Freeze-Stepping

[Violence]

Hello. It seems the Enhanced Client doesn't agree with my rig and I can't really see why.. There's no Lag when I'm not FreezeStepping and it's all UO; There aren't any other issues with any other application. What information should I gather to begin looking into this?

EDIT : I think it's related to what's in view as it seems to get worse the more Housing or NPCs/PCs are present. But I'm not sure and I definitely don't know how to fix this. UO has never acted up like that before.

 

[Violence]

 

[Violence]

If I try to move a screen North.. Depending on how many things the EC will have to load up I'll freeze for more than 1". If I freeze for more than 2" this also results in my character walking on its own as if I had used the Right+Left Click combination.


Once I'm in that new area and it's loaded I have 0 Lag, no problems with moving around.. Also it seems to happen every single time I enter a new screen, no matter if I've just been there and let it load up, so to speak.

Most areas take more than 2" to load in this manner. It's stopping me from playing at all.


I've DeFragged, CleanUp, Updated, Scanned, ETC. Closing what very few programs I have running along with UO makes no difference. And it's a fresh Installation of UO, DLed from UO.Com directly.
Running in Compatibility Mode(WinXP SP2) and "As Admin" did not improve things either, nor having only 1 CPU dedicated to UO. Messing with the FrameRate in the Options did not help.


Since this rig has not ran UO before I dunno what it could be. I've got two 480GTXs, 6GBRAM, Intel Core I7 950 at 3.6 and a CreativeSB Fatal1ty. On Win7(64Bit) Ultimate. Everything's fully functional and I keep it all up to date. No Viruses, nothing. Every other game I've got, MMO or not, runs perfectly.

 

[RawHeadRex]

fresh install of UO you say huh ?

in the recent patch they mentioned a 'fix' for the EC regarding crashes related to " running the game too long." If the 'memory leak' fix was snafu'd, i think many more EC'rs would be experiencing issues as well. For S's and giggles , disable SLI/restart computer and see if it still happens.

normally i would reinstall UO every time i get a UO related corruption ... maybe something happened on the 'fresh install' and it needs to be redone.

 

[Violence]

Thanks. I'll install again. If it's still happening then I'll see if SLI is the issue.

 

[Violence]

Still happening.. Tried a few things on my own such as disabling Desktop Composition ETC.

I really am not going to Format a perfectly working PC just for UO to play as it should. Any suggestions other than that? Should I take this directly to Customer Support or...?

EDIT I should say Format a working PC AGAIN just for UO..

 

[RawHeadRex]

these are always difficult to troubleshoot because you say other games work fine... prolly more demanding cpu_gpu-wise than uo too.

I would first find out if the HD is ok via a S.M.A.R.T program. A great free one is available from Speedfan. Although reinstalling UO is installed on different sectors of the drive than previous install... it's good to make sure.
If it only happens in UO and not other games, it tells me it's either a physical corruption of your hd and/or ... I dunno ... the swap file on the HD is located on bad sectors.
First do the S.M.A.R.T tab in Speedfan and click on 'perform an indepth analysis of the hard drive.' If you have bad sectors and are over the limit of allowed bad sectors, wiping the drive won't help you.

 

[Violence]

Hey again. I did what you said, got SpeedFan's Test and the HDD is more than just Healthy. No issues, just the 2 480s having higher temperatures than I expected but that's all. What else, would you be needing my DXDiag? Or Trace results? EDIT : If it would help determine anything at all about this I could also show you what's currently installed on this PC. Mostly just Drivers and stuff either way.

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

FYI, this is not just the EC...I started noticing the freezing while playing last night.

 

[RawHeadRex]

Hey again. I did what you said, got SpeedFan's Test and the HDD is more than just Healthy. No issues, just the 2 480s having higher temperatures than I expected but that's all. What else, would you be needing my DXDiag? Or Trace results? EDIT : If it would help determine anything at all about this I could also show you what's currently installed on this PC. Mostly just Drivers and stuff either way.

trace route results would be a good idea. Since you experience no problems in other games, one of your UO hops might have ALOT of latency or something causing the studdering/freezing. dxdiag issues would carry over into other games if there was a problem stated, imho.
btw, what are your system specs and is windows controlling allotted page/swap files or is it set to a specific amount ?

 

[MalagAste]

I've used the EC for over a year or so now... and never have I had this experience. Sorry I can not assist you.

 

[Violence]

MalagAste : Thanks, it's allright I hope we can find out what the problem is.. EDIT - That's the thing, it's never acted up like that and I always used the EC. I remember on my old rig there was an issue with the CPU that had similar effects. But all I had to do was Disable CPU 1 and it would work fine really.

RawHeadRex :
Intel Core I7 950 @ 3.8
6GB
Win7 Ultimate(64Bit)
Western Digital 600GB HDD
Dual NVidia 480GTX
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty on LOgiTech 5.1
Razer Mouse/Keys
LG FlatronW236 3D
NVidia 3DVision (Yes, I /Off them before launching UO )

I am not quite sure what else to tell you, PSU is really good.. Cache is CoolerMaster. I keep it clean and I don't mess with the OS more than needed.

