My Stutter is linked to Disk Access

can you defrag the HD? does that help?

can you post your BF2 settings? have you tried turning EAX on/off? From what I've read, the onboard soundcard isn't a true EAX compatible chip, so although it may appear to be an option, it may help to try turning it off (use software rendering).

have you noticed the problem on single player mode? is it just online?

The stutter problem I have doesnt link to hard drive access(2 gig ram), mine happened every time the fan would kick into high gear then slow down. And the stutter that i was experiencing was a complete freeze of everything for a split second, and it would repeat itself EVERY time the fan adjusted speed. And I would get a really loud stuttering noise from the speakers.

Bjim: what version of vid card drivers do you have? are you over-clocking? please remind me on what sysstem you have...

i hope we can get this workin

Im using the omega drivers 2642. i think it was the catalyst 5.4? I am NOT overclocking.

The system i have is a 3.6gig p4 processor and an x800 graphics card.

The laptop was flawless for several months. Suddenly one day, the stuttering just started to happen. It was random, but I narrowed it down to when more power is applied to the CPU fan. It appears whenever there is an adjustment to the fan, I would get a complete freeze along with a stuttering sound through the speakers. And when the fan reached max, the stutter at that point would lower my framerates down to like 3fps until the fan started to decrease speed again, where it would stutter and everything would be fine again for a few seconds before it repeats the process over again. Not long after I experienced random shutdowns. Followed by a complete failure to start. It ended up being a MOBO issue as far as the major problem(failure to start). And when it was returned with a new MOBO, the problem still existed. So i believe that is something to be scratched off the list. And I dont believe it would be the drivers as well, Ive used these drivers since I received the laptop with no problems.

Im not trying to jack the thread or anything, just bringing up the situation and results that I experienced that could possibly be similar to Luvac Zantor's.

Bjim, i was going to suggest that you try setting the "fan always on" in your video card driver settings if you had an nvidia. if you check out the Area51m download area post (first sticky post in the A51m forum), you should find a keyboard BIOS update. This BIOS update should allow you to turn on your fans with a keyboard combination.

I'm just thinking that if your system seems to stutter when more power is applied to the cpu fan, you could start off with the fan running at full speed.

Have you tried "GetThermal" program yet to find out how hot your system is getting? That may be another thing to try. If you search these AW forums, you'll find the download link for it. Running that program may help you discover something else is wrong; perhaps the video card is running too hot? perhaps the fans are going, but it's not cooling enough?

Another thing you may want to try is shutting down pretty much EVERY process in your task manager before playing. In other words, all virus scanners, explorer windows, quicktime, gearsec, etc. let us know how many processes are running in the background when you are playing a game. i have a batch file which does a net stop service and a kill to all extra processes before I play a game. I've gotten it down to 12 processes running, consuming 16mb of memory.

forgot to ask... do you have AlienGUI installed?

the thing that makes me "go hmmmmmmm" is the statement you made about the time it takes for the control panel icons to show up. this is a clear indicator that something is hijacking your explorer.exe....

Ive used the getthermal program and kept the fans running at max, there was no change, it still continued doing the same thing with the exception of the fans not adjusting speed. I had the same thought that you suggested as far as the keeping max power to the fan. I would have thought it would have fixed the problem as well but .....nope. This was something that I forgot to mention as far as what I did to diagnose the problem. But whenever I didnt use the program, it performed the same way as I had mentioned before as far as power to the fans.

I also tried disabling all nonessential running tasks. This also produced no results.

One thing i did NOT do is update the bios that has a control function to operate the fans. As this has not been approved by AW yet, im not quite ready to void my warranty.

As far as the AlienGUI. I used one of the skins since day one of use. And as i mentioned before, I went MONTHS with absolutely no problem. I also did a fresh reinstall several times using both the respawn and the windows disc that was supplied on purchase. I ran the laptop BEFORE installing anything and problem still existed. I produced a disc of all the updates for drivers when I first got the system. I used this disc when the problems started assuming that perhaps I downloaded a bad patch or update later down the line after making this disc. Im led to believe that this is a hardware issue.

I also failed to mention that my laptop is in depot AGAIN because it fails to boot up. So far its been in diagnostics for several days with no result. The last 2 days they were closed however due to the hurricane. So all of this that I have mentioned is problems that existed before and after my laptop came back from depot the first time. So all of this could be a moot discussion concerning the problems that I have had if its fixed when it gets back. But I do know that im not the only one that has these problems. There are threads throughout AWs forums with the same problems that I have had.

BJIM i have the 7700 with the ati card...I myself have onboard sound. What I found to fix the stuttering problem was to turn off alienguise, and turn off everything in the background, with the exceptoion of my firewall. Everything else was off. I haven't received the stuttering problem since July or so. I've been happy with it. As far as the shutting down and crashing issue, well i don't know about that. It may very well be linked to your stuttering problem.