SH3 using 95+% Cpu? major stuttering. unplayable! help!

[Demo]

Hello, first post here. long time lurker.

Well here is my problem. When i first installed SH3 it ran perfectly fine the first time. (w 1.4 patch) Then i got greedy and installed gwx and that ran fine the first time i ran it. but then on my second time running the game when i got the the main menu it was a stuttering piece of ****. it was using 85-100% cpu even just moving the mouse around the menu. So I uninstalled the game completely (did the regedit and starforce removal too) and reinstalled and repatched. (no gwx this time) However when i tried to run the game this time it would crash when it tried to play the intro movies. how do i know that you ask? well after spending hours on various forums I found out the some people had problems with the intro movies and so i moved them to a backup folder. Now the game loads fine except i still have the major stuttering/cpu useage problem making the game unplayable.

I exceed the recommended specs so i don't think it is that. My suspicion is it is something maybe with the bink video thing because of the intro movie crashes. I have tried uninstalling completely and reinstalling several times now with the same result. overwhelming cpu usage making the game unplayable. I am at wits end and am considering writing the game off at this point. :dead: any ideas?

Specs- 2.4ghz P4
1.5gb ram
BFG nvidia 6600 with latest drivers
Windows xp sp2

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome:up: Somebody will get to your question:yep:

[danlisa]

Welcome Demo:up:

You can try 4 things.

1)Defrag but use a 3rd party defrag utility that arranges files by name. Windows defrag will help but it's not the same.
2)Increase your paging file. You can find this in the System properties under Advanced.
3)End all unneeded programs that are running in the background.
4)Go back to older GFX drivers, sometimes the new ones aren't as good.

It seems that there is some kind of conflict somewhere. If you can get into SH3's main menu, tab out of it and check the running processes for anything unusual.

[Demo]

I will try all that. But first i must say i am amazed, simply amazed at the response times. I will report back after i try those recommendations.

[wireman]

When you say uninstalling do you also go in and delete the
sh3 folder off the hard drive? I had a similar problem that only went away after cleaning out the SH3 folder. Hope I have been a help.

[danlisa]

I will try all that. But first i must say i am amazed, simply amazed at the response times. I will report back after i try those recommendations.

lol, not much else to do when on a long patrol.:D

We're very active in here.:up:

[Demo]

Yes i went into explorer and deleted any leftover sh3 folders. btw any recommended defrag utilities? i have come across quite a few just googling.(?)

and i have the page file size maxed out too.

[danlisa]

I use O&O Defrag but it's not free.;) Try to find somthing similar. My page file is currently running a min of 4GB, which was manually set.:up:

[gabeeg]

Before getting too dramatic and removing everything again, open up task manager and sort by CPU usage and see what tasks are using CPU (or gobs of memory for that matter)...you may have another task eating CPU also. Could be something like a virus scanner doing a scheduled scan in the background at the same time, a scheduled backup...or whatever else Try rebooting if you have not already...maybe there are multiples of a tasks running, something stuck in a loop, etc. I agree with one of the other posters, you might want to go to an older version of the GFX driver. I use 71.44 as it has the best performance for me while still retaining the features I want (as opposed to the slightly faster 6x.xx series). Also remember to get rid of the SH3 folder in your "My documents" folder if it is still around and you do uninstall again.

Since it sounds like it ran fine initially prior to installing GWX...I would suspect it would be some variable that has changed between that point and now such as new driver install, software update or install other than SHIII...that is if what I mention in the first paragraph does not get you anywhere.

[emtmedic005]

I suffered from this problem many times and it was caused my many different things.

Usually its something that can be easily fixed, like shuting down other programs, not downloading.

If ur using SH3 Commander, and u installed a mod, u need to "rollback" SH3 Commander files then load the mod.

[Demo]

ok here is what i've done so far:

downloaded the O&O defragmenter. free 30 day trial. :) works like a charm.
installed version 71.84 of drivers (closest ones to 71.44 nvidia had on their site)
page file now at 4gb min
everything non essential is turned off eg. anti-virus, popup blocker, everything. went through task manager and turned off almost everything non system or local network use.
completely uninstalled (including the leftover folders) and reinstalled sh3 w 1.4 patch

aaaannndddd... nothing.:damn: had to take the intro videos out of the folder again because it would just crash on loading... might be something kinda complicated there. i don't know.
but after moving those videos it loaded fine but I still have the same problem. 65-100% cpu usage making the game unplayable all through the game from main menu to sitting at the dock at beginning of mission. i am not pleased. :damn: lol

While running i checked task manager just in case and nothing else was even using any cpu or any major memory usage.

my thoughts are, maybe something with having windows media 10? when installing it says you need to install windows media 9 codecs to run it.

something with the bink player codec. the intro videos use bink i believe and since those don't work maybe something is conflicting with bink.. but not that i can figure out.

