Menu/map freezes for 3-5 seconds: solution

[hbien 0]

There is a conflict between a resident service of PowerDVD DX (and possibly other versions, I have not tried them) that will cause 3-5 seconds where ArmA will "freeze" when switching between menus (of any kind, including gear) or the full screen map (also a menu of sorts). The resident program appears to hook into DirectX input/keyboard, possibly, not sure. In any case, if you are having problems getting the menu/map screens up, try uninstalling PowerDVD (permanent fix) or ending the "PDVDDXSrv.EXE" process (temporary fix - will run again at next reboot). The problem may be specific to nVidia and PowerDVD - I'm not sure.

[-Puma- 2]

i´ve never used power DVD and my MAP freezes for 3-5 seconds

[maddogx 13]

i´ve never used power DVD and my MAP freezes for 3-5 seconds

Nevertheless, if hbien is right this may be applicable to other similar programs. Maybe take a look at the other services that are running in the background on your system. I had this same problem too a while ago, but only briefly. I can't remember how I fixed it though.

[hbien 0]

i´ve never used power DVD and my MAP freezes for 3-5 seconds

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear - I was too excited to play ArmA after solving the issue, lol. Anyway, first a couple of notes. I also didn't install PowerDVD DX - it came pre-installed and I believe it is the standard on Dell systems. So if you have a Dell computer, you have PowerDVD DX installed. Second, to identify this culprit took me quite some time but here's how I got around to it. Since my problem was extremely reproducible, i.e. the map/menu always took 3-5 seconds to appear and disappear, I decided to first remove all running background processes via Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) that did not appear essential. This meant any kind of profiling programs like my G15 keyboard monitor, LCD display programs, and simple things like CTDVDDet (Creative DVD-Audio detector). I also went ahead and "stopped" as many services as I dared. I then started ArmA and the delay was gone! The problem now was finding which one of the many programs/processes/services that interfered. Again, because the problem is readily reproducible without any delay, I was able to start ArmA, load a mission, and try a map (this after a reboot so the problem appeared again). I then Alt-Tab'd out to Task Manager and started to kill processes one by one. After each time, I would return to ArmA (via Alt-TAB and try the map load again). This took forever as you can imagine, but in the end I found that killing PDVDDXSrv.EXE immediately caused the problem to disappear. To confirm, I rebooted again (because by this time many other programs had also been stopped as I marched my way down to PDVDDXSrv) and the problem appeared as expected. I killed PDVDDXSrv.EXE and voila - problem gone! In the meantime, I can give you a quick list of the processes that I found did not appear to affect on my system:

1) CTDVDDET.exe (Creative's DVD-Audio detector)

2) CTHelper.exe (Creative's helper application)

3) daemon.exe (D-tools, v4.12.3)

4) KHALMNPR.exe (Logitech KHAL Main process, used for G15 keyboards I believe)

5) LCDClock.exe (Logitech G-series LCD clock display program)

6) LCDMon.exe (Logitech G-series LCD performance monitor)

7) LGDCore.exe (Logitech G-series keyboard profiler)

8) MSASCui.exe (Windows defender user interface: note that enabling/disabling Windows Defender did not appear to change anything including frame rates - this includes 'real time scans'

9) ONENOTEM.exe (Microsoft Office 2007 OneNote Quick launch)

10) pidgin.exe (Pidgin instant messenging client, v2.4.1 and above)

11) RtHDVCpl.exe (Realteak HD Audio control panel)

12) SetPoint.exe (Logitech's SetPoint driver for mice)

13) wmpnscfg.exe (Windows Media Player Sharing Service Configuration: this despite the fact I have Media Sharing disabled, $%#$ MS)

I hope this helps because ArmA while playable before so long as I didn't go into map or menu is now MUCH more enjoyable!