Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Diaspora Tech Help => Topic started by: Iron_Clad on December 20, 2013, 02:34:32 am
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Every time I try to launch the game it goes unresponsive and closes. Any ideas?
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If you're using Launcher 5.5g, don't, it doesn't work on win8. Use wxLauncher.
Otherwise, Please post your fs2_open.log file. Instructions on how to do this can be found in this post.
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Do note that periods of unresponsiveness are completely normal during mission load.
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Do note that periods of unresponsiveness are completely normal during mission load.
..and can probably be eased somewhat by defragging. Try Defraggler, IIRC it can defrag specified folders & files.
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Do note that periods of unresponsiveness are completely normal during mission load.
..and can probably be eased somewhat by defragging. Try Defraggler, IIRC it can defrag specified folders & files.
No. The reason why FSO becomes unresponsive doesn't have all that much to do with how fast the data is coming in, but with how fast the engine can crunch it. During mission load, the engine does not respond to window messages, which is why Windows will mark it as unresponsive if a certain timeout is hit, this situation can easily come up during particularly complex missions, or when new cache files have to be generated.
(Also, just as an aside: On modern Windows versions like Vista and up, it is usually a bad idea to interfere with the OS when it comes to defragmenting the HDD. It probably has a better idea of what an optimal HDD layout looks like than you do)
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Humm. Well, you could always check the fragmentation (https://www.piriform.com/docs/defraggler/using-defraggler/defragmenting-a-folder-or-file) and then decide. I've a feeling Windows doesn't consider FreeSpace as very beneficial to its operating performance.
So... I dunno, but if you run the Analyze option, go ahead and sort the results by the most fragmented files. Take a look. How often are those files accessed? That's coming out of your system performance. Not much, but still.
As for "MS knows best", well, we could say they know the best about your system's security, too... :rolleyes: Although they have gotten much better in that regard.
I think, just to be fair, on my next Windows install (7 or probably 7 and 8.1 tri-boot with Linux), I will not install any defrag software, and wait for a month or two, then install and run a defrag analysis and post the results. :nod: Perhaps I've been running unnecessary software since Vista. Actually quite possible since I skipped straight from XP to 7, who knows.
http://www.auslogics.com/en/articles/how-to-defrag/
Fragmentation is bad, and you may feel like you need to get every single file put back together, but it really isn't always necessary. Defragmenting certain files may have zero effect on performance, so processing them is not only a waste of time and effort, but may also shorten the hard drive's lifespan through excessive writing. What are those files? Large files that are broken up into large fragments generally don't need to be defragged. Microsoft sets 64 MB as the threshold after which fragments are considered to be too large to even be included in fragmentation statistics, so the built-in Windows defragmenter will not process file fragments larger than 64 MB or include them when calculating the percentage of disk fragmentation.
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Look, jr2, I appreciate your willingness to help and all, but in cases like this, your lack of knowledge about the internal functioning of the engine doesn't help. The thing is, defragmentation has been a cargo cult procedure for a long time now, given that HDDs are much faster than they used to be, and OS-level automated defragging is pretty good at keeping the clutter down. You have to get into pretty obscene levels of fragmentation before it will have any effect on FSO's loading times and behaviour.
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Well... Pretty much why I tend to think defrag is a solution is I'm used to cleaning up machines that are at an obscene level of fragmentation.
I don't care how fast your hard disk is, having 5,000 plus fragments in a single file will do murder to the access time.
All under the watchful eye of the OS. Probably there were secondary causes, such as essential Windows services being shut down to save memory or something, but I've seen it enough (at least on Vista, dunno about 7, I stopped doing repair work regularly before 7 became common in my area). Maybe Windows doesn't have that problem anymore, hence why I will check this as I posted previously. Although I will say, if you re-install your OS regularly, obviously you probably won't be seeing severe fragmentation, so do keep in mind that some people run their OS for 5+ years.
If Windows does indeed do as good a job as you say it does, that shouldn't be a problem, however.
EDIT:
did some research (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx). (MSDN blog) Looks like 7 really is the sweet spot for auto disk defrag. Although the one caveat is that you must let your system idle for auto defrag to work, perhaps this is what I was seeing. In other words, if you always start your PC, use it, and shut it off, it will never defrag, as it will never be idle.
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If Windows does indeed do as good a job as you say it does, that shouldn't be a problem, however.
(http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/pics/defrag.png)
This is what defraggler reports about my drives. This is after almost a year of daily usage, without ever kicking off a manual defragmentation.
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Hmm. Must be either no idle on those systems and / or severe lack of memory shutting down the defrag (and other) processes.
I suppose anyone running Vista / 7 on 512MB RAM with Norton and 30 IM clients + other programs starting at boot deserves what they get though. :rolleyes:
That and some genius at... I forget. Gateway? decided to ship their machines with the hard disk partitioned in two. Joe Average User of course only uses the system volume and fills it up, which also will cause defrag issues.
Anyways, looks like as long as you're on 7+, you don't need defrag if you let your computer idle, ha, MS starts to get it right, good :yes:
Thanks, E.