 

[Gilmour]

most likely its related to your disk.. im getting the same issue, as far as i know no solution for it.. but i would be excited to be corrected.

try reduce any activity on your disk. and/or watch the queue lenght in resource monitor (control panal -> system & Security -> admin tools -> performance monitor -> resource monitor -> disk tab)

although do make sure your ec folder is not indexed. (right click folder -> properties -> advanced (at bottom) -> untick "index this..." if its checked -> restart client.

 

[RawHeadRex]

hops 6 thru 13 are higher than I would like to see. were they that high when things were not studdering ?

 

[Gilmour]

if you look closely you can tell if its connection or other hardware.. if connection the world will still move around you on stuttering, while if its hardware issues the screen with freeze briefly.

you can try download FRAPS show fps, record video game movies, screen capture software or so, and use the fps counter to see if it drops to near 0 when your issue occurs.

 

[Violence]

RawHeadRex : I am not quite sure. What I do know is that I've never had issues with Lag in my FPS/MMOs and this is the same ISP and area. What should I do if it IS my ISP? And what happens if it's not Lag which is what I suspect?

Gilmour : Will do ASAP. I can't check it out ATM but I'd say it all freezes up. Went over to a friend of mine, used his PC for a bit. UO runs normally and even though his PC is pretty much a standard rig, there are no freezing issues on it.

 

[Gilmour]

ok, i found this helped somewhat on my issue tho. if not substantially.

from my previous post.

although do make sure your ec folder is not indexed. (right click folder -> properties -> advanced (at bottom) -> untick "index this..." if its checked -> restart client.

 

[Violence]

I am very sorry to say that that did not improve things. I am beginning to doubt I can actually play again unless I want to ask my Father for my old rig back.. LOL

Thanks for trying to fix it, by the way!

 

[Violence]

Kk I just got my old PC here, LANed and ran UO and... No issues. Luna was easy to run through, other areas did not present any difficulties. It's not my ISP. It's the EC not wanting to work on my rig in particular... Which, on its own has NO issues either so it's just the EC acting up for some reason.

 

[Gilmour]

if you got a protection software, try make an exception in it, also make sure if so, that windows defender not running. could cause a similar issue as well.

 

[Violence]

Thanks. I have already given those solutions a try... I'm afraid nothing changed.

 

[RawHeadRex]

in windows task manager under processes... what is hogging cpu cycles while you are playing UO ?

 

[Violence]

System Idle Process [SYSTEM] , 24K Memory , % Time the CPU is Idle
Ranges from 85 to 95

Does not change near Housing or when in the open.. If that's relevant. Every other Process is at about 00-05, 90% of them about 00-01.

 

[RawHeadRex]

yes please send me the indepth hd analysis via speedfan's S.M.A.R.T tab.

 

[Night]

Thanks. I have already given those solutions a try... I'm afraid nothing changed.

I've been suffering from the same freeze-stepping issue in 2D client which was making UO unplayable.

What appears to have been causing the problem (for me at least) was the avgnsa.exe process which when killed cured the freeze-stepping completely.

In the AVG Free Edition this process is apparently related to the LinkScanner functionality so I have disabled that and hopefully it will go away permanently.

Good luck tracking your issue down. RawHeadRex's proposal of looking at what is using CPU cycles is a good one as if something is causing you a problem it's usually eating some CPU time.

Cheers.

 

[icm420]

Thanks. I have already given those solutions a try... I'm afraid nothing changed.

I've been suffering from the same freeze-stepping issue in 2D client which was making UO unplayable.

What appears to have been causing the problem (for me at least) was the avgnsa.exe process which when killed cured the freeze-stepping completely.

In the AVG Free Edition this process is apparently related to the LinkScanner functionality so I have disabled that and hopefully it will go away permanently.

Good luck tracking your issue down. RawHeadRex's proposal of looking at what is using CPU cycles is a good one as if something is causing you a problem it's usually eating some CPU time.

Cheers.

I have been suffering from this lag stepping the past few days, and after running various scans, reinstalling, etc I have still been lagging hard.. I thought it was my internet but I've played other games online (more demanding system wise as well) without any lag. However I also have AVG Free Edition.. mind PMing me or posting on here on how you disabled the process? It was so bad last night I could hardly walk and ended up logging in frustration. I went and played counter strike and I was pinging 5 with no lag in a large game. So something must be conflicting with my UO I guess. I run 2d client.

 

[Night]

In AVG free you can go into Tools > Advanced Options and there are sub-menus for disabling Link Scanner and Identity Protection services. You may have to be more careful when surfing though.

This hasn't completely fixed the problem on my laptop but is much better on my main (also sli) pc.

Good luck.

 

[Setanta]

If you watch, you will also notice that animals, monsters and NPC's are getting stuck. One of the (probably unintentional) changes in the recent updates seems to be a reversion to the server handoff code that was in use several years ago. At server lines, your char may bounce back a few times before crossing and things chasing or running from you are likely to get stuck or lose sight of you and wander off. This includes pets and summoned creatures that are following you.

 

[Night]

Quick update: ended up uninstalling AVG on my laptop - result: freeze-stepping issue is gone