Memory...

In the games i've been playing lately, everything runs fine at high settings. however, with many demanding games (battlefield 2) and somewhat demanding (farcry) there has been a common issue: everything is perfectly smooth, and then it lags. It's almost like it's trying to load something. Sometimes it just lasts 5 seconds, sometimes up to 30 seconds or so. Then after that, back to running perfectly smooth. This is all in single player, btw, so it's not anything from my internet connection.

Anything you guys recommend to help this?

system:
media center
intel core 2 duo t5200 1.6ghz
256mb geforce go 7600 (updated to latest driver)
2048mb ddr2 ram
5300rpm 80gig internal, 7200rpm 400gig external hd

bf2 is on the notebook's hd, and farcry is on the external. both give the same problems, so I dont think it has anything to do with that.

nothing on the notebook has really been touched, as far as drivers (aside from the gpu) and i haven't removed any programs hp threw in.

Any suggestions?

 

Do you have any antivirus running in the background? what about background processes in general?

go in start menu - run - msconfig and look at the startup items. There might be some programs that you don't really need at startup that you can remove from there.

An anti-virus that scans your files randomly might be the problem. Or is there automatic defrag or something of the sorts?

Although with a core 2 duo, it shouldn't slow it down like that and you have 2GB of ram...

Look at the running processes, anything out of the ordinary?

 

Ha, well.. i just checked my processes and im going to estimate that I have about 70 things running..

like i said, aside from updating the gpu drivers, this is stock from HP. Any idea how I can figure what i need and don't need, and once i figure that out and end the process, how I make sure they don't pop up again?

 

Well, you could uninstall stuff like trial games, MS Office trial version, Norton trial version, all the AOL garbage, etc. You can also uninstall any software that was installed, that you know you will never use. Ideally, you would want to do a complete Windows re-install.

 

Incase anyone was wondering or had the same problems, it seems to have been caused due to overheating. I shut my computer off, let it stand for about an hour, then gave it a little space off the desk and booted it up. works perfect.

i did leave it on for about 4 days nonstop. my bad i guess.

 

Have you cleaned out your fan lately? Read through the cooling guide and definitely do the fan cleanup regularly.

 

Download tweaking companion. Read sections Startup programs and Services.

 

Sometimes when I'm in the middle of a game, my antivirus software will update. There will then be a dramatic drop of FPS. From ~100 to 5 and it lasts for 5-10 seconds. Once the updates are downloaded things return to normal. 70 processes running in the background is not helping...