Ever Try?

[Go4It]

Has anyone ever tried this to play your games, I use it all the time....

Stop explorer.exe during gameplay:

You can start up a game, then press Control+Alt+Del to bring up task manager, go to processestab and find explorer.exe and click end process button all your icons and the start menu will disappear that is because explorer.exe controls opening folders, shortcuts ect. which you don't need during a game and wastes memory.

to turn it back on go back to task manager (Control+Alt+Del) go to File> New Task (Run) and type explorer.exe and press Enter to bring everything back.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Nice info I leave it on, now I will give this a shot.

RDP

[FIREWALL]

This is good info as I just shut off anti virus with good fps improvement. Will try this with above Thx.

[Major Johnson]

This is an awesome tip! I just tried it. No more lag time where things bogg down for a few seconds, especially during TC! And the message window opens and closes with no delay at all!! That is outstanding!!! And you'll notice at least a 15-30 fps increase! Without going into a lot of detail I've already covered in other posts, I've been having quite a lot of trouble getting the game to be stable on my system. I think a large part of my problem was power supply, which I am getting a new one tomorrow. But I believe a lot of the CTDs were due to too much other stuff going on in the background, none of which ever affected any other game currently installed. Granted, the game engine needs to be tweaked so that it gets along better with the other processes, but this tip is a nice work around. Good job!!

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by Major Johnson

This is an awesome tip! I just tried it. No more lag time where things bogg down for a few seconds, especially during TC! And the message window opens and closes with no delay at all!! That is outstanding!!! And you'll notice at least a 15-30 fps increase!

Impressive results

RDP

[Major Johnson]

I suggest doing this at the games main menu before you try to load a saved game. I think you'll find the saved games will load much quicker as well. Good luck!

[Go4It]

Further note: if you close out explorer an the game doesn't appear just alt + tab to bring the game up.

Here's a site some may like......
Slimming down Windows XP

http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/i...p?showforum=13

[kv29]

tried, no change for me. my system is not overloaded (it only takes 180 mb for resident programs in memory) so I think is quite optimized as it is.

[mfddan]

I used it and it worked great for me. During the most graphic intense period my frame rate went from 15 to 25 by closing explorer.exe.

[minsc_tdp]

Another good tip is to download FileMon from sysinternals (just google it, it's very popular for many techs.) It hooks the filesystem and tells you which program is touching what files, in real-time. If you've got some process that is repeatedly banging on the hard drive for some asinine files, it's probably sucking not only disk resources but others as well. Terminate whatever services or processes are responsible.

On the same note, you will often see svchost.exe responsible for all kinds of activity but you know you can't terminate it, since it hosts services. I believe Process Explorer (also sysinternals) or another 3rd party one (called Security Task Manager, not free) can help you identify which services a given svchost.exe is responsible for. It won't boil it down to one service, but with a little bit of research on the few services a particular one is running, and the files it is accessing, will give you an idea of which service to stop.

I wrote this a while back:
How To Build a Windows XP Chopper
http://knepfler.com/chopper (never fully completed but very thorough)

Which is basically an experiment in how many services can be stopped and still have a functioning system. I think I got it down to one service. It wasn't very practical as many things were broken, but you can probably get it down to less than 10 pretty easily and cut all kinds of unnecessary memory use and disk access.

[Argus00]

Yep, I've been playing video games for over 25 years now, and I can say that for the smoothest, trouble free gaming it's best to stop as many programs running in the background as possible, and (in WinXP) also stop and set to manual all non-citical services. Besides gaining fps, a lot of randmom and unexplainable CTD's will also be eliminated.

[switch.dota]

I used to think that helps but it really doesn't. However I'm well below minimum specs (Ath XP @ 1,7+, 768 RAM) so I'm not really entitled to complain

[GTHammer]

So I got this to work once...However, when I went to try it a second time things didn't go so well. After I loaded up the game, I brought up the task manager, and quite explorer.exe. Only then I couldn't get back to my SH4...(ie no tabs on the toolbar) am I missing something or does anyone have any ways I can get around this? I started explorer back up and tried a couple more times everything worked the same. Explorer quits, SH4 stays minimized, no way to get back to it...

[Major Johnson]

Originally Posted by GTHammer

So I got this to work once... no way to get back to it...

When you stop explorer.exe, click on the "Applications" tab and highlight Silent Hunter and click "Switch To". That should bring the game screen up. Good luck!

[Major Johnson]

Originally Posted by switch.dota

I used to think that helps but it really doesn't. However I'm well below minimum specs (Ath XP @ 1,7+, 768 RAM) so I'm not really entitled to complain

I'm afraid your issue is your specs. You really should have at least a 2 Ghz processor and a 1 GB RAM (preferably 2 GB or more). I'm assuming your processor is a socket A, same as mine (Athlon XP 3000+ 2.19 Ghz). That type of socket is outdated, but you might be able to find a Barton processor which would be a nice upgrade. I saw one on eBay yesterday for 30 bucks. Upgrading your RAM will cost more though. Best to shop around. Crucial.com will scan your system, tell you how much you have and how much you can upgrade to, and they'll give you a price. Could be a good starting place. Good luck.