Please help... my hard drive runs crazy

Hello,

I have some technical troubles with my PC. Maybe my system need to be fixed. Maybe I need a better PC with more RAM or another graphic card?

While I am playing, my hard drive is working like crazy and it won't stop. This makes me crazy and I cannot enjoy the game because I cannot moove in this thime. My avatar is like froozen. The whole system is busy then

How can I delete the cache manually and how can I make sure my hard drive wont work that much?

Things I have tried to solve the problem:

- cleaning my cache (using the clean cache function under the preferences)
- reinstalled the game
- installed the game and cache on another partition (E: instead of C didnt help
- installed the game on C: and set my cache folder to E: didnt help too
- there is enough free hard disc space on both partitions _ more then 7 GB
- lower the graphic settings

My system:

WINXP
1GB RAM
PCI Express graphic card with 512 RAM shared memory (128 fix)
DSL 6000




Thank you very much for your help

you may need to just play with your sl settings
lower draw distance
lower stuff under graphics like lowering the settings on mesh and such so i wont be trying to render everything super high

also when you log in go to client across the top and go down to rendering i think it is and turn off clouds/fog/particles you will have to do that every time you log in but it helps get rid of alot of lag

Maybe you are low on memory (not sure what else is running in the background) and your system is swapping like crazy.

Try shutting down some non-essential programs and utilities. No need to uninstall them, just make sure that they are not active in memory (task manager helps to spot them).

With 1 GB RAM on my own machine the HD is pretty quiet except when the client loads a lot of new content, e.g. after TP'ing into a new region.

SL eats a LOT of ram, I generally instantly shoot to 600-800 meg and then drift up to over a gig. Well since the OS requres SOME memory and any other porgrams yo might be running... 1 gig just ends up being extremely tight for SL and you just get plain old fasioned HD swapping.

Now in your case your video card is ALSO sharing 300+ meg of ram with your main memory! So you may actually only have like 600 meg free to run SL.

Buy another gig and you'll be a LOT better off when running SL. If you have the money a better video card will also help as it will not then be taking up any of your main memory like your current one is.

Check graphic drivers to make sure your updated.

Also add more ram. As one other said the SL client EATS RAM. Add another 1 giga of so. i have 4 installed ( i know its over kill ) but I don`t crash much ( before the voice client i mean )..
Usagi

What are the maximum capacity and free space for your partitions?

What are you virtual memory settings? Is windows handling your paging file size?

Have you defragged your hard drive lately?

What speed is your network bandwidth set to in SL's preferences?

What cache size do you have set in SL's preferences?

Double up your RAM Jaqueline, I had the same problem which I could reproduce at will by going to a texture intensive loaction. Going to 2GB solved it instantly.

Agreed........Add more Ram you should have a better SL experience. 1 giga memory just doesnt not do it anymore on sl.

Usagi

Ditto on the RAM. I sometimes play SL when on the road on my laptop, which has only 1GB, and I get the performance issues with that, whereas my desktop with 2GB is absolutely fine. SL is very RAM needy.

Yup hard drive thrashing is usually a sign that you need more RAM.

Press CTRL,ALT and DEL at the same time, task manager should come up. Look at which applications are running, then click on the processes tab and see which process is hogging your CPU use.

You may have something else running in the background.

Again: If there are more suggestions, advises, questions please post them here and talk about it. I / we just can learn from it.

Feel also free to contact me in world...just IM me

Thank you all for your advises and sugestions!!!!!!!!!! You are really great guys all!!!!

RAM is most important yes! !1 GB is not enough! 2GB should be installed at least yesl
Im going to double my RAM then!!!!

YES Farallon Greyskin!!!!! My old graphic card with shared memory (512MB shared memory, 128 MB fix) takes away the free RAM too, so I'm going to get a never and faster gc soon!


Now I have changed my settings under the graphic preferences - it works fine now as long as the cache isnt filled



Here are my new settings ( FURTHER ADVISES VERY WELCOME *******)

NETWORK SETTINGS UNDER PREFERENCES:
############################

Maximum bandwith: 1500 (full) I have DSL 6000kbits
Disk Cache size: set to 1000 MB
Disk Cache Location: E:
Game Program Location: C: when I install the game onto E: I get into troubles after I cleared the cache, I cannot start the program and need to resinall the whole game)
Partition E: space = 40GB, free space 9GB


GRAPHIC SETTINGS UNDER PREFERENCES:
############################

- Run in window mode 800x600 pixels
- Draw distance = 96meters

GRAPHIC DETAIL SETTINGS UNDER PREFERENCES:
#################################

-NO Shaders at all!
I turned all shaders "off" and this helps a lot. I only enable the shaders when I do photos shootings (new card and more RAM is needed to be lazy yes

- Lightening Detail: Local Lightening (I cannot exist without this
- Terrain Detail : set to "low"

Detail Sliders:
Object Detail, Flexible detail, Avatar Mesh Detail = set to 100% (cannot save beauty)
Tree Mesh Detail = set to the half (50)

ADV GRAPHIC SETTINGS UNDER PREFERENCES:
###############################
- Anisotropic Filtering is turned off (disabled)
- Open GL Vertex is turned off (disabled)
- Graphic Card memory set to 128 MB.... instead of 512 MB
(as you know I am using an graphic card with 512 MB shared memory, only 128 MB Ram is fix and the rest works with the RAM in a shared mode (372 MB)
I belive this helps me too, saving some of my avaliable RAM!

