[Toasterstrudull]

I play the game Guild Wars practically every night, but recently i have been getting very bad lag spikes every few minutes. I did some searching and found that the problem is my CPU is getting used by other programs, rather than Guild Wars (I'm on a 1.6 GHz laptop, so i need all the CPU I can get). I believe that the process that is taking away my CPU is the "System" process (see picture below), but I don't know what that does or how to make it stop doing it. It could also very easily be a different process, but when I Alt+Tabbed out of Guild Wars during the lag, that was the process that had a high CPU usage number. I have listed all the processes that run during the time I am on Guild Wars.

Three Main Points:
1. Happens when I play Guild Wars
2. Generally just happens at night.
3. Happens for 3 minutes about every 4-5 minutes (3 minutes on, 4-5 off)

Thanks in Advance for any help,

Ben Sprugel

[McTimson]

Do you have any antivirus or firewall programs installed? They could be trying to update or run scans at night, which takes up CPU cycles and/or bandwidth. For that matter, and background programs you have running could be trying to auto-update themselves.

When it lags, does it seem like the computer itself is being slowed down, or does it seem like it's just the network?

[Courtneyc]

Google for Process Explorer (it will be on Microsoft's site). Download and run that (does not require an install).

That program does a much better job of telling you what is using your memory, CPU, etc.

Courtney sends

P.S. System is a process that starts other processes. For example, if you have iTunes, antivirus software, or firewalls, system is the process that starts them.

[Dishogun]

usaully when i played guild wars the lag was mostly my latency and ping created through the game not my computer. (whent through your ordeal once or twice myself) i find that lowering graphics and making the game more performance reared instead of quality helps the gamplay more. Or it could be the high player count causing lag on the server, try the graphics in the game though, might help.

[Toasterstrudull]

I am running an AntiVirus software -- Sophos. I tried to quit it (SavService.exe) but it seems to automatically reload itself. Also, there is no "quit" option anywhere to be found in the utility window. I checked the auto-update settings, and it is set to do it every 5000 minutes. And it feels like the computer is slowing down drastically. It takes almost a full minute to Alt+Tab out of the game.

Also, I already run Guild Wars on the lowest settings, and it utilizes my entire CPU. The problem is that when other programs start to take away the CPU speed, then the game starts to get lag.

[Steroids]

Umm also guild wars has patched the game and made the game a little harder to run... They have tightned up the graphics some BUT also you have a lot of usless stuff running when your playing do you really need to have firefox open.. guild wars alone will kill your 1.6 pc.... sorry to say... But anything that you are NOT using and is not your av. and or firewall you need to end.. Look at the process name and if u have an anti virus like norton and thats the name dont end it ,... AND ONLY END PROGRAMES WITH YOUR NAME OR OWNER OR WHATEVER IS YOUr NAME WHEN YOU LOG INTO YOUR COMP... do not end system processes LOCAL SERVICE OR NETWORK SEVICE.. ONLY YOUR NAME.. you just have way to much stuff running in our back ground. Your lucky you can even get into playing the game...... And the system process part that you circle has nothing to do with you lagging......