Alright, time for a story. About half a week ago I tried to log on to play a game I play regularly on. That game is Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Prior to this night, I had no issues with the game.
That night, I did. I found that when I'm loading into game, I get horrible framerate issues. So much so that when I am outside in the general world and not in a building, I got no more than 10 fps, where I used to get 90. I don't even get a lot of fps inside a building, which requires significantly less loading.
I did 2 things that night relative to GTA. Installed a mod pack and accidently set the assosciation for the texture files the game uses to automatically open with a certain program. I uninstalled that mod pack completely and I managed to undo the assosciation of the file extension. I even reinstalled and even used a game directory that was 2 months old. All attempts had the same problem.
Interestingly enough, I had to reboot and I tried after rebooting (I assumed maybe I just had too many processes running), but it didn't work. I rebooted another time, and my fps was back to normal for awhile. I went to bed then. I wake up the next morning and try, the fps is tanking again. I reboot later that day and try again, and fps is working.
I haven't been rebooting to check the past couple of days.
Now this is where the problem seems to be more than just the game.
First, no other game I have played so far has given me an issue. However; YouTube videos and iTunes songs have both suddenly given me an issue.
YouTube
I don't usually watch videos on my laptop but I wanted to check something out. Any video on YouTube I play has these effects:
5-6 seconds at the most with horrible framerate, and then the video sets to 00:00 and then it crashes to this screen:
http://i.gyazo.com/bd7b79348a37043865ab6363fa030417.png
(image of the issue)
This happens with every video on YouTube, but not on my desktop. My laptop and my desktop are connected to the same router, but the laptop is on WiFi. Despite that, sites load fast and everything else seems fine. Never had this problem before, and it seems quite interesting to be just a coincidence to start the same time my GTA randomly craps out.
I don't understand how exactly they might be relevant, considering ones a YouTube video and the other is an old video game, but I don't even understand why restarting my computer fixes the game.
iTunes
So I noticed when I was testing out the YT videos, I never heard any sound. And I turned my volume up to 80.
I played a bit of Arma and didn't hear any sound. I had headphones leading to my desktop in but the volume was still on 80, I would of heard at least something, at least when I shot a gun or flew a chopper. But I didn't, and the volume icon remains as the speaker with only 1 half-circle (when it would normally be at 3 by now)
It gets better. I load up iTunes to see if I can play a song, I double click on a few different songs and get the same result. The player states that I'm playing the song but remains stuck on 00:00 and I hear nothing. I can "Pause" it or "Skip" on the track, both of which act very laggy and take upwards of 3 or 4 seconds, something that normally was instantly.
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In addition: I remembered something. The other day I started up my laptop and immediately opened the task manager to check some things. I noticed that on a fresh reboot, I had 100% disk usage for 5-10 minutes. It then stopped, haven't seen this problem occur since (but I keep forgetting to check specifically when I boot)
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- GTA plays like crap (but no other game)
- YouTube just doesn't play
- iTunes just doesn't play
- One instance of 100% disk usage on boot-up
My gfx card drivers are up to date, I last updated them a few weeks ago and haven't had problems with them. (I have not tried reinstalling them, I can but I don't have any to roll back to and I'm worried if I uninstall to no gfx card drivers if that could be harmful)
I have checked my Nvidia Control Panel, I have set it to auto detect what card (Nvidia vs Integrated) to use for programs. I have also selected to specifically use Nvidia or specifically use Integrated. None of this made any difference.
I haven't noticed anything else acting weird so far.
---
Win8 64bit
Intel i7 3632QM CPU @ 2.20 GHz
8gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT 650M
(got a link to the amazon page of the laptop if needed)
---
Any thoughts on what this could be?
That night, I did. I found that when I'm loading into game, I get horrible framerate issues. So much so that when I am outside in the general world and not in a building, I got no more than 10 fps, where I used to get 90. I don't even get a lot of fps inside a building, which requires significantly less loading.
I did 2 things that night relative to GTA. Installed a mod pack and accidently set the assosciation for the texture files the game uses to automatically open with a certain program. I uninstalled that mod pack completely and I managed to undo the assosciation of the file extension. I even reinstalled and even used a game directory that was 2 months old. All attempts had the same problem.
Interestingly enough, I had to reboot and I tried after rebooting (I assumed maybe I just had too many processes running), but it didn't work. I rebooted another time, and my fps was back to normal for awhile. I went to bed then. I wake up the next morning and try, the fps is tanking again. I reboot later that day and try again, and fps is working.
I haven't been rebooting to check the past couple of days.
Now this is where the problem seems to be more than just the game.
First, no other game I have played so far has given me an issue. However; YouTube videos and iTunes songs have both suddenly given me an issue.
YouTube
I don't usually watch videos on my laptop but I wanted to check something out. Any video on YouTube I play has these effects:
5-6 seconds at the most with horrible framerate, and then the video sets to 00:00 and then it crashes to this screen:
http://i.gyazo.com/bd7b79348a37043865ab6363fa030417.png
(image of the issue)
This happens with every video on YouTube, but not on my desktop. My laptop and my desktop are connected to the same router, but the laptop is on WiFi. Despite that, sites load fast and everything else seems fine. Never had this problem before, and it seems quite interesting to be just a coincidence to start the same time my GTA randomly craps out.
I don't understand how exactly they might be relevant, considering ones a YouTube video and the other is an old video game, but I don't even understand why restarting my computer fixes the game.
iTunes
So I noticed when I was testing out the YT videos, I never heard any sound. And I turned my volume up to 80.
I played a bit of Arma and didn't hear any sound. I had headphones leading to my desktop in but the volume was still on 80, I would of heard at least something, at least when I shot a gun or flew a chopper. But I didn't, and the volume icon remains as the speaker with only 1 half-circle (when it would normally be at 3 by now)
It gets better. I load up iTunes to see if I can play a song, I double click on a few different songs and get the same result. The player states that I'm playing the song but remains stuck on 00:00 and I hear nothing. I can "Pause" it or "Skip" on the track, both of which act very laggy and take upwards of 3 or 4 seconds, something that normally was instantly.
---
In addition: I remembered something. The other day I started up my laptop and immediately opened the task manager to check some things. I noticed that on a fresh reboot, I had 100% disk usage for 5-10 minutes. It then stopped, haven't seen this problem occur since (but I keep forgetting to check specifically when I boot)
---
- GTA plays like crap (but no other game)
- YouTube just doesn't play
- iTunes just doesn't play
- One instance of 100% disk usage on boot-up
My gfx card drivers are up to date, I last updated them a few weeks ago and haven't had problems with them. (I have not tried reinstalling them, I can but I don't have any to roll back to and I'm worried if I uninstall to no gfx card drivers if that could be harmful)
I have checked my Nvidia Control Panel, I have set it to auto detect what card (Nvidia vs Integrated) to use for programs. I have also selected to specifically use Nvidia or specifically use Integrated. None of this made any difference.
I haven't noticed anything else acting weird so far.
---
Win8 64bit
Intel i7 3632QM CPU @ 2.20 GHz
8gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT 650M
(got a link to the amazon page of the laptop if needed)
---
Any thoughts on what this could be?