Hey everyone, my roommate is running a custom built PC, with specs:
Windows 7 x64 Home Pro OS,
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard,
16GB RAM, Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz,
GPU is Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.
Recently, he got Skyrim on Steam purely for the mods, and he went a little mod crazy. I'm not sure which mod was the last he downloaded. But, one night, his game was working fine-- we had previous errors with some mods, but we uninstalled them and everything was back to working order-- but the next morning, every game of his (not just Skyrim) experienced HUGE frame drops, probably down to the 5-10fps range. Games that used to run on high/ultra graphics settings with buttery smoothness stopped working-- even at the lowest graphics settings, the frame drops are noticeable (those less so than on highest settings). And these are constant-- they don't dip or increase, and are not affected by movement (as in, the games are always laggy, no matter what inputs we make; making inputs seems to have no effect on the lag), and it happens when he uses the mouse or just the keyboard. All input has about a second of lag behind it. He says that the performance issues might even extend to other computer use, like web-browsing or something, but the effects are only noticeable when playing games. I haven't noticed any performance problems outside of the games.
I did a lot of work for the past couple days trying to fix his computer-- physically cleaned it, checked everything. We thought it might have been a virus, so we got Spybot Search & Destroy and AVG Free and (AVG had trouble installing, but long story short, we got them installed successfully) ran full computer scans, and we cleaned any problems they found, and the lag still persisted. We fully deleted all Skyrim data, mods and all, and no luck. We fully uninstalled Steam itself and reinstalled it (we didn't delete the games, just moved the SteamApps folder before we started uninstalling it, then moved it back once we were done), to no avail. We clean-installed new drivers for the graphics card; no dice. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any games that aren't connected to Steam, so we are unsure if this is a Steam problem or general computer problem. We both are reaching our wits ends with this stupid lag-- we really hope there's a simple solution that doesn't include wiping the hard drive or something... but we are getting desperate.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them! We've both read many articles about a lot of similar problems, but none have had the exact same problem as us, and none of the relatively simple fixes have worked. I hope I've given enough info, but if not, just let me know what you need and I'll see if I can figure it out. Even though I put his computer together and can fumble through system files, I'm not actually a PC professional, so please give me instructions or link a guide. Thanks!
Windows 7 x64 Home Pro OS,
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard,
16GB RAM, Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz,
GPU is Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.
Recently, he got Skyrim on Steam purely for the mods, and he went a little mod crazy. I'm not sure which mod was the last he downloaded. But, one night, his game was working fine-- we had previous errors with some mods, but we uninstalled them and everything was back to working order-- but the next morning, every game of his (not just Skyrim) experienced HUGE frame drops, probably down to the 5-10fps range. Games that used to run on high/ultra graphics settings with buttery smoothness stopped working-- even at the lowest graphics settings, the frame drops are noticeable (those less so than on highest settings). And these are constant-- they don't dip or increase, and are not affected by movement (as in, the games are always laggy, no matter what inputs we make; making inputs seems to have no effect on the lag), and it happens when he uses the mouse or just the keyboard. All input has about a second of lag behind it. He says that the performance issues might even extend to other computer use, like web-browsing or something, but the effects are only noticeable when playing games. I haven't noticed any performance problems outside of the games.
I did a lot of work for the past couple days trying to fix his computer-- physically cleaned it, checked everything. We thought it might have been a virus, so we got Spybot Search & Destroy and AVG Free and (AVG had trouble installing, but long story short, we got them installed successfully) ran full computer scans, and we cleaned any problems they found, and the lag still persisted. We fully deleted all Skyrim data, mods and all, and no luck. We fully uninstalled Steam itself and reinstalled it (we didn't delete the games, just moved the SteamApps folder before we started uninstalling it, then moved it back once we were done), to no avail. We clean-installed new drivers for the graphics card; no dice. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any games that aren't connected to Steam, so we are unsure if this is a Steam problem or general computer problem. We both are reaching our wits ends with this stupid lag-- we really hope there's a simple solution that doesn't include wiping the hard drive or something... but we are getting desperate.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them! We've both read many articles about a lot of similar problems, but none have had the exact same problem as us, and none of the relatively simple fixes have worked. I hope I've given enough info, but if not, just let me know what you need and I'll see if I can figure it out. Even though I put his computer together and can fumble through system files, I'm not actually a PC professional, so please give me instructions or link a guide. Thanks!