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General discussion

Sudden Lag Spikes

Mar 29, 2009 5:27PM PDT

Until a few days ago, I was able to play an online game I like that I've been able to play for years on dial up with just normal lag problems. But now instead of the occasionnal lag spikes that happened once every few hours or so, it is happening every 5 seconds or so. On the game there's a zone list to choose and it shows the ping for each one. When I first launch the game, the pings go normally 200-250ms then i wait a few seconds and most of the zones show a 1700-3000ms. Then it just seems to repeat in a pattern going from 200ish back to 2000ish. To clear some things up, it is not my modem, I have tested this with 3 different modems. I've tried a lot in the past few days including tweaking the modem settings, tcp/ip settings and init strings, but nothing seems to make a difference. I'm thinking it has something to do with my computer but I have no idea what it could be. Also, I have no spyware, it isn't that.

I am running Windows XP, V2 Premier Computer,Pentium 4 3.06 GHZ, 480 MB Ram.

I realize the computer isn't impressive but I played this game with much better performance on a much worse computer with the same modem.

Also, not sure how packetloss affects ping but even when my ping is good i seem to get a lot of packetloss. And I never had packetloss problems before.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Discussion is locked

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Possibilities
Mar 30, 2009 12:00PM PDT

480M is not a standard number for RAM unless you are sharing ram with an on main-board graphics adapter...may have an intermittent problem there. Should have some multiple of 128M.
Would use multiple anti-malware scanners to check for virus, spyware, trojans, worms, etc.
Would run a software cleaner program to erase cookies, unnecessary files, temp files, and also a registry key cleaner.
Is any part of the game software on your HD...if so defrag it..if it hasn't been done recently. A page and hive defrager never hurts.
You may also want to run HIPS software if you have it.
Go to your Task manager and check the usage under the performance tab. That should give you an idea if your computer is the problem.

Shut off all your malware scanners while you are playing the game...if you TRUST the site but keep your firewall active and if you have.

The following link should assist you:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/security-tools.html

Best of luck!

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Thanks
Mar 30, 2009 3:16PM PDT

Thanks for the advice. I'm gonna look into that now. I've noticed one more thing. I read this site that said to ping my ISP. So I pinged the ISP 200 times and had a packet loss of 14%. The site said then to disconnect and dial again and keep doing it until you have around 0% packetloss. After i redialed, i pinged 200 times again and had 0% packetloss. And went to play my game and it worked fine for 20 minutes. So i pinged my ISP again after lag made it too bad to play and it gave me again around 15% packetloss. So when I first connect, my lag is fine and then like 20 minutes later or so it goes back to awful. No matter how good the connection is at first, it suddenly starts dropping packets and then continues dropping them until i reestablish a new connection. If you know what that could be, I'd appreciate it. Until then I'm gonna take your advice and scan/defrag.

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Fixed
Mar 31, 2009 7:16AM PDT

Well that site you posted was great. I ran a spyware remover called SUPERAntiSpyware that they recommended. Judging from the name, I wasn't too excited but it turned out to be the best remover i've ever used. I tried spybot before and it only found a few spyware entries. This one found 2 trojans, a worm and 100 or so adware. After I removed those, my lag was fixed completely. Thanks again, I was about to replace all my phone wiring.

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Glad I could assist
Apr 2, 2009 10:32PM PDT

SUPERAntiSpyware is one of many that I use. Just remember to keep only one Anti-Spyware, one Virus, and one Firewall program resident or actively guarding your system at one time.
I still have my severe slowdown with Copper.net, even though I have scanned with 2 Virus & 6 Anti-Spyware programs. I have noted that every time I hang-up and then reconnect, my response is restored. I have also noted that there doesn't seem to be any correlation in the time it takes slowdown, although I am getting slightly better response since I changed my firewall to Comodo.
What do you use to ping your ISP and check packet loss ?

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UOTrace
Apr 3, 2009 10:35AM PDT

I actually used an Ultima Online tracer. This site: http://www.paleface.net/filedialup.html referred me to it when I was trying to tweak my dial up. I'm, sure there are plenty of traceroute programs out there but this one worked fine. Just follow the instructions on that page and you'll come to a download link for it.

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Ultima
Jul 2, 2009 6:12AM PDT

I use Ultima all the time. I'm a huge fan.