30-60 second hangs

[merpa]

This will happen to me usually when I am travelling, maybe when I hit the next chunk?

Anyway, I'll be cruising along and suddenly the game just stops. 30-60 seconds later it comes back again and all is normal. Last night this happened when I was on my way to Khegor's End. I was going up the road and had just turned off into the wooded area with the spiders.

It's a lot like a massive swap, but I have 2 GB of ram and my hard drive isn't crunching. Also I checked in performance manager and I have a good amount of ram free.

AMD 64x2 4200
eVGA 7900 GTO
2GB DDR

[Trystan365]

Merpa,
I have a similar setup as you.

Sorry, but gonna tell a story before I give you my suggestion:
Last night, after playing for an hour or so, textures on furry animals (horses, dingos, lions...those sorts of furry) went all wonky. Ok, I said to myself, I'll get to a safe spot and log and reboot. And so I do...sort of. I exit Vanguard and get a BSOD. On XP. I KNOW! Machine reboots. I fire up VG, get through the patcher and instead of character select, I get a big ole black screen and the system is hung like a porn star. I hit reset and try again. Same thing. Ok, good, the gods were *not* just testing me. I reinstall my video drivers, reboot, and restart VG...same bloody black screen. Next, I do a full file scan. I say to my self, SELF, if there is a borked file, *this* should find it! BUZZZZZ, it told me everything was as kosher as matzo and I restart the game. Login...patcher....wait for it....BIG BLACK SCREEN and my computer does another John Holmes impersonation. Well, I got this nifty set of DVDs at the store the other day, hows about I blow the beta code away and make use of these fine platters of plastic and aluminium? Did and done. Game reinstalled, account updated with my shiny new game code and now to start the game. It patches and while it does, I think Oh bloody heck, I'll hafta rebuild my UI layout...yippee. Patching is done and game starts...really! It does this time! Oh joy of joys! O happy night!

Now that I have begun a highjack, I now return you to your normally schedualled thread...I got the same thing you were experiencing...twas very very odd. I hadn't had this happen at all during beta. I exit the game, check my fragmentation, as every other thing had already been checked and rechecked *and* I had just patched...the drive was fragmented like the proverbial china after the bull had done his jog through the shop. After a not-so-quick defrag of the harddisk, I relaunched and actually started to get better FPS and less hitching than I had during beta. Oh, the 25-30 second hangs in game were a thing of the past, as well. :)

My advice, check your harddrive fragmentation, this game is a fragmenting fiend after patching. That and if you are still running the beta code...kill it with extreme prejudice and reinstall...you'll thank someone for it.

[Ayeshala]

Next time you get a black screen, try deleting the content of the Cache folder in the Vanguard directory, it might fix the problem.

Merpa, I'm curious, do you play with HDR on?

[andolyne]

This will happen to me usually when I am travelling, maybe when I hit the next chunk?

Anyway, I'll be cruising along and suddenly the game just stops. 30-60 seconds later it comes back again and all is normal. Last night this happened when I was on my way to Khegor's End. I was going up the road and had just turned off into the wooded area with the spiders.

It's a lot like a massive swap, but I have 2 GB of ram and my hard drive isn't crunching. Also I checked in performance manager and I have a good amount of ram free.

AMD 64x2 4200
eVGA 7900 GTO
2GB DDR
pretty sure it's when you're crossing chunks... mine it similar.

try defragging it might help load that stuff into memory faster.

[merpa]

Next time you get a black screen, try deleting the content of the Cache folder in the Vanguard directory, it might fix the problem.

Merpa, I'm curious, do you play with HDR on?

I was playing with HDR on, I turned it off to see if anything got better. It didn't.

Trying the re-install of VG now.

BTW, I had to delete the directory VG was in. The uninstall option on control panel doesn't work. I sure hope it didn't leave a bunch of garbage in my registry.

[Vallas]

Others have said it but it sounds like fragmentation. That alone can cause the client to take a very, very long time to even open if the wrong files are fragmented. Its a huge game as far as hard drive usage, if those files get scattered it gets ugly.

[fordfanboi]

How large is the patch after a reinstall from the retail DVD? I remember patching the downloaded beta5 client took me 36+ hours on 8mbps cable.

[Vallas]

How large is the patch after a reinstall from the retail DVD? I remember patching the downloaded beta5 client took me 36+ hours on 8mbps cable.



Yikes...I got the entire game from D2D in under 3 hours :)

[Trystan365]

How large is the patch after a reinstall from the retail DVD? I remember patching the downloaded beta5 client took me 36+ hours on 8mbps cable.

After the install from DVD I did, the patch process took about 15-20 minutes. Your mileage may vary as I have a 4Mb pipe into my apartment.

[fordfanboi]

After the install from DVD I did, the patch process took about 15-20 minutes. Your mileage may vary as I have a 4Mb pipe into my apartment.

Great!

SUPPOSEDLY I'm getting 8mbps on my cable, and if I connect to my ISP's site and use their test app, I do get 8mbps... but I RARELY see anything that resembles those speeds anywhere else. I'll allow for an hour if I decide to reinstall. heh

Thanks for the info!