Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

[neased]

Hi everyone,

I recently re-installed Windows XP Pro on my computer and since I've done that, BF2 has been absolutely shockingly bad. I have a GeForce 6800GT, AMD 64bit 3500+, 2 gig ram and an MSI Neo 3 platinum mobo. Before I reinstalled windows, I could run BF2 with everything on max and only get an occasional bit of lag, but now, no matter how I adjust the graphical settings it looks like everythings on low (i have installed the graphics card driver and all drivers). I've tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it and the patch, putting it on my partitioned D drive, and on my C drive (OS drive), tried it without the patch on singleplayer and it's still really bad. I've got Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft on here that I have on a partitioned drive (D) and they work perfectly with no graphical problems or any performance issues. I've installed all the mother board drivers and my graphics driver, but regardless, it comes down to it just being BF2 that has a problem running on my computer now. It's stupidly frustrating coz I love this game and it doesnt make sense to me that no hardware has changed and everything is back to the way it was and bf2 looks like im playing it without any anti-aliasing (or whatever it is) and it looks like my graphics settings are all on low. Also, whenever there's a lot happening on the screen the FPS dips dramatically (from what I can see).

Thanks for anyones advice in advance.

[LoD]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

Your correct, no hardware has changed. This is 99.999% something you messed up.

Good news is that its probably an easy fix. I would backup your data to a seperate partition/drive and reformat again.

Start off with mobo drivers, make sure you install the AGP drivers, then DX9.0c, video drivers and do windows updates.

Make sure you get the latest drivers from nvidia.

I cant think of anything else really, but obviously a driver is missing, or you messed something up on your reinstall.

[neased]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

lol! thanks for the fast reply! I'm glad to hear that it's fixable. Do I have to do all the driver installs in a specific order then? Because I've installed all the drivers (up to date from the websites) but not in that order...

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

For general overview of how to properly install windows, reccommend:

http://www.tweakguides.com/

under "tweaking companion".

note, you don't *have* to do everything in the specific order he lays out, he gets pretty gestapo-ish about the details, but it still provides and excellent overview of what to do, in what order.

also, if you follow the guide and everything works, then you'll always know how you got there, and won't have to wonder how you finally got it to work three months from now.

[neased]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

ok i'll give it a shot. The one thing that still confuses me though is: "Why only BF2?" I run Half Life 2 at full wack and no problems at all. it's almost like there's a fault with bf2 itself or something. I'll give it a go n e way.

cheers guys

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

ok i'll give it a shot. The one thing that still confuses me though is: "Why only BF2?" I run Half Life 2 at full wack and no problems at all. it's almost like there's a fault with bf2 itself or something. I'll give it a go n e way.

cheers guys

pls let us know how it worked out! otherwise, won't know if it helped or not.

also, you're very right--if bf2 is the only prog affected, it means that things are very weird. i assume you've tried stuff like clearing the bf2 cache

my documents\bf2...

anyway, best of luck. if it doesn't work, repost and we'll try and troubleshoot from there. keep in mind that it could be basic things, like putting your windows pagefile on a different hd (really helped my "transition pc"--3.0ghz p4, 1gb ram, 120gb modern HD, 20 gb legacy hd. and an x800xtAIW).

you really should be getting better fps!

[kushcompany]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

Your correct, no hardware has changed. This is 99.999% something you messed up.

Good news is that its probably an easy fix. I would backup your data to a seperate partition/drive and reformat again.

Start off with mobo drivers, make sure you install the AGP drivers, then DX9.0c, video drivers and do windows updates.

Make sure you get the latest drivers from nvidia.

I cant think of anything else really, but obviously a driver is missing, or you messed something up on your reinstall.

+1!!!!!!!

[neased]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

I've tried reinstalling windows and it didnt work either, even in that order. BUT- I have discovered the problem! It's not to do with windows unfortunately. Aparently my mother board has warped and also the chipset fan is dead and the chip is over heating. So basically i need to get a new MOBO and gfx card and it should potatown.

thanks for your help though guys! SLi FTW

[GeeZeR]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

Have you got antivirus software running in the background? I Use Panda and find that BF2 plays very bad when that's running ,because its scanning everything that's going in and out, so maybe try disabling you antivirus while on BF2.

[Consultant01]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

what are your page file settings?

Right click on "MY COMPUTER" and go to properties, then click on the "Advanced" tab up top, then "Settings" under performance, then "Advanced" and at the bottom look at your page file, click "Change" and make the min and max sizes the same and equal to 2x your system RAM. 2gigs of ram would be a 4096 page file size min and max...

Try that.

[skikaz]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

the only thing that might of changed is the way IRQs were assigned to your hardware after formatting your HD. you might have a sharing problem or a device that does not like a certain IRQ.

[neased]

Re: Reformatted HDD and now stupid performance

Ok. I've bought new stuff and everything runs really smooth now. But it is still quite liney. It's even more noticeable on my other games like wow and hl2. To give you more of an idea, it's like having a high scale resolution but putting it through a low scale piece of equipment. I reformatted windows, deleted the partition full format and then installed the graphics drivers etc in the order said above and in that tweaking companion and it still doesnt seem to have done n e thing. Hardware changes are : DFI Lanparty UTnF4 Ultra-d and XFX Geforce 6800XT, AMD 3800+X2.