drivehard454

I have been an avid player of the popular Combat Arms FPS online game. I know that my equipment is a bit old but it has been playing very well up until recently. I cannot figure out if it is the game itself or which component is giving me the trouble.

My computer stats should be posted, I believe it says I have 1 gig of ram, but I added another two sticks of 256 each in the other slots, same Mhz as the corsair. I run on a 1.5 mhz DSL connection.

As stated, I have not had any problems up until a month ago. They did an update which added a new feature where players can speak if they have a microphone. Ever since then, I am having a problem playing. They have done a few updates also since then, one to fix "latency" issues, but my game play is the same.

The best way to describe is this. My graphics are fine, speed is fine, smoothness is fine, as long as there are only about 4 players in the game. The game allows up to 16 players, and as players join in, my gameplay gets worse and worse. Here is the weird part. It is only bad when there is another player in my vicinity. If they are all across the map, I am fine, but the closer they get to me the choppier the game gets, like it is skipping frames. When i play in a game with only about 2 on 2, or 4 players, I generally don't have a problem, sometimes slighty choppy in an upclose battle, but distance, like sniping, I am right on target and it is smooth.

I have done every thing I can think of. I uninstalled the game and re-installed it. Thinking of trying it one more time, just to see. I upgraded to a slightly better video card. I had the geforce FX 5500 256, and now I installed an MSI Nvidia FX 5600XT 256. This plays the same, no difference, except for some reason I cannot use the DVI with that card, the screen blacks out, then comes back, blacks out and comes back, getting worse the longer is is hooked up, so I am using the VGA hook-up. I can however turn the graphics up all the way now. I have run the system stability check on the Nvidia control panel, and it says everything passed. I have not run a memtest though, because I am not sure if I might screw something up.

The only other problem I am encountering, is for some reason, my computer is randomly shutting down and restarting. Most of the time it is while I am on Combat arms, but it has happened a few times just using the computer. This happens about once an hour or so, when in combat arms, but only about once every day to three days while not playing. When this happens, I catch a very quick glimpse at times of a blue screen with a bunch of text, I believe telling me the problem, but it happens so quickly I can't catch a single word. When I get back to windows, I get a box saying "the computer has encounterer a serious error", and send to microsoft?.

I know this is a lot to read, I tried to give as much information as possible. I know there are a lot of knowledgable people here,, I have been helped out many times in the past!!.......Thanks

Tyrsonswood

To catch the blue screen go to control panel/system/advanced/startup and recovery....... uncheck the automatically restart box.



Memtest won't hurt, also make sure everything inside is clean and reseated also. It may be that software, or that could be just a coincidence and it's hardware. Check your temps too.

__________________

iPlayer

As your pc has less workload when they aren't being drawn in your screen, so it's rather expected for it to run smoother in those situations.
While I doubt reinstalling the game would make any difference, defragging your hdd and removing some of the useless stuff you might have loaded on the pc's memory, might help overall performance.

Might be worth monitoring the temperatures while you play the game.
Also try increasing the virtual mem' size, besides the other things Tyr suggested.

__________________

drivehard454

I keep my HDDs pretty organized. However they are almost full. I have a 30 gb with only 2 GB left and an 80 GB with only 9 Gb left. They are full of mostly pictures, music and music videos. The rest is a few programs for my contracting business, a couple games and some other applications.

I am strict on keeping spyware, adware and viruses of, unessesary toolbars, etc, and any other junk i don't need. Scans come up clean.

Not sure about the virtual memory though, may be something to look into. What is the recommendation an the changes I might need to increase to?. Also I need a reminder on how to get there. lol

I changed the setting, and did get the the blue screen to stay on the next "shut down" I am going to try to post it on this post but it has been some time since the last time I did this here, so if i don't get it on this one, I will put in a new post.

Not sure what the screen is telling me, from what I gather it may be a driver issue? I checked the seating of all my components, and even cleaned the inside, wasn't very dirty. I even put new paste on my processor heatsink. Not sure how to monitor temperatures while in gaming. I touched the heatsink on the video card last time it shut down and it did not feel "hot".