Otherwise I have checked ubisofts community support forums and nothing there is too helpful either. :damn:

i don't know what i could do short of reinstalling windows and starting over. i really don't want to do that as it is a pain and a half.


thanks for the tips so far but nothing seems to work..

[Telgriff]

Check the cooling on the pc aswell. I went trawling for similar problems and got a very close hit to do with P4's overheating and overtaxing the CPU causing stutters, freezes and instability. Another mention was whether the BIOS CPU idle temperature (if you can access that, depending on BIOS) could be too high meaning its working it for no reason.

[Demo]

nope temp is low 50's under load. i have some extra fans on the case. :) plus sh3 is the only program running wierd / slow. R:tw runs great.

I may just end up on shore for awhile untill i get my new comp put together in a couple months. although i am almost certain it is a software type conflict somewhere. the annoying thing is i played sh3 on this comp some time ago and it worked fine! that is what grinds on me.

[Mooncatt]

i would give tuneup utilities a try, its free for 14 days and obviosly tunes up ya pc, it gets rid of all the crap and it also has a memory optimiser on it well worth a shot first. http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/
i honestly thought it was so good i bought it and it keeps my pc in perfect working order :up:

[P_Funk]

I had a similar problem a few weeks ago. For some reason when I had the GWX skins mod installed it just made my computer slow. Removing it made it run faster. There is no real reason why it would have done that but it was the only thing that I removed and it fixed it.

My advice is to remove all extras and just try out GWX as it comes fresh after the installer finishes. If that doesn't help try going back to stock patched. If its still slow at stock patched then its coincidental to GWX. SOMETHING is doing it and you might just have to screw around with the set up to find it.

If you use SH3 Commander try launching without it. If you have the 16km mod bring it down to 8km. If you have a new boat skin remove it. Be creative. Computers are really freaking stupid and sometimes the problems defy reasonable logic.

[Demo]

All the tries after the very first install have been without gwx, stock sh3 w/ 1.4 patch.

I also ran that tuneup thing but unfortunately that did not help.:damn:

I am thinking I may just be one of the unlucky ones that has something installed that is conflicting with sh3. I just have no idea what it is. I mostly run games on my comp so its not like i'm doing anything unusual. :damn:

So for now, untill i get my new system built in a few weeks I will just be onshore looking enviously at everyone else sailing away. and no. i will not reinstall windows just to try and get sh3 to run. too much good stuff on the drive. ;)


edit: sweet I'm a Nub now! ;P

2nd edit: Just for "fun" i tried the first single player mission, in non full screen mode, sink the barham or something like that and had task manager running to monitor usage stats. The game was using high 90's cpu the whole time and the mem usage was continually climbing untill at about 1g mem usage the game just ctd. so yeah. end of my little "adventure". i have put prolly 10 hours into this thing just trying to get it to work. and just for the record i am in no way blaming gwx for messing anything up. some people may construe my first post as saying gwx caused the problems. i doubt it.

[ceedub]

Hi Demo.
Have you recently installed a cheap webcam?
Because I had a similar problem with my cpu cycles being used 90-100%, making playing a game impossible (it was Rainbow6 Vegas...by the way).
When I ran Task Manager - based on a tip from the Ubisoft forums - I found out that it was a little file called "vm-sti.exe", part of the software of a cheap-assed webcam that I installed, which for reasons unknown, hi-jacks almost 100% of the cpu cycles after 30 minutes. I searched online and found many references to this particular issue.
I deleted this file and had no more problems.
I hope its this simple for you as well.
Cheers
Ceedub

[Demo]

:up: Thanks for the tip(s). But nope, unfortunately I have gotten quite good at reading task manager and nothing unusual or extra is running when i'm running stock sh3. I wish it was something simple but ehh... I guess one really can't win them all after all. i will update if i try something different that works but for now, i'm sunk.

[gclarkso]

:up: Thanks for the tip(s). But nope, unfortunately I have gotten quite good at reading task manager and nothing unusual or extra is running when i'm running stock sh3. I wish it was something simple but ehh... I guess one really can't win them all after all. i will update if i try something different that works but for now, i'm sunk.

May I suggest FileMon from Sysinternals?

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx

It can capture pretty much all file activity while minimized which then the data can be sliced and diced to identify the nasty bugger. It has helped me mucho in the past...and best of all, it's FREE!

Gordon

[Rilex]

It is normal for D3D applications to consume all available CPU time, don't worry about it.

However, GWX does increase the demands of the system as the textures are quite a bit higher quality. Even on a 6800GT w/ 256MB RAM texture swapping can occur. Nothing you can really do about that besides replace the video card with either something significantly faster or with more memory.