diablo 2 LoD slowdowns

[bluescreenNoob]

After playing for a couple hours the game slows down, usually when entering a new area. Sometimes it slow downs to a crawl when fighting bosses. These slowdowns seem random. None of my other games have any problems even when playing non-stop for hours. I play BF1942 DC, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars Kotor, Jedi Academy 2, Ghost Master, Halo. All these games are much more demanding than D2. I've already uninstalled and deleted the reg keys. Did a fresh install, was running fine for awhile but when I got to act 5 the game started freezing for a good 5-10 seconds when moving to the next area. It slowed down a couple times when I was in the middle of an area. Anybody have an idea on whats wrong? I'm using Cat 3.9 drivers.

 

[bluescreenNoob]

Tried to run in direct draw mode. Seemed to work for awhile but then had a freeze for about 15 seconds while in the middle of an area in act 5. Thought maybe my hard drive was having trouble keeping up but as I said before all my other games run fine...

 

[bluescreenNoob]

Checked my event log, under system I got the error: The Device, \Device\CDRom0, had a bad block. What does this mean?

 

[bluescreenNoob]

The error only occured twice. About 5 minutes apart. Is this because of a dirty/scratched disk or a faulty cdrom? I never had this error before although I've had some crc errors when trying install a couple games.

 

[Rick]

That CDROM error could do it.

Blizzard has some fixes for CDROM problems caused by Diablo II. Many CDROMs are not able to properly read the discs properly because of the copy protection they have employed.

What I recommend is getting a no-cd patch from www.gamecopyworld.com. If you play on Battle.net, no-cd patches don't always work, but no-cd loaders usually do.

A loader will load the game for you, stripping it of CD protection. This way you can run the game straight from the hard drive instead of relying on the CDROM.

 

[bluescreenNoob]

Thanks Rick I'll try that, no mirrors for the file up atm though