Warcraft 3 lags,never lagged before

[Klopp]

I looked for the answer everywhere and I couldn't find it.The reason I couldn't find it is that the lag never ocured before on my laptop even though it's crap.I enter a game there is no issue for 10 min.Then everyone's ping jumps sky high and the lag spikes are unplayable.I repeat-never happened before and I don't know what to do.
I already tried something with regedit,cleaning windows from viruses,tried CCleaner,tried freeing more and more disk space also tried to reinstall w3.The last option for me is to reinstall windows I suppose to XP because its more suitable for my laptop.This are my specs but I don't think they are the problem because I never had this problem before.

Intel Celeron 900
2GB RAM
2.20Ghz
Mobile intel express chipset family.

 

[ssddx]

are you sure its not a connection issue?

 

[Klopp]

Nope,connection stable and strong 36-40 mbps

 

[Klopp]

Lets assume it is the connection,how could I fix it?

 

[ssddx]

i just re-read your post and you said something about reinstalling xp which was more suitable for your pc. what are you using now?

have you played without issue on your laptop on that new os? does the pc play the games better when you start up fresh (shut down then start up) than if you had it on for awhile?

check your ram usage, cpu usage in performance meter.

basically:

what is different with your machine (hardware, software, network or os) than when you used to play fine?

 

[Klopp]

Nothing is different,always played smooth on windows 7 (other games have lags though).My cpu usage is around 95-100 because of system idle.That could be the issue but I am having a hard time solving it.There was also a rundl.dll process that I killed when starting w3 but it didn't solve the issue at all.

The interesting thing also that I didn't mention is that I am playing smooth the first 5-10 min.Then the lag begins and its unplayable.I don't think I understand the RAM usage but I think it's 999 mb.If that's the graph under CPU usage..

 

[ssddx]

well it could very well be that you have a process running which is taking up cpu cycles which causes the game to lag.

keep in mind also that when you first start rts games (warcraft, starcraft, total annihilation... any of them) that there is less demand in the beginning than later on in the game since you dont have as many units active. later on (around 10 minutes normally and onwards) there can be many units in game with more going on hence lag. in fact i used to get the same lag on an old pentium III system we had back in the day.

i would try and track down what process is causing the system slowdown. there are system processes you could kill to gain additional performance as well (look them up). it could very well be you have alot of programs installed which auto-run certain components in your notification area. when you have a slow cpu and low ram every little bit matters.

 

[Klopp]

I understand and I always check what process causes high cpu usage.

Every program in my notification area is removed and the system highly focuses on system idle..I

Tried to look up the system process that is causing high cpu usage but it mostly reffered to system idle,any solutions how to solve the problem?

 

[ssddx]

hmm well according to this

You want system idle process to be high. That means the processor is looking for work. 99 is better than 60.

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/43926-system-idle-process-high-cpu-usage.html

you could try setting wc3 priority level to highest... though i'm thinking its not a cpu issue provided you arent playing in any larger games then you once did when things worked smoothly (or bigger maps for that matter) so doing this might not do anything.

also... try playing the game on smaller maps with less people for a game.. see if that helps at all. (basically in a less complex scenario). also disable any extra unit patches or modifications if you have anything like that. oh and disable any mods just play a straight game of wc3

if no dice..

run a ram test to make sure you dont have a dead stick or any issues... memtest86 is a favorite but these are also other options
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/memorytest.htm
if you have a dead stick of ram that could explain things as well.

if that doesnt work then i suppose you could try a fresh windows install (if it is not too much trouble) which would rule out any oddities.

 

[Klopp]

Ok thanks,I know many people have this issue.Looks like this is the last option for me and if it doesn't work I will just reinstall windows to xp it should work fine.

p.s I like to play a bit bigger maps and thats the fun of w3.Setting priority to highest isn't an option because it is the same.

Thank you again.

 

[ssddx]

did you run memtest? if not you should.

larger maps might be your issue.

you do not have the ram or cpu to handle such things well.

i used to be an avid player of total annihilation which is another RTS game. i also played starcraft.

my first system which was a athlon 64 3500+ single core which had 2gb of ram really struggled in late game on some of those large maps which took up a great deal of memory. i frequently had issues with stuttering late game on large maps with many units.

this is why as a test i said to play on a small map with fewer players to see if it worked fine. please do so and report back.

 

[Klopp]

I'm new to memptest and its kinda difficult to image the files..Nevertheless I reinstalled to windows xp and it works fine.