Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

[Tatmaster]

I just put together a new shiny computer, but I've noticed that (in BF2 only, it seems), my game will continually pause every 6 or so seconds for 6 seconds or longer. Needless to say, it is completely impossible to do anything.

The strange thing is that it happens uniformly throughout the game. While playing intro movies, it will pause, while navigating thorugh my control bindings, it will pause, etc. And, of course, in the game itself it will pause.

Here's my system:
Athlon 64 X2 4400+
2 gigs RAM (2 x 1 gig, cas 3) running in Dual-Channel mode
Radeon x1900 XT
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
1 SATA drive, 1 PATA drive, 2 PATA DVD-ROM drives
Ultra-X 500 watt power supply

Using the latest ATI and Creative drivers.

This is truly strange. I have no idea why this is happening. The presence of my spyware/anti-virus software seems to not be a factor, as the problems continue even when they are disabled.

Any ideas?

[ThoughtForm]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

Is the hard disk light on during these pauses?

Is the CPU running at full speed (set clock and multiplier properly?)

What other programmes are running in the background while BF2 is running?

[Tatmaster]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

Oh, one thing I failed to mention in the setup:

Mobo is: Asus A8R32-MVP

The HD light isn't going off during these times, and yes my CPU is running at 2.2 ghz (per core).

Programs in the background are, as far as I can remember, these system-tray items:

-McAfee Viruscan 8.0
-Windows Defernder 2.0 (anti-spyware)
-Daemon Tools 4.01 or something
-DVD43
-Creative Labs Mixer Controls/etc

Otherwise, no other programs are running or should be taking attention. Of the non-readily-apparent programs in the background that I am aware of, I only know of ituneshelper.exe running (something like that).

It's pretty weird.

I just solved the issue. Thankfully, the back of my brain remembered a comment that I had read in these forums somewhere.

Apparently, having two LAN ports causes problems with BF2. In my case, having both of them enabled resulted in continual pausing. Disabling my secondary LAN port completely solved the problem.

Ok, scratch that. I thought I had solved the problem, so I patched my version to 1.21. After trying to load again, I found that the freezing problems became even further aggravated. I am truly mystified at this point, to see it appear to work perfectly and then turn around completely.

Help!!!

[ThoughtForm]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

hmm

have you applied all the windows updates?
If i remember correctly, the dual core CPUs needed a patch from microsoft via windowsupdate to work correctly

[sknight]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

McAffee!!!!! I haven't seen McAffee do a good job EVAR! Switch to AVG Free or at least turn it off when playing BF2.

[Tatmaster]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

This problem is really strange, since it happened after I pretty much disabled all background programs too.

Mcafee isn't to blame. Also, I have exhauseted Windows Update and have nothing left to update.

I noticed that it happened to another game that I tried out, Fahrenheit. The problem is quite inconsistent... game works fine for 5-10 minutes, then suddenly starts pausing every 6 seconds or so.

It seems that once the pausing starts, it won't go away at all. Battlefield 2 had the pausing syndrome immediately after it began in Fahrenheit.

I have been using Daemon Tools to mount CD/DVD images of both these games so that I don't have to insert a DVD every time I play the game. Do you guys think that this may be the cause of the problem?

I'm going to try testing for a while without the images mounted to see what happens.

I also thought it might be CPU-temp related. I put by CPU on a stress test overnight and the temperature when I woke up was only 49 degrees Celcius, so I don't think that is a problem. Oddly enough, Battlefield did pause like mad when I loaded it after that test, and then did seem to freeze forever.

That being said, I have seen similar weirdness running programs immediately after CPU stress tests.

[Alm()nd J()y]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

When it freezes I'm guessing yuo can still ALT + CTRL + DEL out of it right? See when your game starts acting funny ALT + CTRL + DEL and see if your CPU usage is jumping around or anything.

[ThoughtForm]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

Check your driver settings for the X1900XT and see if anything is amiss.

Particularly, see whether overdrive and / or VPU recover are enabled

Do the pauses also happen when you watch movies on that computer by the way?

[Tatmaster]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

No, it doesn't pause when I watch movies. Overdrive isn't enabled, and I have tried it with both VPU recovery on and off.

I'm beginning to think that it is an overheating issue. I haven't seen my videocard temps higher than 73 degrees celcius after playing games, though, and my CPU temps aren't really higher than 45 degrees Celcius after 100 percent utilization.

The strange thing is that it seems to affect every D3D game, but not OPENGL games. I have no idea why this is the case.

God, this is such a pain.

[ThoughtForm]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

hmm odd problem that.

Run DXDIAG and see if anything has been inadvertently turned off
(Start -> run -> dxdiag)

You can also test some 3d functions in the Display tab

If that fails to turn up anything, you can try using the Catalyst-uninstaller utility from the ATI site then reinstall the 6.3 drivers and see if that helps. Maybe the last driver install got borked somehow.

[Keyser^Soze]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

I have almost exactly the same stuff in my computer and I also have this strange lag/pausing/freezes in BF2.

I spoke with EA customer support and they asked me to send in a dxdiag-file so they could check things out. Now I sit and wait for that e-mail response and I just hope they got a solution. If they fix this problem I will let you know here ASAP.

Cheers

[Keyser^Soze]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

Still haven't heard from the EA support and the new patch (1.22) didn't solve the problem... :-/

[Keyser^Soze]

Re: Continual pausing in BF2 (even menus)

I updated the BIOS on my Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe and now it all runs smooth. I hope this will solve problems for everyone not just for BF2 but every game and application.