Super low frame-rate fix???

[skunkworx]

I upgraded my computer's RAM to 2 gigs about a moth ago, and everything was going great. About a week ago, it just started getting slower and slower until it practically doesn't work. I open the program and it's running at 28-38fps, then drops down to 3-5fps within a few seconds and it just stays there.
I've tried re-starting, shutting it down and starting, closing down just about every single application etc... The CPU is only showing about 58% usage and it's the only thing running (all other background programs are at 0 besides system idle process). What in the world would be causing this to happen? I can't seem to pinpoint the problem. Would it be a good idea to re-install the whole thing?

[atomicplatypus]

Do you run the sim in windowed or fullscreen mode? 3D applications run faster in fullscreen mode. You might also check that your configuration and quality settings haven’t changed and are bogging down your video card.

Have you checked that your new stick of RAM is fast enough for your machine and isn’t defective? You might consider running the Microsoft Memory Diagnostic tool to check your RAM. Bad RAM will show up in boot problems, speed degradation and/or inconsistent performance.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Double-check that you have the latest DirectX drivers for your machine along with the latest video card drivers. Sometimes video card driver corruption will result in weird performance issues. It’s best to just re-install them when in doubt.

If after trying both of these and you still have problems check out your motherboard drivers. Other performance causing issues would be not installing your mother board drivers into Windows. If you purchased the computer pre-built these are sometimes missed. Otherwise, check that your drivers are up-to-date.

When was the last time you installed Windows? As the registry gets older performance seems to suffer especially with frequent hardware and software changes. I typically format and start from fresh once a year.

[skunkworx]

I'm not sure I understand how to do all those performance checks. I tried the Microsoft thing, and it didn't seem to work or I'm just too computer illiterate to figure it out. I am horrible with computer stuff, so this puts me in a bit of a bind. I really don't understand why it would just start dropping like that though. How would not having driver updates slow the computer down, when the darn thing worked just fine a week ago? I am going to try to get a different spyware program installed because the Norton360 eats your computer for breakfast in the performance dept. I do have a crappy vid card, but that doesn't mean it should sudenly lose all computing power when it all ran seamlessly for the last year on 512, and then even better on 2gig. I'm just at a loss as to why it would do that!

Thanks for the help Atomic, I'll dink around with it more tomorrow. Maybe I'll just stumble across something out of place and fix it.

[astroflyer]

Just a thought...your norton is not running a scan when you see this slowdown is it? I had an antivirus that had a built in timer and once it decided to run the scan everything slowed to a crawl.

scans can take hours and in my case, shutting down the computer before the scan finished meant at next bootup it was crawling once again. confused me for quite a while.

removed that program and the machine hasn't hiccupped since.

[skunkworx]

Well I think I narrowed it down a bit. It's running better, but not by much. The frame rates are 16-26fpm. I ended up doing a defrag on the hard drive and that seemed to help. I also did some tinkering with some other settings, set it to full screen mode and played with the graphics. I think I just need to dumb it down a bit more. It seems to be smooth enough at 26fpm's but I've seen it run at 50+fpm's and it looks really really nice. I think it might be time for a new laptop already (mine's only a year old).

[atomicplatypus]

It’s hard to say what the issue could be without poking around on your computer so I’ve tried to outline some common issues. Virus checking software and spyware running on your machine are two other common reasons for slow-downs.

If all else fails you might try re-installing Windows. Although a new laptop does sound better!

If you decide to try this then first backup your stuff then put the Windows CD into your computer and reboot. The Windows setup program should run and you can follow the directions for a clean install. After Windows has installed, your computer may have come with other CD’s. These typically will be motherboard drivers which if left uninstalled can hinder performance.

Next, locate the manufacturer for your video card and download their latest display drivers. Run Windows update to get the latest patches as well.

Next, install RealFlight and setup the graphics settings to your preference. Check out the performance. Assuming no hardware issues are present I’ll bet you will see a noticeable improvement in performance.

Then, continue to install your other apps. Run RealFlight between installing programs and see if any are impacting RealFlights performance.

I hope that helps!