Author Topic: Any updates or leads on the stutter bug? (Read 3854 times)

TweetyBird · « **Reply #15 on:** July 09, 2004, 09:55:24 PM »

>>but the quick of it is I reformatted my hard drive, installed several partitions, put AHII in it's own partition all by itself. The beauty of it's own partition is the ease of reformatting the partition to erase any trace of old AHII files when new versions come out. <<

Hope that helps them figure out the problem. But I aint doing that. Syst req lists nothing of AH needing its own hard drive partition. I'll be damned if I reformat my hard drive for patch 5 lol.
Think I'll wait for a patch that reconsiders the texture handling.
If the program is counting on it being installed on a squeaky clean blank partition, there is one hell of a design fault.

Just curious though - what file system did you use to reformat the AH partition - FAT32 or NTFS. I'm wondering if the file system might have something to do with it.

TweetyBird · « **Reply #16 on:** July 09, 2004, 10:14:06 PM »

>>I only have found one way on my box to create stutters of a disruptive magnitude.<<

Well, I guess "disruptive" could be relative. I think it would be safe to investigate even non-disruptive stutters, especially if they tend to occur with hard drive access.

Edit: Hopefully some news will be given this week if it looks like things are going to change. I'm barely playing now. Tonight was very bad with a bunch of planes and a fleet close by. This is just completely different than it was 2 weeks ago, and I have to make a decision.

DAVENRINO · « **Reply #17 on:** July 09, 2004, 11:09:18 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by MOSQ
My Stutters are fixed. If you've read my other posts, you know I've been having up to 8 second screen freezes as I approach an enemy plane. I was going to wait to post an indepth analysis after a few days, but the quick of it is I reformatted my hard drive, installed several partitions, put AHII in it's own partition all by itself. The beauty of it's own partition is the ease of reformatting the partition to erase any trace of old AHII files when new versions come out.

Now my system has only the latest versions of all it's drivers, no old junk cluttering it up.

Everything is working awesome. 512 textures, the whole nine yards. I have my performance sliders set farther to the left than ever before. Sound card is set to full acceleration. The graphics are great!

NO stutters. No CTDs. Decent if not spectacular frame rates.

And I just checked, my cache file is NOT set to read only! I have no idea what it was set to before the reformat.

Intel 1.4 Ghz Celeron
Intel 440-BX mobo, 100mhz FSB, IDE Ultra 66
384 MBs RAM
Asylum Nvidia FX-5200 Ultra 128 MB AGP
SoundBlaster Live! Value
Win 98 se
20 Gig 7200 rpm HD
Dell 200 watt power supply

I installed a new hard drive 3 weeks ago with 4 partions and 4 on the slave HDD. AH is all alone on the D drive, but i still get an average of 1 CTD per hour. No stutters or freezes.

MOSQ · « **Reply #18 on:** July 10, 2004, 02:53:22 AM »

TweetyBird,

I have WIN 98, so it's FAT 32.

Just finished two hours, not a single stutter, not even a micro one.

I'd bet a lot of it is the read only cache problem.

And I inadvertantly confirmed that if you fire up the AHII film viewer, it sucks all the files out of your cache.

Edit: And that causes stutters until you reload all the planes. So I sat in a field ack for 45 minutes while planes took off <200 away. Each plane not previously viewed caused a micro freeze/stutter the moment it appeared on the runway.

quig · « **Reply #19 on:** July 10, 2004, 07:37:35 AM »

Just checked.

Every folder in my AHII directory is labeled 'Read Only'. I un-tick the Read Only attribute, apply it, check again and it's back to Read Only status.

But I can go into the game and change views and button assignments and they stay changed next time I launch the game. So I think it is just an XP thing to report those folders Read Only. Everything still seems to work like it should.

I've also lowered sound acceleration to none, renamed the sound folder and all that. I noticed I have a folder called 'Tcache' now, but that might be from renaming the cache folder trying to fix the stutters.

Windows XP Home.

Pyro · « **Reply #20 on:** July 10, 2004, 11:23:22 AM »

Hmm, very interesting discovery. Are you guys whose folders keep reverting to read-only using any sort of disk compression or file managing software?