Thanks guys, looking forward to more input

Optix

If your system is overclocked you should put it back to the stock settings. My overclock can do some strange things until I set it back to stock.

You could check your control panel to see if any of your USB devices/ports is showing an errors and if not, try running MemTest to see if your memory is throwing any errors.

If that checks out I'd go with what your BSOD is telling you - usbccgp.sys indicates that you likely have an issue with your USB drivers. You could try to update your chipset drivers to see if that fixes the problem. If you're using a USB device that has a separate driver something in that driver may have corrupted usbccgp.sys.

__________________

drivehard454

I did have my nvidia 5500 card clocked. But I changed to the msi nvidia 5600xt in the midst of these problems and the results are the same with that card.

Guess I will attempt the memtest process next. Had me a bit nervous about the directions, with making a disc and stuff, but I will try it out.

Will it help to unplug any usb devices? I am currently using 6 ports, one for mouse, two for two separate printers, one for camera, one for web cam, and one for mp3 player. The camera and mp3 are only plugged into the devices when I need to upload/download.

Thanks Optix

Tyrsonswood

You may want to try it with less, or temporarily with no USB devices...... also what version of XP you using?

__________________

drivehard454

I will try that. I am running Windows XP pro version 2002 SP3, and IE 8 (if that matters).

Currently heading to town, so it may be a bit before I can try this, will post when i get back........Thanks

ET3D

Regarding the blue screen, you might want to try the hotfix here: Error message when you try to uninstall or unload the driver for a multifunction USB device on a Windows XP-based computer: "STOP: 0x000000D1 DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

The description doesn't seem to match exactly what you're doing, but it might be related.

If you want to check further before applying the hotfix, it's talking about multifunction devices. Is one of your printers multifunction (i.e., scanner also)? You might want to disconnect it and try to see if this reduces or eliminates the crashes.

Regarding the slowdown, I suspect it has to do with your CPU, which is under the recommended spec for the game (although over the minimum). It's possible that the voice update is taxing it more, and therefore slowing you down. You can try to overclock the CPU and see if it helps, but I'm not sure it'd do much good. Does the game have forums? You could try to ask there.

Optix

I would disconnect everything but your keyboard provided you are familiar with how to navigate through Windows using shortcut keys. It should help you isolate the culprit.

__________________

kris23

yea... ive been hooked on Combat Arms, rather ironic that i come on and see this lol...

well, most of the lag AT THIS TIME is caused by the nexon servers being overloaded due to everyone playing fireteam. the BSOD may be caused by bad RAM or a bad OS install

as for the general lag, thats caused by your CPU not being able to process all the movements of the nearby characters, its a rather demanding game as far as your system specs go

__________________

drivehard454

Yes, one of the printers is a printer/scanner/fax, and is about 6 years old, HP OfficeJet K60. It works great and is using a USB port. I unplugged it now.

The hotfix looks like something to try, if this does not solve the issue. I mean, it shouldn't hurt to download, I will make a restore point before hand.

I know what your saying about the CPU, but I just can't see it as being the cause, but I am not going to rule it completely out. It is plenty fast for the game, I know of another person which plays with a 1.4 Ghz processor which is about the same age of purchase and he is not having trouble. The game has forums, but I haven't seen much help for issues, mostly a lot of complaining from the younger players. Thanks for the advice.

Everything is diconnected, I have a USB to ...um....round looking mouse plug-in adaptor...lol...so I now have no USB ports in use. I will post my results. Thanks

Ahh... a fellow combat arms player. Would like to play sometime if you send your screen name, I'll add you and keep an eye out for you......I still play, but my kdr is taking some heat....lol.

I know what you are talking about with the heavy load on the servers. But this is not the same. I have gone through that before, and it goes away as the load decreases. The game played fine when they first added roadkill and voice. The voice wasn't working correctly so after that weekend they did a maintenance, or update, and then that was it for me, the game got way too choppy to play decent. The following week there was a post about latency problems, I was hoping this would fix my problem. The day before that I played and the game ran flawlessly, then the update and back to choppy. That is how it has stayed since then.

