My laptop is being funny :/

[timtadams]

When im playing C&C zero hour (with shockwave mod) my computer runs perfectly, 50% of the time

It runs perfect for a few minutes, then i hear the fan speed up for a few seconds and the game slows to a snails pace Then after another few minutes i hear the fan again, the game speeds up and its perfect again.

The whole time my processor is running at 100%, and when i check the processes, the game is the only thing using the processor (bar a bit for the system). There are no other processors hogging the processor.

So i dont know whats causing the problem. Not sure if anyone can help with this, but i thought Id ask anyway. So does anyone know if i can improve performance somehow?

(its completely random as it does not occur when anything in particular in the game occurs, as far as i can tell)

 

[atsanjose]

has this happend before?
does it happen when you play any other (highly demanding) games?
did you mess with fan settings?
what kind of laptop do you use?

 

[Weeble]

Sounds like it's an overheating problem - could well be your graphics card simply overheating which throttles the CPU to prevent further damage..?

How long have you had it? Could be that it's just clogged with dust if you've had it a while and this is the first time it's started acting up. Check your memory usage as well - CPU isn't the only thing that requires fannage!

 

[No-Dachi]

I had the same problem with my laptop - the cpu fan would act up and sound like jet engine during take-off for a few minutes, before cooling down again. While this was going on my laptop froze almost completely. Luckily it was only about a year old, so I handed it in and they replaced the CPU for me for free Now, a year later the same has started happening, so I've just delivered it again. Not sure about the real technical stuff, but to me it seems like it's the CPU that's the problem - that it's getting to hot (like weeble said), only I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with the grafic card, as my computer would freeze up under a normal firefox surfing session.

 

[timtadams]

Well, i sometimes play frozen throne on lan with mates and it sometimes slows down.

But there is nothing unusual about this. Its simply occurs because there are heaps of units/lots happening so the computer has a lot to deal with. Completely normal. It is not intermittent.

Whereas what im describing, its intermittent. It obviously can cope fine with whats there, but sometimes slows...Interestingly I dont think it happens on the normal command and conquer generals. I guess i could try zero hour w/o the mod and see how it goes.

My laptop is a 4.5 yr old Toshiba Satellite. 1.73 GHz Centrino processor. 2GB RAM.

And no, i didnt mess with fan settings, i wouldnt know how.

I guess i could open it up and check for dust. Thanks for the idea

 

[alwaysnumb]

1 thing to try is open task manager, click the process tab, right click the games process and assign is above normal priority.

 

[timtadams]

1 thing to try is open task manager, click the process tab, right click the games process and assign is above normal priority.

lol, i tried that. set it to high, no difference

this is because it was already using on average, 98% of the processor (the rest for system)

I even tried realtime, never done that and never will again
took like a minute + just to get a chance to move mouse. Took like 15 min just to reset priority to normal l

[edit] btw, i tried to pull apart my laptop to check for dust. Took out all like 20 screws, but i still couldnt open it up, it was still attached somehow

[edit2] oh shiii* i hit 1000 posts. I was supposed to stop