weird stuttering freezing thing on startup

[Hewer]

Here's another one for you guys- I haven't been able to find anything on this in the troubleshooting section or anything.

 

The first couple of times I started TDM everything went fine. Since those first two or three times, I now get something weird happening on startup. When I launch Doom 3, it starts with the ID animation that ends on the beating heart with the ID logo- While it's doing the animation there is no sound and part of my taskbar is showing- only part because of the resolution change it can only show part of it. I can get little snippets of sound if I click the mouse button.

Then when the startup screen for Doom 3 comes up, I'll get about a half second of the music and the enlarged partial taskbar pops up and the whole thing freezes. If I click the mouse, I'll get another half second of music where the taskbar goes away and I can sometimes move the mouse for that half second, but then it freezes when the taskbar pops on top again. If I keep clicking the mouse like this anywhere from 5-15 or so times, it will eventually stay up and not freeze.

Then I click on 'Mods' and then The Dark Mod and the whole thing starts over again when TDM is loading. I usually have to click 20-35 or so times to get it to stay from that point.

Once I've gotten it to load like that, I don't have any problems at all with playing. No crashes or stutters or anything. I think I might have a bit of a problem saving as it has me re-install the training mission every time even though I've saved a game and done some quicksaves- I'm not sure I'm doing it right because just getting the game going is too laborious right now to play around with it.

 

If it means anything, I've noticed that when I open the console right after the game gets going, there are a whole bunch of lines in red that say things like: "WARNING could not open image/extinguishable/wall lantern/ blablabla"

Some say other things, but most of them are could not open/extinguishable/something

 

Anyway, here's the specs of my machine:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

ASUS Notebook G72GX Series

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8700 @2.53GHz

RAM: 6 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M

 

Thanks

[Tels]

Here's another one for you guys- I haven't been able to find anything on this in the troubleshooting section or anything.

 

The first couple of times I started TDM everything went fine. Since those first two or three times, I now get something weird happening on startup. When I launch Doom 3, it starts with the ID animation that ends

 

You shouldn't start first doom, then select the mod, instead use "tdmlauncher" so it will start right-away with the mod loaded

 

Apart from this, I can imagine a few things:

 

* virus infection

* running out of memory (although with 6Gb this is very unlikely)

* corrupt file on disk (e.g. you have either a corrupt HD or a corrupt memory chip)

 

Do you have an on-demand virus scanner running?

 

If it means anything, I've noticed that when I open the console right after the game gets going, there are a whole bunch of lines in red that say things like: "WARNING could not open image/extinguishable/wall lantern/ blablabla"

Some say other things, but most of them are could not open/extinguishable/something

 

These are "normal", D3 complains due to the underscore but loads the image anyway (we haven't been able to stop the warning, tho)

[Mortem Desino]

You might have tried to load a corrupt FM package. To clean up, delete any file in your darkmod folder except pk4 files, and tdm_update. Then delete tdm_game01.pk4 and tdm_game02.pk4. After that: run tdm_update. It'll redownload the important bits to turn TDM back to before you started playing. Beware that you will lose your video settings, keyboard bindings, and such.

[Hewer]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I do run some anti virus programs. I tried closing them down and it didn't change anything. Then I noticed an ASUS protection program of some sort running. I exited out of it and for good measure, I closed Firefox. After that I didn't have any problems at all. I'll have to do a little experimenting to isolate whatever is causing the problem.

 

Thanks again

[Tels]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I do run some anti virus programs. I tried closing them down and it didn't change anything. Then I noticed an ASUS protection program of some sort running. I exited out of it and for good measure, I closed Firefox. After that I didn't have any problems at all. I'll have to do a little experimenting to isolate whatever is causing the problem.

 

Thanks again

 

Please post back when you find it Closing all programs in the background is good advice, even on linux, because Firefox+Flash = Major Performance Sucker

[LEGION]

I always shut down everything I can when playing games, you don´t need the stuff anyway, while playing, right? Ah, you´re just lazy, aren´t you?

[gnartsch]

I always shut down everything I can when playing games, you don´t need the stuff anyway, while playing, right? Ah, you´re just lazy, aren´t you?

 

I do the same and have placed a batch-file on my desktop in order to do this.

 

set KILL=V:\BootDriverProgram\Software\Microsoft\SysinternalsSuite\pskill.exe -t

net stop "Ati HotKey Poller" 
net stop JavaQuickStarterService
net stop "Apple Mobile Device"
...

