fix file. I'll add that to tomorrows list. I normally run without any game sounds. Could that hesitation be related to the sound files? (something else for tomorrows list - I'll try it with the sounds on.)

===

Small miracles department: I found a back-up of almost all of my saved game files on a thumb drive, 400 or so out of 500+. I'll take it, it's more then I expected...

CARRYING
ON,
R

[Rich]

For the record, as I posted earlier, I get the same lag. Somewhat different system but same os. I tried emulating other os in the shortcut with no luck.

[DRG]

The shortcut to what ???.... the game EXE or the gameoptions EXE?

Don

[Render]

Don - I think Rich is referring to the fix file when he says shortcut. It skips the gameoptions exe and goes into the pre-game splash every time.

The lag effect is only on full screen, in windowed mode the game runs very smooth. But in 800x600 it's painfully small, even on a wide screen.

Does the full blown version allow one to change the size of the window in windowed mode?

UNBEATEN
PATHES,
R