I picked up some different RAM, I am going to install and see if there is change and will post my findings. Thanks Kris

drivehard454

Update:

I unhooked all USB components. The computer has not crashed throughout the night and most of the day. I decided to log on to my Combat Arms game and to my amazement it played perfectly. I am dumbfounded that it would be from a component which is not even being used plugged into the USB port...........SO, onto the next question, what do I need to do to resolve the issue? I am assuming I need to update drivers for the component/s? Thanks......

kris23

sounds like bad drivers causing a BSOD, id uninstall all drivers for whatever is plugged in, using the hardware manager as well. then plug them back in and see if it runs properly.

if it still fails to run, the registry may need to be cleaned and by that time, i just recommend a reformat.

my user name on CA is kris2341

__________________

drivehard454

Thanks kris, I will try as yopu suggested. My user name on CA is 1badmfer

Another dilema.....I loaded up combat again and started to play. I finished two games with no problems, and a plus because I am using the new card I installed and can turn the graphics up high. However, during the beginning of the third game, POOF, I get the blue screen. This time it stated something different. I restarted computer and tried again, but only got half way through the first game and I got the screen again. Posted :



then...yes more....I was on DH and browsing some new threads when I decided to check out the funny videos thread. I got half way through one and got the blue screen again. This time it stated:



I am going to try and research/google some of this myself, but will more than likely get a good answer here also!

I have a problem also with the new ram I recieved, but will open a new thread on the topic, since it is not really related to what is causing these problems on this thread.

Thanks!

iPlayer

At a glance those appear related to the graphics and audio drivers. Although those might come up with faulty ram and other reasons as well.

__________________

drivehard454

Thanks, I am working on the ram issue, still need to make a thread addressing that, its a whole new problem.

Tried playing the game again, got 3/4 through one game and got this blue screen....



Page fault in nonpaged area?

drivehard454

Ok....google research.....page fault does have to do with memory. I am going in that direction tomorrow, time for ZZZZZZ. The nv4-disp.dll is what I thought. I may have the wrong driver. Can I get some assistance as to the proper way to unistall and re-install a driver for this MSI nvidia geforce FX5600XT 256 MB Video card? Do I use the MSI website or the Nvidia website?

Thanks

iPlayer

Could be both the ram or the NTFS hard drive the page file is on, if not a PSU problem. Try disabling the page file/virtual mem as well, or run a chkdsk /f.

Are you running an anti virus program in the background?


Use the nvidia site's if you want the latest. You can find earlier modded versions @omegacorner.

__________________

kris23

id say give it a complete reformat... its too troublesome to keep trying to diagnose the issue...

unless u have stuff you want to keep in particular, go reformat it

__________________

ET3D

If you want to replace the NVIDIA driver, NVIDIA's site is the place to go. You'll find the most up to date drivers there, as well as an option to download older drivers.

Regarding the USB issue, have you tried the hotfix?

That said, as others here suspect, it may be a more serious underlying issue.

drivehard454

Thanks. I ran chkdsk not too long ago, but I wasn't having problems then.I will try it again. Also I am going to switch in MB bios to slow start and see if any errors show up.


I am running AVG Free.

How do I disable page file/virtual memory, and is this something to leave disabled?

Kris.....that's not what I want to hear....lol. I don't have any windows to put back on. I no longer have the xp disk, it was damaged. I want to wait with that though. I had absolutely no problems with anything to do with windows/XP up until recently. First starting with the game issue, now after changing the video card, so I am hoping a reformat should not be necessary. I do kind of have a lot of stuff on there, programs and stuff, plus Quickbooks for my business. I am hoping to resolve this without having to try to back everything up. I did that once before and something screwed up while putting on disks and I lost a lot of stuff. Thanks for the recommendation.

I have not run the hotfix yet. I was going to attack that after I get the immediate issues fixed. Right now nothing is hooed to the USB and now I am getting video driver errors and possible Ram, so I am going to try to fix that first.