%KILL% a2service.exe
%KILL% ctfmon.exe
...

 

The first line points to the pskill command that is availlable in the SysinternalsSuite.

It allows to kill processes by naming the executable (see the lines with %KILL%).

The lines starting with net stop shutdown some fairly annoying services (updater, chats, whatever may produce popups, etc).

Just check whatever processes are running in the Taskmanager or active services in the Services-panel.

Typically there is quite a lot of stuff that really should not be running all the time anyway.

[Hewer]

I always shut down everything I can when playing games, you don´t need the stuff anyway, while playing, right? Ah, you´re just lazy, aren´t you?

 

Yeah, I tend to play in pretty short sessions during breaks from doing other things. So it's partly laziness, partly convenience to not shut things down and temporarily 'dedicate' my computer to gaming. Sometimes I'm in the middle of downloading or uploading and want to play for a little bit while that runs in the background. And I usually forget that there's anti-virus, anti-adware type stuff running all the time also. I want my cake, and I want to eat it, too- right?

 

@gnartsch

That batch file idea sounds really useful- unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near the skill to make something like that myself. I'm an Illustrator/Graphic Designer (I specialized in design for print), and I can handle html and css, but even JavaScript is beyond me. My brother is a programmer by profession, though- I'll have to ask him about it and I'm sure he could rig something up for me like you've got. He's always tweaking and customizing things like that.

[LEGION]

You can use what gnartsch posted, just, like he said, look what programs are running at the Taskmanager. But add only stuff you´re sure is software you´re sure win won´t need. Thanks, gnartsch! That will save me lot of clicks!

[aidakeeley]

You'd be best just stopping those invasive useless shits from loading to begin with. Clear them from your start up folder, as start up services, and registry runs. Junk the junk.

[gnartsch]

You'd be best just stopping those invasive useless shits from loading to begin with. Clear them from your start up folder, as start up services, and registry runs. Junk the junk.

 

That's a very good advice, aidakeeley !

 

Personally I use

C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig.exe

In order to achieve these permanent changes.

 

The good things about it:

it does not only care about shortcuts in the 'Startup'-folder, but also cares about

the sh*t found in the Windows-Registry to be started on SystemStart.

And handles services as well + providing some sort of backup.

 

 

@Hewer, I would not recommend shutting down Antivirus.

A good AV should have little effect on performance.

I NEVER shut it down, especially when connected to the internet !

However, do what ever you need to do to identify the source of the problem and then maybe consider replacing the devil with something else.

 

Care about the useless stuff first. Probably the stuttering goes away with that already and gameplay gets much better.

 

Also, DO NOT use the approach via MSCONFIG.EXE unless you know 100% sure what you are about to touch.

Your system may easily never come up again, if you put hands on the wrong things.

 

 

Using a combo of both procedures, games in general run very smooth on may fairly outdated system.

Partly because memory utilization went down overall by > 200MB (before starting a game).

Partly because that junk-software does not request any share on CPU.

Edited September 11, 2010 by gnartsch

[Serpentine]

msconfig is fairly terrible.

autoruns on the other hand is something you really should not be without. It's a few hundred kb and stand alone, no install etc. It does a lot more than the simple list in msconfig and the toggling is far easier. It can also delete most types... but be very careful with that

 

The same goes for most of the sysinternal tools.

 

The only type of startup item I wouldn't really trust autoruns with is services, which is always best to do via services.msc

[Hewer]

Please post back when you find it Closing all programs in the background is good advice, even on linux, because Firefox+Flash = Major Performance Sucker

 

I've been busy and haven't been able to play much, but last night all I did was make sure Firefox wasn't running, and the game loaded up perfectly.

[Serpentine]

If you have EAX enabled, try disable it. Tho you'd get constant minor spikes if it's the problem I'm thinking of

[New Horizon]

Also, just to make sure it wasn't missed when Tels mentioned it...use TDM Launcher to run the mod. You'll need to create a shortcut for it and send it to desktop.

[Hewer]

Also, just to make sure it wasn't missed when Tels mentioned it...use TDM Launcher to run the mod. You'll need to create a shortcut for it and send it to desktop.

yeah, I did that as soon as he mentioned it And you know what the worst part is? I NEVER LEARNED TO READ.

 

@Serpentine

I have no idea what EAX is, so I googled it. One of the links took me to TTLG- anyway, I suppose I need to disable that in the game options? I'll look in to doing that when I next fire the game up.

 

Thanks again you guys