screen stutters

[hotard]

I was having frame-freeze problems.. game would play fine then start to momentarily freeze.. frame rate showed a drop.. I suspect it was going to 0 but the on screen display only showed a downgrade.. probably sampling just didn't catch the 0 point. At first I could log out-relog and it would fix it.. then it progressed to the point I had to reboot to clear the issue.. Then in became necessary to reboot in safe mode, then restart in normal mode. I had the computer gone over, and all that was found was a couple bad sectors on the hard drive. Lastly I started getting wierd colors on my display.. Figured the graphics card was on the way out.. I went ahead and put a new system together. I pulled the HD out of the old computer to use as a 2nd drive in my new one. I left AH installed on the old HD.. I had been running the game on my new pc for a week or so, then 1 session I started getting the screen freeze big time. I un-installed the game, and re-installed on the new drive. No issues since. I think my problems may have been a combo of graphics card and hard drive.

[cattb]

I notice after I let my puter sleep then wake it and then log into AH I get stutter. When I start puter from a non-sleeping mode and log in AH  there is no stutter. Anyone have a idea why that is?

[gpwurzel]

Quite possibly due to the way hibernation/sleep was implemented. My computer dont like it either, so I never go into that mode. I do a shut down every time I finish using it.

Wurz

[Bizman]

I notice after I let my puter sleep then wake it and then log into AH I get stutter. When I start puter from a non-sleeping mode and log in AH  there is no stutter. Anyone have a idea why that is?

The sleep doesn't clear your RAM, a restart does. Gaming wise it is always recommendable to do a reboot before playing. Poorly coded net apps and sites may leave their memory reservations active even after closing them. You may also have a pending update waiting for a reboot. Wurz certainly has a point in his manner of shutting the puter down when not in use.

I think my problems may have been a combo of graphics card and hard drive.

Sounds reasonable. A couple of bad sectors is just what their name says: Bad. One reason might be, that there was a piece of driver code in the baddies, and the reboot replaced that piece with a backup copy from an older driver version. Insignificant but enough to cause stutters. Bad sectors per se aren't a major issue, there usually are spare sectors on the disk. But that depends on what has caused them: In the cases of the head hitting the platter or the "platter plague" tiny pieces of disk surface may get loose and cause random shortcuts. In those cases the problems tend to get worse. A stable scratch or dent on the disk surface may be replaceable. But since there is no way to tell what has caused the baddies, it's good practice to use such disks only for non essential purposes. The disk manufacturers have free testing programs which may "repair" the disk, meaning to replace the bad sectors with spare ones. I'm currently having trouble with a tested disk which "passed after repair". I doubt it wouldn't pass a new test...

[Chalenge]

OR... his PSU was the problem the whole time.

HOtard I hope you didnt migrate the PSU over?