Pyro · « **Reply #21 on:** July 10, 2004, 11:45:47 AM »

If you have XP, the folder will have a gray checkbox. Just verify that it's not a black check and that the files in the folder are unchecked.

quig · « **Reply #22 on:** July 10, 2004, 11:50:21 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Pyro
Are you guys whose folders keep reverting to read-only using any sort of disk compression or file managing software?

No disk compression or file managing software.

But I got to thinking... I am using the NTSF file system, and AHII installs root directory. The system has 5 different logins. I bet if I install it in My Documents under my user name instead I can get it to remove the Read Only status.

Downloading now

** EDIT

Didn't work. What was I thinking?

**

quig · « **Reply #23 on:** July 10, 2004, 12:12:35 PM »

acetnt367th · « **Reply #24 on:** July 10, 2004, 12:26:39 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Pyro
If you have XP, the folder will have a gray checkbox. Just verify that it's not a black check and that the files in the folder are unchecked.

Pyro,

I have Win XP home - no disk compression. Everytime I Deselect "read only" to the cache folder it returns i.e. it appears read only when I check again (This happens without even running the game)

Regards

Acetnt

Jackal1 · « **Reply #25 on:** July 10, 2004, 12:38:46 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Pyro
If you have XP, the folder will have a gray checkbox. Just verify that it's not a black check and that the files in the folder are unchecked.

I don`t know about the gray and black checks. In mine it shows filled in green as the one shown above.
I uncheck the box on the folder then go through all of the files and do the same.
When I close out and go back in the folder and files have all reverted to read only.

SlapShot · « **Reply #26 on:** July 10, 2004, 12:50:17 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Pyro
Hmm, very interesting discovery. Are you guys whose folders keep reverting to read-only using any sort of disk compression or file managing software?

Go here ...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;256614

SYMPTOMS
You may be unable to remove the Read-Only attribute from a folder using Windows Explorer. In addition, some programs may display error messages when you try to save files to the folder.

CAUSE
This behavior occurs because the folder is customized. You can customize a folder by clicking Customize this folder on the View menu. Many programs also customize folders (for example, the Fonts folder comes with a customization as part of the standard system configuration).

STATUS
This behavior is by design.

WORKAROUND
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Windows Explorer uses the Read-Only attribute to determine whether or not the folder is customized. To work around this behavior, you can configure Windows Explorer to use the System flag instead of the Read-Only flag.

MOSQ · « **Reply #27 on:** July 10, 2004, 01:31:41 PM »

Quig,
Your cache folder is 142 MBs alone. Wow. When I reformatted and installed AHII, I noticed that my entire AHII default install was 167 MBs. That's with the defualt plane skins, prior to going online and starting the cache process of new skins. It was easy to be sure because that's all there is on it's own partition. I'm at work right now, but I think when I looked last night AHII had grown via the new plane skins download to maybe 185MBs or so. I'll check in a couple of hours and edit this post with my exact AHII file size and cache size.

It just seems like 827 files taking up 142 MBs in cache is a lot of data to read and display on the "fly".

TweetyBird · « **Reply #28 on:** July 10, 2004, 03:17:47 PM »

>>Windows Explorer uses the Read-Only attribute to determine whether or not the folder is customized.<<

Another example of Microsoft sloppiness and hack code.
Hmm, now what kind of side effects could happen if we use the read-only flag for something else? They can think of 4698 ways to put spam on your desktop, but can't see the problems of using attribute flags "creatively."

Ok, next question. Is it possible this read-only attribute is producing errors that have to be parsed, slowing down hard drive access? I know the program is writing to this folder, but I wonder if its going through some long stream of low level error handling while doing so.

Waffle · « **Reply #29 on:** July 10, 2004, 03:23:00 PM »

in same boat as jackal...

actually - If I look at any folder in ah2, ie skins, cache, filmes, ect.....properties show a green box highlighting readonly.

edit - all files on my system have the green box highlighting read-only. There is no check there. Clicking it will make it go away, but will come right back.

also Pyro - no disk compression or management software.

Using NTFS setup.

Files in the folder have no black check boxes in their properties.
Maybe just an XP oddity - which means a false alarm