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I've had this problem for some time. This happens even after rebooting, loading my comp takes a few minutes then 80+ cpu is being used and nothing is even open yet. My comp is a year and a few months old, no spyware or viruses that I can find, Nothing being overused in task manager, I don't go to any sites I'm not familiar with, got a good firewall etc and I do not have any bots, or even client edits. I re-installed sro and tried putting all the setting to crap and it's still laggy. sro usually takes 400k - 600k cpu usage now and awhile before I was even able to have it open while having photoshop open at the same time T_T Now I can barely have firefox open with sro. I just added 500gb and still its slow and laggy, with and without sro open. The only thing I can think of is the need for more ram? Dunno, but any help would be immensely appreciated.

First of all, I'm not really an expert when it comes to technical stuff. However, did you reguarly get rid of unnessecary files, spyware check up, cleaned registry, frequent defragmenting, etc etc etc?

Yep, defrag'd both hard drives and both are healthy, usually do it every other day. As for cleaned registry, I'm not to sure about that, only that it's bad if you mess around in there and do something wrong, right? =x


Thanks for the reply btw \o/

Clean registry is for invalid entries in your computer's registry, and speeds up your computer.

I use this program besides the usual spyware/defragmentating stuff. It's free to use, called Easy Cleaner and you can download it in whatever language here.

When you start it, you get a menu of things you can do. If you aren't sure about one of the options, hover your mouse and you get a short discription about the function and what it does. If that's not enough, there's also a help file included in case you need it.
It also shows all the files that are candidate for deletion, and it marks it with a color, green for safe to delete, and yellow and red.

Been using the program since my first computer, it's really good.

Hope it helps, if it doesn't help, or not enough, keep posting, I'm pretty sure there's a whizzkid (or two?) who know more possible solutions for your problem.

Thanks for the link, it didn't change anything though and 60% of the registry was cleaned up T.T

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't solved your problem. I'll ask the technical department at my school tomorrow, I had to go there anyways so I might aswell see if they know a solution for your problem. :3

Thanks so much ^^

ahh, I forgot the name of the program, but it like like a "process manager" that shows ALL cpu usage.

I use to get strange high cpu usage, and task manager showed nothing. The program showed it had to do with hardware I/O handling or something- practically, driver issues.

What kind of processor, single- or dual-core? If dual, try the affinity fix - running SRO on one processor.

edited to add link to Ted's solution, which should work: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=83571&p=1062818#p1062818

Also, how much memory (RAM) in the PC? You mentioned you added 500 gb, that is usually hard drive space, which doesn't help memory issues much. If you have 512MB of RAM that may not be enough to run SRO, depending on what else is taking up room.

I second the defragment thought, if your main (boot) drive with your operating system files is getting over 60-70% full it will not help speed any.

Lastly and most important, right-click your taskbar, open Task Manager and look at the Processes tab. If you click on the CPU heading it will sort the processes by the one that is using the majority of time. On my PC at work, Firefox takes up about 20% CPU and other things take up some, leaving about 60-70% for system idle processes.

For grins, see if there is a process called "svchost" running taking up a lot of CPU time. We can go from there.

No clue about it really, its dual core I think and the svchost, explorer, rundll32.exe and tmproxy take around 26k to 62k at times. I have all those things set on windows 98 =x I did that to stop the ??? errors. I have 2(gb?) of ram. It's still my whole comp lagging not just sro =s Though sro is close to unplayable now.

Are there any programs that let you view hidden programs using cpu?
^---- edit, found one but nothing hidden..

Thanks for reading \o/

Well, do you have anti-spyware and anti-virus programs in place and updated?

Spywareblaster is good to prevent spyware being installed from websites, but you have to manually update it.
AVG and Avast are good for most viruses.
Spybot Search & Destroy is useful for scanning and cleaning spyware that SWB doesn't prevent.

If you checked your hard drive space and it's not over 60% and not fragmented, there is something else going on that we're not seeing. A dual-core shouldn't take 3-4 minutes to boot up. Something is using up CPU time.

Does your hard drive light stay on/flicker constantly even when you're not doing anything at all?

No flickering but it always sounds like it's being used, like when you first open a large program. Also I keep getting errors like this, sometimes they go away then come back.





I looked them up and read that some of those are caused by Dell printers, so I just unplugged the printer cause I'm lazy. It's not been plugged in since. Even re-installed windows XP. I got another one of these errors this morning but didn't s/s it or notice what application error it was.

Today I d/led Security Task Manager, found 2 hidden files that were taking up all the 100% cpu. I deleted them and now they're gone, the cpu is stable but the lag in and out of sro continues. I've messed around with the virtual memory and still nothing helps. Web pages take long to load, especially images and in sro I have a 2-3 second text and movement delay. At rare times everything seems to run a bit smoothly then suddenly laggy. Still can barely have Photoshop and sro open at once like I was able to at one time. I dunno what to do or think anymore =/

That's fine, you're narrowing the problem down. How fast is your connection to the internet? Go here:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

and see what your upload and download are. There also may be an updated network card driver for your PC (*assuming you are using high-speed cable or DSL and NOT using a USB connection to your router).

Also, open up Windows Explorer (not internet explorer) and check the free drive space on your C: drive. If you click on the C: drive in the left pane, on the very lower left it should say something like "x objects (Disk free space: xx GB)". Less space on a small drive = slowdowns.

Delete your temporary internet files for the web pages to load a little faster...open IE, go to Tools, Internet options, on the General tab click on Delete Files then check the box by "Offline Content". That may help a little with that but wouldn't have a huge impact on SRO and Photoshop.

