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Windows Vista - Slow game when focusedFollow

#1 Jul 30 2011 at 4:46 PM Rating: Good
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To start, this is about a computer owned by a friend of mine, so I'm not certain about all the details.

Recently he bought Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, and it worked just fine for the first week or so (not counting the crashes when he tried to run the games benchmark thing). Now, though, when he runs it he's only getting something like 5 frames a second. He mention that, right before this issue started, a windows security popup appeared saying something about "Memory Relocation" and the SSFIV.exe, but he's not entirely sure exactly what it said.

I took a look at his computer, but I really didn't know where to even start. I did discover that, when I had it windowed, if the program didn't have focus it ran smoothly and took up like 40% of the cpu according to the task manager. But then whenever it had focus, that percentage dropped to 10 or so.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but he bought the game through steam (as did I). He sent an email to capcom to see if they had anything to say, but they only replied asking if his internet was plugged in, and he hasn't heard back from them since then.

I run 7 and haven't had any problems at all, and have had absolutely no luck googling for a solution.

Edit: changed the title to be...better, I guess.

Edited, Jul 31st 2011 2:01am by Siesen
#2 Jul 31 2011 at 1:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Apperently, there are some crashing issues with that game. According to at least one post out there, if your game is crashing(APPCRASH with SSFIV.exe) after the patch, Delete "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\capcom\SUPERSTREETFIG HTERIV" folder, it forced SSFIV to re-create a file.

Regarding the error, is there a chance that the error was 'Memory Allocation Failure"? If so, check the amount of available system ram, and the amount of utilization. task manager and or the CPU usage gadget from addgadget.com will tell you that. If the system has 2 or less GB ram, your friend needs more ram regardless. if he has more than 2GB, check the allocation levels and see if he has a constant available ram pool. If it is anywhere near 90% for extended periods of time, more ram is required. Also check that the amount of ram that "should" be there, is. a ram stick may have failed. Is this a 64 bit OS or a 32 bit copy of vista? if its 32 bit, check how much video memory is on the video card (do a search on the web for GPUz if unsure) The memory addressing pool in windows 32 bit only supports 3.3 GB worth of ram addresses. Video cards partially share that pool, so if you have a video card with alot of ram (1GB or more) and alot of system ram, they can compete for addresses and result in less system ram being available.

Vista SP2 fixed many of the stability issues with vista, Windows 7 fixed them all. I would strongly reccommend to your friend that they upgrade to windows 7 64 bit at their earliest possible oppertunity.

Updating the video card drivers and checking for signs of overheating or hard drive errors using speedfan would be a good next step. http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

uninstall / reinstall the game if all that doesn't do the trick.

Also check for viruses or other unwanted thingies. A quick check with malwarebytes should show if anything is amis.
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#3 Aug 05 2011 at 6:28 PM Rating: Good
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Well, this is awkward. I took some of your advice and looked at his computer. It turns out that, even though he has a a x64 processor, 4 gigs of memory and a graphics card with 2 gigs of memory, he was running a 32 bit machine. I took my copy of x64 Windows 7 and installed it on his computer, and now it runs perfectly fine at max settings. The benchmark is telling him he's getting almost 100 fps at max.

But now...I'm having the exact same issue, although mine does run faster than his did. It just started today, no warnings, no popups or anything. Same symptoms, a slow running SSFIV when focused, but it runs at normal speed when something else has focus.

After running the benchmark in windowed mode, it's getting 70 frames when not focused, 40 frames when it is.

Got it solved (kinda). We had downloaded this controller emulator thing, since our Hori arcade sticks weren't being read by the game. It forced the game to take the buttons as xbox controller input, so we could actually bind the buttons. I removed the files from the folder and it ran perfectly fine; after adding them back in it began to lag.

At least I have another stick, although one of the buttons sometimes doesn't register, but I have no idea what we will do if it starts to lag again on his computer.

Edited, Aug 5th 2011 8:58pm by Siesen
#4 Aug 05 2011 at 11:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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Huh, good to know you got it figured out. It might be that you just need to find a different emulator. Sounds like that one has a serious memory leak if I had to guess. And good call on the 64 bit. Ram is still dirt cheap at the moment, might want to convince your friend to jump to 8GB. DDR2 or DDR3 he should be able to get there for under $70.
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