Computer stops while playing games

My system is windows xp. My video driver is nvidia ge force 2 mx 100/200. I have updated my driver but it didn't help. While playing games the computer will stop for 20 seconds or so and than begin play again. I does this periodically through the game. My computer is a compact, pentium 4.

This happened before and I wound up doing a factory restore. I really don't want to have to do that again.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Eileen:

 

You may need to check quite a few areas. I will make a few suggestions.

Your computer does meet the "system requirements" of the game(s)?

Close or suspend the items in the System Tray (next to the time) before starting the game (including the antivirus, but remember to restart it after the game).

Post a Hijack This log here and we may be able to suggest disabling unnecessary startup items. (If you don't know Hijack This, find and download it with a Google search).

The Compaq computers I have worked on have not had large amounts of RAM. Let us know if the harddrive LED stays on during the pauses, I have a feeling it may be using swapfile to run the game.

Have you run antispyware programs?

Go to the System Monitors. I am in Win 98 at the moment, you will be able to find them using Help and Support. Let us know what the reading for "Available Memory" is when you are at a blank desktop, no programs running.

Matt

 

it's almost always a good idea to follow the game maker's advice on 'creating a clean environment' for the game.

general tips = trim startup to only what u need, get more ram if need be, defrag and patch everything. i'd also kill any AV product prior to game play or any product that isn't game specific that may check for updates etc. eg - system restore does it's thing all the time ... and can delay everything

 

Disable all the unneeded services - particulary the indexing service - its a resource hog without doing much, empty your temp folders, run chkdsk on the drive(s), defrag them and then try to play.

You may also need to increase your RAM and/or increase your pagefile.