- Fog Distance = 3.8 (not sure what I should set here)
- max particle count= 256 (also not sure)
- outfit composite limed = 4


AUDIO & VIDEO SETTINGS UNDER PREFERENCES
##################################

All the standard settings, music and video streams if needed

- default upload bitrate : set to 128kbits coz I have an availiabe upload bandwith of 820 kbits



SYSTEM SETTINGS (WINDOWS)

- I make sure there is always enough free disk space (4 GB at least, I have 9GB free)
- normally I install games onto another partition, not on C; to make sure the system runs seperately, but there is a "BUG" with SL Software when I go this way. I need to install the game on Csystem, standard). However, the cache location can be anywhere else
- I make sure my disc is clean, and the files are sorted (defraged)
- I close other programs that work in the background, especially downloads and scanner!


Again: If there are more suggestions, advises, questions please post them here and talk about it. I (we) just can learn from it.

Feel free to contact me in world...just IM me


###############################

it'd be too long to give instructions on how to do many of these things, but they all can help boost system performance

1)Ram:
if you get lots of HD "grinding" when you are using a program that isn't actively opening or saving a document, you could probably use more ram

2)Page Files:
this is where the grinding comes in, but they are useful(sometimes neccesary). there are guides for setting good custom settings, but the general rule is use a fixed size, about .5 times your total ram (unless you have 1gb+) and place it on a separate drive than C:\

3)Ad-ware Cleaners:
run one every once in awhile, Ad-Aware makes a good free one

4)Virus Checkers:
many have built in "email scanning" but if you onlyuse web-mail like yahoo, msn, or gmail you don't need this component running. Also consider turning off download scanning, and instead manually scan downloaded files

5) msConfig;
with getting too deep, you need to look at the programs that start up automatically, and kill anything you aren't going to use as soon as you get on every time you get on.... preloaders like tray icons eat memory, and many have options to turn these off. almost all these function will load when you start the app, and may take an extra 1-3 seconds to load. good example = quicktime,

6) services:
Windows Thinks you need to run some odd things... like a webserver.... ALL THE TIME... you want to shut of the stuff you don't use or that you use rarely and will start when you need it... BlkViper has an EXCELLENT guide on what to set, how, and why, search for it

7)Defrag:
defrag your HD every so often, fragmentation causes slow reads and HD grinding when accessing/saving files, always hit defrag anyway, because the few fragmented files tend to be the ones most accessed

organize your HD contents
there are guide for this, I'll give you my system...
at a minimum...
C: drive = only the operating system (needs less defrag)
D: drive = programs I run, like SL (needs less defrag if no save files)
these are nice if you have lots of space or extra HDs
E: drive = Save Files (documents folder saves to C we don't want that, save to D if not available)
F: drive = Temp files, temp internet files, page file (things that don't need defrag, just delete temp files, = done
... You can partition larger HD's via windows, ideally the OS (windows) and the page file should be on physically separate drives

Think
do you REALLY need X program to run all the time? no? kill it

I have a new card now and more RAM too. All troubles are gone!

Ram in my system 3 GB
Graphic card = NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTX

Jaqueline, with your new stuff, be sure to shut down all non-essential programs as Void and others have said. Skype, for example, hogs RAM, and iTunes always has stuff running in the background. If you shut those down every time you run, SL, your computer will be a lot happier.

Hmm, this is all interesting. By the opinions of most here SL shouldn't run on my comp at all.
Old Gateway 310x, 1gig ram, pent4 2.4, nvidia 5600le. I usually have 2 or 3 other apps running while on SL and rarely have problems. Oh, all my graphics settings are about mid way and draw distance is 512.

SL will run, but not as well at higher performance settings, and not in texture intensive areas.

heh try this
AMD Athalon 700Mhz
384Mb RAM
ATI 9200 series AIW

I still browse the forums, listen to streams, edit photos, and run a webserver in the background.... while on SL... my only sacrifice has been draw distance, and I only knocked that down to 64 due to a hideously texture heavy sim I frequented... but most places not neccesary (or useful if I move much through the sim)

sytem optimization can make a HUGE difference

(they tell me I shouldn't even be able to load SL on this dinosaur, shows what they know)

Ive always found cutting down the cache size and setting video memory a little lower that the max your card supports help on older hardware.

On machines with less than 1.5-2gb of ram i usually set disk cache size around 200mb and video memory around 64-128mb. Helps keep the viewer footprint way down and cuts out the thrashing with no real noticeable difference in performance.

Well there you go.

Congratulations.