Problem playing games on my pc.

[Power Surge]

When I play games like World o Warcraft or The Movies sometimes my hard-disk makes that buzzing/beeping sound and starts reading. When this happens the game freezes for a few seconds. Sometimes it even happens every 5 - 10 seconds! What could it be? I checked for viruses and spyware and found nothing. Here are my specs:

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 1 (2600.xpsp2.050301-1526)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
System Model: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
BIOS: BIOS Date: 01/05/04 22:29:58 Ver: 08.00.09
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 189MB used, 1504MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.0001.0904 32bit Unicode


Card name: RADEON 9800 PRO
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9800 PRO AGP (0x4E48)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E48&SUBSYS_00021002&REV_00
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Current Mode: 1152 x 864 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Philips 107E (107E2)
Monitor Max Res: 1280,1024
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6587 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 12/12/2005 14:41:03, 252928 bytes

Here are the processes:

http://img336.imageshack.us/img336/2360/pro15bk.jpg
http://img336.imageshack.us/img336/103/pro28pf.jpg

And I checked my pc for viruses, spyware and errors.

 

[blue_dragon]

Have you tried different versions of video drivers?

 

[Power Surge]

Tried 4.11 and 5.13

P.S. While we are on topic - where can I download older versions of Catalyst drivers (5.1 in particular)?

 

[Ruder]

It is called "swapping" - you have too little useable RAM, optimise by checking / stopping all other running sofware. Your disk might also be slow - defrag it.

The Movies game can use up to 600 Megs RAM, and it will also read the scenes from disk.

 

[Power Surge]

You mean I should stop processes in task manager (the screenshots in my first post)? Which onces of those can I safely stop? And I have 1 gig of ram - why wouldn't it be enough?

 

[mailpup]

Catalyst 5.1 driver is still available on the ATI website. I checked and it's there.

 

[Power Surge]

Tried different versions - doesn't help.

 

[swker98]

could it be the cd rom drive making that noise and is not readsing the disk fast enoph

 

[Power Surge]

No, the games run from my hard-disk, and World of Warcraft doesn't even need the CD in cd-drive.

 

[Power Surge]

Few days ago I installed Psyconoauts Demo to see if it would run. To my surprise it ran just fine - not buzzes/freezes at all. I thought maybe it's less image intensive or something. So I switched my pc off and went to bed. In the morning when I switched my pc on and tried to play the demo installed on my pc, to my surprise it was buzzing/freezing like crazy. I uninstalled the demo, did another install and made copy on install directory (that's the one over 500 megs), to another place on my hard disk. Played it - works fine, restarted pc - buzzing/freezing, replaced the install directory with clean copy - works fine again. And also I don't actually have to play the game for it to get corrupted - it gets corrupted when I install and restart.

Also I have noticed that if I get enough of those buzzes/freezes my hard disk access slows down - when I burn a DVD+R I can't get the speed over 2.2x and when i copy 200 meg file from one place on hard-disk to anothe it takes about 2 - 3 minutes (normaly it takes 20 - 30 second).

 

[kens8]

How old is your hard drive? Sounds like it may be dying. Mine did similar stuff right before it died. Sometimes it would work perfect, sometimes it would make the noises you're describing. A game would be reading from the HD much more often than when you're doing normal tasks like internet or word processing.

 

[kens8]

You could also defrag. Maybe it just has to search too much for the data.

 

[Power Surge]

I'm sorry, but I think I confused you by using word "buzzing". The sound is more like eeee that hard disk makes when it powers up (when you turn on pc) or powers down. My bad... I can't record it because it is too soft for my mp3 player to catch.

I mean the sound is not that unusual - I have heard it ever since I bought the pc every time I turn my pc on/off. It's the quantity of it that alarms me - every few seconds.