games becoming jerky in windows 98

Hi
I have an 800 pentium 3 with an all in wonder 32meg video card &
Windows98 SE.
Up untill recently the games have worked fine. Gta, the cars ran smoothly and all was OK. Now the game is unplayable as the cars are very 'Jerky'. Do you know the reason?
Thanks
Lewis
I hope tis is the right place to ask this question

 

You have something running in the background, using up a large percentage of your processor's time. I would go get HijackThis. It will show everything running, and starting up.

 

One explanation of jerkiness of games in Win98:

"Windows 98 added a new feature, PageFile_Call_Async_Manager, that allows the Memory manager to asynchronously write out page file (swap file) buffers during periods of time when VFAT file system activity is not busy" says Microsoft.

We have then an element of unpredictabilty. This can be circumvented by adding ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 to the [386Enh] section of System.ini which causes synchronous writing; Win95's default state.

However, this doesn't explain why all was well until recently and you may already have this setting. If you haven't then give it a shot.

When not playing games if you have a shortage of RAM and a lot of swapping then set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0; or remove the entry. With conditions reversed the better tack is a setting of 1.

It should be pointed out that this setting has nothing to do with how much swapfile is used - it is to do with when. For every 100 web sites that mention this setting, 99 of them don't understand it.

 

Thanks markp62, I ddon't know what to do with this info.
Thanks gammaepsilon Again I am unable to follow your advice as I don't really understand what to do


I have an 800 pentium 3 with an all in wonder 32meg video card &
Windows98 SE. Also I have 256 meg of ram, a firewire card.
It would seem to me I may have some kind of conflict, is there anyway of checking for conflicts.

This is happening with several programs and it never happened before.
I have two Hard Drives, one 80 gig and one 60 gig both 7200 rpm aand both less than 25% full

 

You could post it here.

The Device Manager would show any hardware conflicts, it would have a yellow ! or ?. Right click My Computer and select Properties, click on Device Manager tab.

Using Notepad, open your System.Ini file located in the windows folder. There is a section named [386Enh], add the line ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 under that heading. Save and reboot.

 

lewislewis

With regard my tip click Start>Run, type system.ini then OK.

Scroll down to the section [386Enh] and add the entry to the bottom of that section.

[386Enh]
............
......
........
.....
.........
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

[..........]
...........
....
.......

You will need to restart your computer after this addition.

If this has no effect on your problem you can either remove the addition or simply prefix the entry with ';' ie it becomes
;ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

If it has no effect then markp62's advice is worth implementing. My tip can be introduced very quickly and you will see the effect, or not, fairly soon with Gta. If not come back and ask markp62 to walk you through HijackThis.

One observation. With less than 25% full of a 80Gb and 60Gb then this may indicate that you have a lot of programs loaded and a boot manager will help here to choose between a games configuration and a non-games configuration the latter giving more elbow room for Gta or whatever.

 

Apologies, markp62 - you came in whilst I was typing and making myself a cup of tea.

 

Apologies, markp62 - you came in whilst I was typing and making myself a cup of tea.

 

No, I didn't sneeze. The first of the two seemed to suspend so I stopped loading and tried again. I've seen this before but it's been a while.

 

HI everyone
Thanks for all your interested. I have discovered the problem. the DMA box was unchecked, now it is working fine. I have a post looking for help with netmeetting if that has anyinterest
Thanks again, I really appreciate the interest you have all shown
Lewis