I am wondering about the driver for my card. Do I have to unistall the old drivers before installing new? I never had video driver fault until I put the new card in. First I went to MSI and downloaded the driver from there. Then when my DVI output wasn't working(it would continuously black out and flash back on, so now I am using the VGA output) I went to Nvidia and downloaded the driver from them. I never deleted anything during this process. Someone mentioned I need to erase the old drivers before installing new? If so, what is the process?

Thanks guys.

iPlayer

Get that hotfix installed first.

Uninstall your old graphics drivers before you install the new ones.

If you are still getting issues you can try disabling the virtual mem by going into your system's properties > advanced options > performance > advanced options

Try without the AV running as well.

Hope this helps find the culprit.

PS: Make sure you have a restoration point to get back to, just in case something doesn't go too well.

The memory error can come up not only for issues with your system ram, but also your vid card's memory, cpu cache, etc

__________________

Optix

I'm with Kris. If you reinstall the drivers and it still barks at you go for a full reinstall of your OS. You can troubleshoot BSOD's until you're blue in the face but where you are getting multiple errors it may be best to start fresh.

__________________

drivehard454

Update and hopefully solution!

OK. I did the hotfix. Unistalled all and any video drivers, and the ntune I had. I reinstalled video drivers from Nvidia site, this time making sure my AVG was off. Then I installed ntune afterward as recommended.

I still got a BSOD, however game played flawlessly, at least for this old rig it did. So i did memtest and found one of my 256 stick were not performing properly. I pulled it and have not had a single issue since. Game runs great, played all weekend...lol, and no issues otherwise. I am a bit slower loading, but looking for some memory. Right now I have my twin 512 corsair in the dual channel and one 256 in slot 2. Can really tell the difference between 1.5 gig and 1.25 gig. I have another pair of the twin 512 but finally found out why they would not work with my existing pair. My motherboard only supports dual sided moemory in the dual channel. I have to use single sided in the other two slots, weird.

Thanks everyone for helping me and working through it. I always learn so much when I post on here. I wish I could help other people out more, hopefully newcomers with the same issues find my posts and can fix their problems a little bit easier.

I am glad I did not need to reinstall. I have been very careful, making sure I have proper protection, cleaning programs and defenses since the last time I had to re-install. Hopefully it stays that way....lol.

One last question, after reading through this thread, it was mentioned about changing my virtual memory. What is the recommended setting for this? Right now it is set at 2557. Also, it says it uses the HDD as though it is RAM. I have two HDD. One is slower than the other. Does this affect speed of virtual memory, is this that important, and how do I know which HDD it is using then if it is important. I assume it is using the master, which I believe, I have to check, the slower one 30,000 rpm. My other is 72,000.

Lots of questions I know but maybe easy ones for some of you.

Thanks again

anonemus

Here you go, 1badmfer!

How to Increase Virtual Memory

iPlayer

I mentioned it just to check if the issue was there.

So, you are still getting the same bsod. Does the game have a support page or forum?

Some extra 0s there. But, yeah, use the faster drive for it.

__________________

drivehard454

LOL....thanks. Explained it all. I adjusted to 2500 on the faster HDD and selected no paging on the slower drive. set min and max to 2500 as recommended. Checked out some other stuff on that site also. Nice site. Thanks again.

No, I am not getting anything. Everything seems to be working perfectly,(I thought I stated that in the last post, but thats ok).

The only thing I have not tried yet is to switch this new card back to the DVI output. It was acting goofy when I first installed it at the beginning of this trouble. Would blink on and off on the monitor getting worse the longer it is hooked up. Afraid to mess with it...lol, everything is working now. Wondering if there is a difference leaving it VGA?

Extra o's(embarrasing)lol. I was going to verify what I was putting down, but then assured myself I was right.....WRONG. Thanks again

anonemus

If you're using a CRT monitor, VGA connector is preferred. If LCD, much better to use DVI.

Since you're having no problem right now (knock on wood), better leave things as is?

drivehard454

Thats my thinking...lol. However, wouldnt hurt I guess to just plug it in a try it again. I had the DVI hooked up with the other card and it worked just fine and the screen self formats to whatever needs to be displayed at the moment whereas now I have to make the changes myself.