Need help finding source of problem (random 2 second freezes)

[crazy8]

A couple things, first and foremost I can't find that video card anywhere, you sure you have it right MSI 640 TI, all I can find is geforce 640 GT, in any event I'm sure this card is not optimal for high settings in wow.

I can't post links but go to the Seagate website and click on drivers and firmware, I'm positive that hard drive of yours has an "important" firmware update available, not sure if thats the issue but it will not hurt to update it as its listed as "important".

Double check the video card as well, download something like gpuz or speccy and see what it says.

---------- Post added 2013-02-18 at 12:01 PM ----------

A couple things, first and foremost I can't find that video card anywhere, you sure you have it right MSI 640 TI, all I can find is geforce 640 GT, in any event I'm sure this card is not optimal for high settings in wow.

I can't post links but go to the Seagate website and click on drivers and firmware, I'm positive that hard drive of yours has an "important" firmware update available, not sure if thats the issue but it will not hurt to update it as its listed as "important".

Double check the video card as well, download something like gpuz or speccy and see what it says.

[Caavo]

My mistake, my GPU MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition 1GB GDDR5 OC 2DVI/Mini HDMI PCI-Express Video Card N650TI PE 1GD5/OC

So, vRam I'd imagine is 1GB?

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-OC-PCI-Exp...ords=msi+650ti

I am going to go onto the seagate website and update the firmware, thanks!

[Deleted]

I had the same problem right after upgrading my hardware to i7 level, but that was during WotLK. Back then the solution I found for random freezes was manually setting CPU affinity to 8 cores in config.wtf. It might be worth a shot even if as far as I know current client is much more clever with multi core setups. SSD also helps a lot with WoW.

To customize which cores WoW uses place SET processAffinityMask "x" in your Config.wtf where x is the corresponding value in the following table.

15 is 4 cores, 255 is 8 cores.

[Caavo]

I had the same problem right after upgrading my hardware to i7 level, but that was during WotLK. Back then the solution I found for random freezes was manually setting CPU affinity to 8 cores in config.wtf. It might be worth a shot even if as far as I know current client is much more clever with multi core setups. SSD also helps a lot with WoW.

15 is 4 cores, 255 is 8 cores.

It's not just WoW for me though

@Crazyeight

Would you be able to link me the firmware that you found?

http://drivers.softpedia.com/progDow...ad-218436.html

Is this right? I don't have a Dell OptiPlex, but it's the right hard drive though.

[crazy8]

I would go through the actual seagate site to be safe, they have some kind of auto checker that you can d/l and you then have to jump through a few hoops,lol, I think the exe you d/l is called drivedetect.exe and that is straight from the seagate site.

---------- Post added 2013-02-18 at 01:04 PM ----------

You will know your in the right place on the seagate site when you have to input your serial number,model or part number, your country then a check box to agree to conditions and then a captcha,lol, like I said a few hoops.

I would give you the actual link but site will not allow me.

[Faithh]

That "fix" to allow wow using more cores isn't really using the rest of the cores. If the chip doesn't exceed 25% (i7ht) or 50% (i5) you aren't using more cores but rather sharing the load over x cores. You can force nvidia threaded optimization in the control panel. From my experience when I was just standing somewhere alone all 8 cores were being used with still a total load of 25% but once I move into the capital it's back to 2 cores being burned others chilling.

[Deleted]

That "fix" to allow wow using more cores isn't really using the rest of the cores. If the chip doesn't exceed 25% (i7ht) or 50% (i5) you aren't using more cores but rather sharing the load over x cores. You can force nvidia threaded optimization in the control panel. From my experience when I was just standing somewhere alone all 8 cores were being used with still a total load of 25% but once I move into the capital it's back to 2 cores being burned others chilling.

From my experience WoW used to have rather low CPU usage but when, for example, I spun around in Dalaran right after zoning in the CPU usage spiked a lot. That's the reason it made the game feel much more fluid. But now I am having no issues even without touching such variables.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

It sounds like your vRAM is getting full, and your game stutters while files are loaded in from the hard-drive.

[JSorrentino]

2 seconds freezes: When? In a raid? During Sha? What are you doing (exactly) when the freezes happen?

Have you disabled ALL addons and and checked to see if this still happens?

What else is running on the system, you mentioned Kaspersky, try disabling this and seeing if it still happens, if it does, try excluding the WOW folder from Kaspersky scanning.

Just some things to check out.

[crazy8]

There's a utility called that I use to find these freezes. Leave it running until you hit a few of them, then find what has "Highest Execution". You'll probably see your graphics driver and some other things. Hopefully you'll find another driver *.sys file that's at fault.

Also, it's great for finding issues with choppy audio/video problems. =D

Good luck.

Thank you friend, I had forgotten about this little proggy, I just ran it and found out that my cable going to my cd/dvd drive was probably an issue, I just went and changed it and re-ran the proggy and all is good

Just another thought Caavo, do you have any windows gadgets running, I found that ones that tracked your hard drives was causing cpu spikes, as soon as I removed the gadget the spikes went away.

[Caavo]

2 seconds freezes: When? In a raid? During Sha? What are you doing (exactly) when the freezes happen?

Have you disabled ALL addons and and checked to see if this still happens?

What else is running on the system, you mentioned Kaspersky, try disabling this and seeing if it still happens, if it does, try excluding the WOW folder from Kaspersky scanning.

Just some things to check out.

Happens randomly, not always when playing WoW, I can be watching a movie and it happens.

A temporary fix that seems to be working is enabling Gaming/Multimedia Mode in Process Lasso. Haven't gotten a freeze since I enabled that. Froze once today before I enabled the application.

[Deleted]

Why don't you just disable it, you don't need something like that really. Especially it it's actually using more process power than it's freeing.

[Caavo]

Why don't you just disable it, you don't need something like that really. Especially it it's actually using more process power than it's freeing.

I think you mis-read it. When I run Process Lasso and enable the Gaming/Multimedia Mode, that is when the freezes stop for me.

Here is what it looks like the Gaming/Multimedia Mode does:

http://bitsum.com/docs/pl/Gaming%20mode/
http://bitsum.com/docs/pl/faq.htm#gaming_mode_good

[Deleted]

Oh so you're saying starting to use that program helped you? That's good I guess

[Caavo]

Oh so you're saying starting to use that program helped you? That's good I guess

Yep, I guess, but I'd like to do a permanent fix, since this program is on a trial.

[Deleted]

Why don't you just do a fresh OS install? Takes no time, just make sure to save everything you need. I understand trying other options first but sometimes starting fresh is easier.

Use Ninite after you're done, click the programs you need and let it install everything, it's fast and deselects toolbars etc.

[Terridon]

Just to mention some other possible cause..
It could be your harddisk that is screwed up, so when it try to read a broken sector it freezes, to it gives up, or manages to read it.
Is several programs to check if there's broken sectors on the HD