Computer has run FL well for five months...
After using Limewire for music while I was too broke to use Itunes. My comp has, i think, slowed a bit.
Biggest notice is that FL is having issues with graphics (sometimes ships are invisible-much more then before), and I always have lag at least around 15% steadily. I've never had lag before. It's an older computer and it doesn't take a ton to get messed up but, well, I think i got a virus or something, i dunno.
Anybody have suggestions? Should I do a reformat here and start fresh? It's been six months I almost might as well, and freelancer shouldn't just drop off like that, or is the server constantly bad for everyone lately?
Also. Most importantly. I have FL Acct Mgr, I wrote down my signature and acct. number. If i just hold on to that and input it into FL acct manager when I'm done reformatting/reinstalling, will I be able to use my account that I have now?
-
[5:57:11 PM] InfernalTater (Lewis) [Formerly TLI-Inferno]:meanwhile, Aces 'I don't always miss my destinations, but when I do, I'm on the other side of house space.'
slowdowns can have many causes. - hard to determine why its slow...
one reason why you might experience a "sudden" slowdown can be that. - if you have an older video card and run freelancer in 16 bit colour overlay/fullscreen, but your desktop in 32 bit. freelancer might change to 32 bit if you ran freelancer in a window once. - if run in a window, freelancer automaticly changes to the colour depth of the desktop.... hence might switch from 16 to 32 bit colour, resulting in a FPS drop. chances for that are low, but might be a cause of a drop of FPS.
the more common cause could be a virus or a trojan rather. for that, i d recommend 3 programs.
- spybot S&D
- avast!
- tuneup2008
thost three programs work well together. run spybot, activate the immunity part and check for any spyware. spyware is "mostly" rather harmless ( unless you have valuable and private data on your computer, but thats usually not the case on a normal home computer ), but can of course slow your computer down, cause it establishes a connection with another host.
avast has an option to do a much deeper scan than for example AntiVir. - but avast slows your computer down severely. - so i d NOT recommend to keep it up and running all the time but only update it to the latest version and run an INTENSE DEEPSCAN. ( it takes a long time... when you start, be prepared to have something else to do for 2 - 3 hours )
TuneUp2008 is a common windows optimizer, but in my opinion a rather good one. it comes with a generous trial period. cleaning up your registry, optimizing your memory and defragmentation of all the files helps. - do the "one click maintenance" and it CAN help your computer greatly if it accumulated too much rubbish over the time. - we all know windows likes to slow down cause it accumulates automatic restore points, .dll stuff, etc. .
if you ran those three programs and made sure that freelancer runs in a colourdepth and resoultion that actually works best for your computer and videocard... and when freelancer still runs choppy and worse than you think it used to run. - a full format and fresh install might be the way to go. - but make sure you backup ALL your important data before you do it ( and i don t mean only your FL ID )
another option can be to restore windows to a previous point if you do have a restore point marked down. - that way, you can get rid of programs that slow the computer down, too.
well, thats all i can think of. - its basicly the common steps taken when you experience problems with the operating system. - it can also be an overheat problem inside your case, an aging processor, an old graphic card or a hardware problem in general - in that case, all that won t help anything.
- so.... only reinstall if you suspect trojans/viruses that you cannot get rid of. - there are some... but not many
- make a full system check before you get to the option of reinstalling windows completely and possibly use a previous restore point
-
limewire? nuff said. Thats the number one source of malware on the internet, it has viri that conform to your search and rename themselves to your search.
It is possible that the issue is unrelated, but that is highly unlikely.
You should reformat your computer and reinstall a legal copy of Windows and protect it with decent antivirus, antispyware, and a firewall. The ones recomended are decent, especialy avast.
Here's where limewire gets a chance to redeem itself. Use it to download a antivirus scanner such as Norton 360 or COMODO. Scan it and destroy it. Alternatively if your like me and had about 1780 errors with your computer (my 512G harddrive was as corrupt as a LSI officer) then you have to back up everything valuable and reformat. Thats a last resort though.
how do you guys get so many malware anyway? - i only run the freeware antivir + spybot teatimer - and never get any virus. - the only time i had to reformat the harddrive ( 2 weeks ago ) was when i downloaded service pack 3 from the official microsoft page to apply it on my officially bourght windows XP version.
after the update download, windows explorer crashed and was not able to recover itself anymore.
anyway - whats limeware? maybe i don t have problems cause i never browse shady websites....
' Wrote:Here's where limewire gets a chance to redeem itself. Use it to download a antivirus scanner such as Norton 360 or COMODO. Scan it and destroy it. Alternatively if your like me and had about 1780 errors with your computer (my 512G harddrive was as corrupt as a LSI officer) then you have to back up everything valuable and reformat. Thats a last resort though.
Oh my--how about "no".
Half the "antivirus" warez out there is seeded with trojans and the like designed to disable your computer's ability to even know it is infected.
Avast is a very good choice AVG free is passable (better than nothing and easier on your system if its ancient).
Hijack This!, Spybot Search & Destroy AdAware Free--are a good combo to run periodically.
Oh, and defrag your hard drive when you get it cleaned.
' Wrote:how do you guys get so many malware anyway? - i only run the freeware antivir + spybot teatimer - and never get any virus. -
It's just that people want to get stuff for free and you are constantly playing against the odds with malware to get them. Sooner or later it's gonna happen.
I would suggest using CTRL+ALT+DEL to see if there's already suspicious processes running and using those tune up utilities (one good is autoruns by MS) that can determine which programs get run at windows startup. Unnecessary programs can be pretty big resource hogs running background.