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

[Gares]

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

I used Junctions, but like I said before I get this lag on single player as well that is why I know its not my symlinks.

Yes my alts run on a different drive as well.

As for my Task Manager etc here it is...

[Kural]

Hi Gares

I am about 90% certain that I know the reason for this problem, but you won't like the solution...

I bought 4 ATI Radeon cards (not the same model as yours) brand new 6 months ago. I had my main on my gaming laptop, which is a ROCK with Nvidia graphics card. Everything was fine for a good while, but I always used to notice these random jerks on my slave's screens. Because it was just in my peripheral, I wasn't all that bothered. They would sometimes jerk about a bit on my screen but nothing that made me crap house bricks. Anyway, I went down to London for a conference and left my Frikkin laptop there, I was so annoyed and it took some moron forever to DSL it back to me. Long story short, I was without my main's laptop for ages and I wanted to cry.

So, I did the only thing a gentleman could do, I stole my GF's PC. Now, the funny thing is that her PC is the EXACT same build as all of my slaves. It has the same ATI Radeon in it, same RAM and same processor. As soon as I finally got everything working together, the most random crap started to happen. It was a bit like this:

KEY: --- = Moving fine X = random 'skip' (not lag, more of a jerk or a skip)

------------- X ------- X-- X X------------------------------------ X -------XXXXX ---------------- X------XX ----X--- and so on.

I was losing follow every five god damn minutes and I wanted to peel off my eyebrows after half an hour of this mental jerking. It was the most noticeable when I was running back to my corpses. So, I tried everything, messed with settings, checked FPS, lowered res... even changed my keyboards and mice. Several handfuls of hair later, I turned my attention to the graphics card. I have a small workshop in my house with a number of PC parts in there. I happened to have a load of old ZOTAC Nvidia 8600 GTS's (512mb) and decided to just try my main first. Lo and behold... the jerking stopped on my main. A HA! I beat you!... or so I thought.

I figured that the ATI Radeon must just need some updated drivers, so I did so... FAIL
Maybe it's Direct X? I'll update that.............................................. .......... FAIL
Maybe it's the neighbours cat, I'll kill that.............................................. .. FAIL

After much fecking around, I just swapped all of the cards for the 8600s and the jerking stopped... completely. Gone. I couldn't believe it. I just swapped some top of the range Radeons for a load of crappy £60 cards. Winner.

So, like I said; you probably won't like the solution, which is basically to take out a card and try an Nvidia one (if you have one) even if you only have a 256mb card - try it and let me know.

[Gares]

Hi Gares

I am about 90% certain that I know the reason for this problem, but you won't like the solution...

I bought 4 ATI Radeon cards (not the same model as yours) brand new 6 months ago. I had my main on my gaming laptop, which is a ROCK with Nvidia graphics card. Everything was fine for a good while, but I always used to notice these random jerks on my slave's screens. Because it was just in my peripheral, I wasn't all that bothered. They would sometimes jerk about a bit on my screen but nothing that made me crap house bricks. Anyway, I went down to London for a conference and left my Frikkin laptop there, I was so annoyed and it took some moron forever to DSL it back to me. Long story short, I was without my main's laptop for ages and I wanted to cry.

So, I did the only thing a gentleman could do, I stole my GF's PC. Now, the funny thing is that her PC is the EXACT same build as all of my slaves. It has the same ATI Radeon in it, same RAM and same processor. As soon as I finally got everything working together, the most random crap started to happen. It was a bit like this:

KEY: --- = Moving fine X = random 'skip' (not lag, more of a jerk or a skip)

------------- X ------- X-- X X------------------------------------ X -------XXXXX ---------------- X------XX ----X--- and so on.

I was losing follow every five god damn minutes and I wanted to peel off my eyebrows after half an hour of this mental jerking. It was the most noticeable when I was running back to my corpses. So, I tried everything, messed with settings, checked FPS, lowered res... even changed my keyboards and mice. Several handfuls of hair later, I turned my attention to the graphics card. I have a small workshop in my house with a number of PC parts in there. I happened to have a load of old ZOTAC Nvidia 8600 GTS's (512mb) and decided to just try my main first. Lo and behold... the jerking stopped on my main. A HA! I beat you!... or so I thought.

I figured that the ATI Radeon must just need some updated drivers, so I did so... FAIL
Maybe it's Direct X? I'll update that.............................................. .......... FAIL
Maybe it's the neighbours cat, I'll kill that.............................................. .. FAIL

After much fecking around, I just swapped all of the cards for the 8600s and the jerking stopped... completely. Gone. I couldn't believe it. I just swapped some top of the range Radeons for a load of crappy £60 cards. Winner.

So, like I said; you probably won't like the solution, which is basically to take out a card and try an Nvidia one (if you have one) even if you only have a 256mb card - try it and let me know.

Yeah I really don't like this solution but I might see if I can find someone with an extra card and see if this MIGHT solve the problem.

The only thing is that I've heard of this problem with Nvidia cards as well.

[Yamio]

ATI has always, always, always had problems with their drivers. I bet they have the same 3 underpaid knuckle-headed dudes they originally hired in the 90's still building them. That has always been their downfall; they'll make a reasonably hotfire video card that rates and reviews really high, but it'll have horrible drivers. Even their latest/greatest drivers will be for shit.

I learned a very long time ago to steer clear of ATI. Yeah, I've had several of their cards over the years but I haven't bought one in the last 5 years.

[Gares]

Well until I can find someone with an extra card I am SOL cause I am not buying a new one anytime soon.

Other then that I really don't know what the problem would be.

[Jafula]

Motherboard BIOS update?

[Gares]

I did that as well already

[Seldum]

I have a small note... I also expirenced loss of follow all of a sudden.... my main is a druid/feral, and I picked the talent to enhance speed... so the other toons coulden't keep up... lol stupid user error!

Beside that, I have a gigabyte geforce 7950 GX2 with 1 GB ram on it, and my main rarly touch 60 fps. even in single player mode... lol. Crap card. Anyone ever thinking of buying this card, don't. Its gay.

I did a test of it in 3dmax or whatever the program is called, and the rating was like a laptop... yes, its probaly a diver issue, but having updated the driver with the newest driver from the gigabyte website, its still crap. A note - I software 5 box. My dual core uses almost 100% when im 5 boxing.

[Hachoo]

Erm... do NOT use the driver from the gigabyte website for that card. http://www.nvidia.com only. Also, turn off vertical sync if its on - I have a 9800GT and if I have Vertical Sync on in WoW I max at 60FPS because its trying to sync to my monitor refresh rate - if I turn off Vertical sync I get 100+FPS almost everywhere.

[Gares]

Anyone else got any suggestions?

I have that turned off as well already Hachoo. I played in Window mode (solo) the other day with my task manager up, and didn't see anything that popped up while I was "freezing" however I did notice my HD light was on but that was about it.

Also when I 5 box and my slaves lose /follow its usually all of them. Before I Symlinked my folders it was sometimes only 1-2 at different times. Its like with the symlink whatever the problem is occurs on all of them at the same time.

With more then a Terabyte of Space on each drive and 8 Gigs of RAM I should be doing fine, but I really am not sure if my HD is paging or not. (I don't think so because I don't lose any FPS when the problem occurs).

I was thinking maybe its my wireless connection to my router on my desktop but again my laptop is setup the same way with Windows XP with SP3 and I don't have this problem while I play on it.

Is there anyway to check to see if my HD is paging at times?

I'm thinking of trying Windows 7 and seeing if the problem exists.

I honestly don't know what else to do.