You mentioned virtual memory as well. If you right-click the My Computer icon, then click Properties, then click on the Advanced tab, then in the Performance section click on Settings - first turn down the visual effects for a test. Click on "Adjust for best performance" if it's not already checked, then click on the Advanced tab (still under Performance Options) and under the Virtual Memory section at the bottom, see how much the paging file is taking up. For the most part you should let Windows handle the settings, but you can change it if you know how much RAM you have. Usually I set mine to 1.5 times the system RAM, so if you have 1 gig of ram, I would set a 1500 MB paging file. For 2 gigs I set a 3 gig paging file.

Lastly, if the pagefile itself is very fragmented and you are using quite a bit of system RAM it could slow you down - and Windows defrag doesn't do the greatest job of defragmenting. If you can, find Diskeeper and grab a trial version of that. Diskeeper does a good job of moving commonly accessed files to the middle of the disk where the speed and access times are the best.

Obviously there is something slowing your computer down; the first thing I think of is spyware, but I'm going on the assumption your system may be relatively clean. I've fixed systems that were top of the line but spyware, viruses and popups rendered them completely useless. If you do have an overabundance of spyware sometimes it's just faster to back up your data and completely reinstall the operating system - after formatting the drive that is. I don't recommend this step until absolutely necessary because there always seems to be something that's missed - for example, your passwords to web pages are in Cookies and hardly anyone remembers to back them up.

(Off topic - I once fixed a system that had 10,000 viruses and 2,400+ pieces of spyware. I spent 6 hours cleaning it up so it was usable. That's why at some point it's easier to format and reinstall.)

Oh, one more thing - it could be hardware-related, I've seen systems with faulty memory sticks run slower than molasses, although for the most part they just bluescreen and behave really badly, so it could be something like that.

Last Result:
Download Speed: 9828 kbps (1228.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 150 kbps (18.8 KB/sec transfer rate)



C: Drive has 105GB's of free space - K drive is where I reinstalled sro, it has 300+GB's free



I use FireFox and did that with the cache etc, deleted temp internet files too.



K, did that and it says total paging file size for all drivers: 4094MB. I have 2GB's of ram total. Above that both Processor and Memory are set to "Programs". And this ----v





I defragged both drivers (often) and both come out as "Healthy", I use diskeeper too.



Hm, what really good spyware program would you suggest? I haven't tried the ones the others suggested yet, I was going to go try Avast now. I'm pretty sure if I did have some spyware it not be an assload. I have a linksys wireless N router, they suck and freeze up randomly, a year ago my brother edited one of the drivers so it would never freeze, it hasn't since so I'm not sure what drivers I should update or not and If I reformat, well I can't really remember where I put his edited driver installer >_< Reformating is something I'm desperately trying to avoid.



X_x Sounds like my dad's computer > > I should go over and install some of this stuff on his to fix it - -;

Now that I think of it photoshop and non internet related things don't lag now. Also, the main cable my router is hooked up to, that person is mass pirating all day long. Could that be a cause?

Really good spyware programs? Nothing's perfect, but I use

Spywareblaster to prevent
Spybot Search & Destroy to scan/destroy
HijackThis (not for beginners) occasionally to make sure nothing snuck on the system

Avast has some protection too, but I'm just starting to use it so I cannot vouch for how well it works.

Photoshop more responsive seems to indicate something was indeed taking up lots of memory and causing the system to possibly swap to the paging file.

Good job, you're maintaining the system well. My thought is your internet:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 9828 kbps (1228.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 150 kbps (18.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

That is not much faster than dialup for the upload and could definitely impact SRO.

As for all the downloads that person is doing, if he/she manages the connection correctly, you shouldn't have a problem. Most torrent programs can limit the bandwidth so it does not impact you that much; I haven't used Limewire/Napster/any other peer-to-peer program for a very long time so I can't say if they have bandwidth-limiting features. BUT it could very well cause lag if they are taking up all the bandwidth. My cable (8mb/s down, 1 mb/s up) will have lag in SRO occasionally and some of that is due to poor coding in the client; cable bandwidth is also split in the neighborhood it is given to

For example, Comcast sells broadband to 25 people in a neighborhood. Say their capacity is 50 people @ some predetermined speed. Comcast will attempt to allocate it so everyone gets at least a minimum bandwidth of xxx KB/sec. All it takes is three or four people who really use their bandwidth all day, every day, to slow down the entire neighborhood. When I first got my cable, it was blazingly fast and I got speeds in excess of the rated 8mb/1mb; as more people have gotten cable or switched from DSL, that speed has dropped over the 2 years I've had it. There are times when it is faster, but I can't get on the Net at 2 am to play SRO

DSL for its slowness usually does not share the bandwidth among the people in the neighborhood; it is a dedicated line from your house directly to the switching office closest to you. From that point on however, it becomes shared like everything else. That's why sometimes DSL has better "latency" even though it has lower speeds/bandwidth.

(Heh, sorry for the off-topic wandering.)

Ask that person to stop downloading files for a test and see if SRO is less laggy. If it doesn't help, there could be some issues with the line itself or with your router or your firewall. I've had problems with squirrels chewing on the cable in my backyard resulting in very slow internet. Replacing the cable solved those issues.

Good luck!

Fixed! It was in fact, the non stop pirating from the main cable =_= We have Comcast boost now. The lag is gone and of course there were those two hidden cpu files I got rid of. So everything is ok now. Thank you all soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much for taking the time to help me, I really appreciate it! ^___^