Operation Flashpoint and Win XP

[Torpan- 0]

Hi guys!

Few days ago I decided to give a try with Win XP. And so far I like it. But after the clean install of XP my favorite game, OFP, doesn't play nice. At first it plays smooth but after 15 minutes or so the movements get jerky and choppy. And I don't understand why. I updated my video, sound drivers - nothing helps. Even increased swap file to 800MB - still no go. Any ideas. Every other game plays nice (Return to Castle Wolfenstein). I have the US version of the game 1.20. I also tried 1.30 and 1.40; also tried Red Hammer. The game runs very well on Win 98. Maybe XP isn't good after all

My comp.:

AMD 1.33Ghz Thunderbird

ASUS A7M266 with 256MB of Ram (Crucial)

Sound Blaster Live 5.1 X-Gamer

ATi Radeon 64MB ViVo

[Greg 0]

I have almost the same machine, just 1.2ghz and Geforce2mx. I have no slow down probs that you describe. Double check your MB drivers, BIOS, AGP, Sound Blaster. Are you Alt-tabing to get more savegames? Don't, that appears to slow things down the more you do it, use SHIFT -SAVEGAME instead. Another thing to watch, run the game, wait for it to get choppy and use task manager to see your memory usage. If it is currently allocating way over 256mb that is a possible problem, but only if it is regularly accessing much of that. Are you running any programs in the background eg Outlook, Music players etc? How jerky and choppy is it? Smooth with occasional pause, consistent slow frame rate etc? I noticed v1.4 causes severe slow downs on some user made maps that ran fine with earlier versions. Don't quit on XP just yet, something appears to be wrong and probably fixable.

[Hilandor 1]

yeah pal u got near same set up as me i had same problems and solved them by finding ati drivers at www.ati.com for the graphic card this helped a lot

[muzzmuzz 1]

I had the same problem for about 2-3 weeks but after a Scan Disk/Defrag and install of Nvidia 23.11 drivers it was fine.

Flash Point now runs better than it did on any other of my operating systems! I have an AMD Athlon 1.4ghz 768mb RAM and Geforce III card.

[Gorgi Knootewoot 0]

What is SHIFT-SAVEGAME?

When you press shift and save-game at the same time you get more save games?

Gorgi

[R. Gerschwarzenge 0]

Nope. Press and hold shift, type - from numpad and then type savegame. Remember to hold down shift all the time. Then it should save your game.

[Wobble 1]

OK folks listen up.. here is what ya do..

1: go to start/settings/control panel/SYSTEM

click the hardware tab then click DEVICE MANAGER..

now, click the + next to system if under there it says "Advanced power configuration and interface (ACPI)" THAT IS BAD.

what ACPI does is force your devices to shart IRQ numbers.. insted of each device having its own.. it does this so you can connect as many devices as possable, but you dont need it and it slows yer PC down..

SO select 'update driver' the select one from a list and pick STANDARD PC.. after reboot many system devices will show up as 'new' hardware and will be installed.. this is normal..

anywho, Torpan your problem sounds like a memory leak.

there are a few ways to help this..

1: make sure no file sharing progs are running (Naposterm, Kazaa..etc)

2: go into your bios and make sure BANK INTELEAVING(memory) is on.

3:defrag your hard drive.. its a long shot but can help.

4:after OFP ha slowed down alot like you say exit it and QUICKLY hit ctrl+alt+del

click the 'processes' tab and look at MEM USAGE.. see where all your memory has gone. and disable whatever program is eating it all up.

what NOT to do!:

do not mess with yer swap file, XP is smarter than you in this manner, this isnt win98.

[Torpan- 0]

Hi guys!

I tried to check it on memory leaks. Launched the Battlefield single player mission and started to play after 15 minutes the slowdown began to appear so I quickly hit the "magic" combination Ctrl-Alt-Del. The memory use was (Win XP + OFP) 190MB, 136MB for OFP only but I have 256MB, so it shouldn't be the problem, also the was some other program don't recall the name (started with "~") but it ate only 0.9MB.

Also changed different playmods: tried to disable W-buffer, Multitexturing, resolution 1024-768, all shadows off, lowered the amount of lights, EAX and Hardware acceleration off; the one I didn't try is to change from Direct 3D H-L to simple Direct 3D. Also I'll try BIOS tweaks.

Do Radeon owners need fastwrites in BIOS enabled?

If Plug and Play OS is disabled in BIOS can I still manually assign IRQ's to devices?

Thanks for replies.

[Wobble 1]

Do Radeon owners need fastwrites in BIOS enabled?

I was wondering this aswell.

[Torpan- 0]

Hi guys!

Finally I am able to play the game without slowdowns. I just changed from Direct 3D H-L to simple Direct 3D and the game runs fine. I suppose OFP doesn't like Radeon cards + Win XP and H-L enabled. My friend has the problem with it also.

As for "fastwrites in BIOS" the official respond from ATi is that Radeon and new cards (7500, 8500) do not use fastwrites. But it doesn't matter if they are enabled or disabled. But I think it's better to leave it disabled.