Best way to to tell what programs/processes I have running that might be impeding my system causing soft lag?

[Hachoo]

Two things. First, set maxfpsbk to 10 for everyone, then, set maxfps to 45 (this is mostly just a test).

Ok, now try again, still have issues?

If yes, when you're having issues, watch your hard drive light, is it flashing like mad or solid on?

If yes, your symlinking isn't working right (or isn't set up at all), or your hard drive can't handle the traffic.

If no, set your maxfps to 30 now, see if you still have the issue.

Are all of your clones set to the absolute lowest graphic setting? Is your main window using FSAA (anti aliasing? 2x? 4x?) Turn it off.

If none of this fixes the issue, go to each WoW window and set the graphics to the BARE minimum, ALL of them, including the main window.

If you still have the issue, I have no idea. If you don't have the issue any longer, then slowly increase settings on only your main window until you have the issue again to determine what the problem is.

Edit: Also, not sure what your CPU affinity is actually set to, but I have a dual core processor and it actually helped me to set my 4 clones to ALL be on CPU1, and leave ONLY my main on CPU0 - even though the clones stutter like hell I can fly with 5 epic flyers without losing follow ever.

[Gares]

does it normally happen when you first walk into a new area with loads of people?

if so, it could be the system reading the data from the drives... and if you are stuttering, it may be related to the cache size on the disk
(just a stab in the dark there)

It happens in combat and not when I first enter a crowded place. I know that lag, but my best guess could be reading data from the drive. As someone said I doubt that its my symlinks cause it happen when I solo (which is an entirely different WOW folder as well), so it *might* be something related to my Hard Drive. I honestly couldn't tell you if my HD light is going like mad when it happens cause its only like 1-2 seconds. (Nothing like raiding Sarth and all of sudden my spellcast stutters in the middle of a lava wave and I get hit).

I don't suppose there is anyway to test this out with my cache size etc? The only reason I ask is cause the problem is no better or worse on how many instances of WOW I have running.

I also have my effects set to 24 bit color 24 bit depth 1XMultisampling, maybe I should turn that down? But I really don't see that causing the problem.

[Ticks]

Sounds like a disk issue. When you travel into high population areas, the wow client starts to cache information about the NPCs/Players in the area and your pagefile will be very active. If you can, keep the pagefile.sys file off of the drive where your wow clients are installed. For example, I have a C: drive for the OS and an E: drive for my wow installations. These two drives are on two distinct raid 0 disks and on two different channels. A lot of the newer motherboards will have dual channel disk controllers and if you take advantage of that fact, you can divide the data flow between them and get noticeably better performance.

[Hachoo]

does it normally happen when you first walk into a new area with loads of people?

if so, it could be the system reading the data from the drives... and if you are stuttering, it may be related to the cache size on the disk
(just a stab in the dark there)

It happens in combat and not when I first enter a crowded place. I know that lag, but my best guess could be reading data from the drive. As someone said I doubt that its my symlinks cause it happen when I solo (which is an entirely different WOW folder as well), so it *might* be something related to my Hard Drive. I honestly couldn't tell you if my HD light is going like mad when it happens cause its only like 1-2 seconds. (Nothing like raiding Sarth and all of sudden my spellcast stutters in the middle of a lava wave and I get hit).

I don't suppose there is anyway to test this out with my cache size etc? The only reason I ask is cause the problem is no better or worse on how many instances of WOW I have running.

I also have my effects set to 24 bit color 24 bit depth 1XMultisampling, maybe I should turn that down? But I really don't see that causing the problem.

If it only happens 1-2 seconds it might be trickier to find. What I would do is run WoW in windowed mode, open up task manager and sort processes by CPU used from highest to lowest. Now play, and when it freezes temporarily glance at the task manager window and see if anything is spiking CPU usage. If not, its most likely a disk issue.

[Gares]

I will have to try that.

EDIT: Well I am just flying around and my CPU usage seems to be at like 85% most of the time but I don't really see anything that was cause it to go up and down so much. Even sitting idle with my guys stationary not moving my CPU usage is like 80-90% the entire time and my RAM usage is at 4.59GB.

4 of my WOWS (Slaves are using around half a gig of RAM each but my main is using almost a full gig to itself. The CPU number keeps changing in my Process tab and stuff keeps moving around every second, but I don't see anything that is causing a spike (Other then that I seem to be running very high CPU usage while boxing). Its kind of dumb cause it says I am using CPU 14, 12, 10, 7 etc....WTF is with that? When I only have 4?

Edit 2: Its wierd cause now I have 4 guys near Utgarde Keep and 1 in Orgrimmar and my CPU usage is like 45% and steady. But I can't tell why its lower then before.

[wowphreak]

try setting all instances of wow to 16bit graphics?

[Hachoo]

I will have to try that.

EDIT: Well I am just flying around and my CPU usage seems to be at like 85% most of the time but I don't really see anything that was cause it to go up and down so much. Even sitting idle with my guys stationary not moving my CPU usage is like 80-90% the entire time and my RAM usage is at 4.59GB.

4 of my WOWS (Slaves are using around half a gig of RAM each but my main is using almost a full gig to itself. The CPU number keeps changing in my Process tab and stuff keeps moving around every second, but I don't see anything that is causing a spike (Other then that I seem to be running very high CPU usage while boxing). Its kind of dumb cause it says I am using CPU 14, 12, 10, 7 etc....WTF is with that? When I only have 4?

Edit 2: Its wierd cause now I have 4 guys near Utgarde Keep and 1 in Orgrimmar and my CPU usage is like 45% and steady. But I can't tell why its lower then before.

Thats..weird...my WoWs use 260MB of memory each with the main window using ~600 (in dalaran, less everywhere else). I only have 3GB of memory in my system and dont have any stutter issues or performance problems at all unless I fly into Dalaran. My CPU also is usually around ~12% per WoW (x5), with it going up some in major cities or intensive areas. Not sure what is causing your system to use so much resources. When you sort by CPU usage and Memory usage, what else besides WoW shows up at the top of the list?

[Jafula]

Try updating your graphic card drivers and if you are using vista, try turning off the aero interface.

[Gares]

Try updating your graphic card drivers and if you are using vista, try turning off the aero interface.

Graphics card drivers always up to date. I have tried with Aero off it makes no difference.

[Bloodcloud]

symlinks:
How did you do the symlinking, Junctions (winbolic) or mklink ?

Did you try running Alts on a different HD ?

Just shooting into the dark as well (hoping to hit a hidden Nightelf