Winamp and Guildwars - Loading screen lag

Morgot

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Feb 2007

KDLM

N/Mo

Hello.

Ive searched here, googled, and done everything else but with no luck.
I despise iTunes and all its background processes, so I use WinAmp. It works great with other games, and can copy to and from any devices. Clearly a great program. But if I try to use WinAmp with Guild Wars, I get this INSANE lag at loading screens if it has to decompress any files. I usually end up minimizing Guild Wars, (Which also takes a long time when this happens.) and closing WinAmp. Then, it decompresses fine. When WinAmp isn't running, this never happens.

Any help?

DutchGun

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Mar 2006

Washington, USA

Quote:
Originally Posted by Morgot
Hello.

Ive searched here, googled, and done everything else but with no luck.
I despise iTunes and all its background processes, so I use WinAmp. It works great with other games, and can copy to and from any devices. Clearly a great program. But if I try to use WinAmp with Guild Wars, I get this INSANE lag at loading screens if it has to decompress any files. I usually end up minimizing Guild Wars, (Which also takes a long time when this happens.) and closing WinAmp. Then, it decompresses fine. When WinAmp isn't running, this never happens.

Any help?
I'd recommend making sure they're not competing for the same DirectSound driver resources. Try disabling DirectSound output in WinAmp, if you haven't already done so.

The fact of the matter is that Guild Wars seems to already strain resources when decompressing for some reason. It could be that running another mildly intensive processes such as WinAmp just puts your system over the edge. Hopefully, anet will try to fix the decompression problem, but I wouldn't hold your breath. It's apparently been around for some time.

Morgot

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Feb 2007

KDLM

N/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by DutchGun
I'd recommend making sure they're not competing for the same DirectSound driver resources. Try disabling DirectSound output in WinAmp, if you haven't already done so.
Thank you for a speedy reply!

That seemed to help, although I am starting to think that you are right about it just maxing out my system (Which seems strange since my system is DEFINITELY not average.). Thanks.

Lonesamurai

Lonesamurai

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Apr 2006

Cheltenham, Glos, UK

Wolf Pack Samurai [WPS]

R/A

What is your system specs?

Morgot

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Feb 2007

KDLM

N/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonesamurai
What is your system specs?
Here is all I could find.

Pentium 4 2.6ghz
1.00gb RAM
ATI Radeon x1650
SoundBlaster [A800]

Guess it's more average than I thought, but it's also not your standard off the line dell box.

sykoone

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Dec 2005

Mystical Chaos

E/

If it happens when gw is decompressing, just use the -image switch to decompress everything first. Then the problem should be solved.

Morgot

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Feb 2007

KDLM

N/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by sykoone
If it happens when gw is decompressing, just use the -image switch to decompress everything first. Then the problem should be solved.
Wow! 36800 files to decompress! This might take a while...

Etta

Etta

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jun 2006

Mancland, British Empire

Or you can just shut down win amp when GW is decompressing, don't really need -image really imo. Running other program in the background will always slow down GW unless you're using dual core or high grade amd cpu and have a lot of rams to spare. Alternatively use a stereo, it can play music pretty well and doesn't slow down and drop your fps in GW.

Pariah

Pariah

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: May 2005

Lords of Cabal

N/

It is most likely as Dutch said, just too much for your comp. I run Winamp and GW at the same time constantly and have no lag or problems of any kind.

And if you think 36000+ files to decompress is ugly - I just had to delete my gw.dat file and download a new image in order to repair a bad .dat file. It was well over 96,000 files. I had to leave it run overnight. It fixed my problem though. Thankfully I have a really fast broadband connection.

Morgot

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Feb 2007

KDLM

N/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pariah
It is most likely as Dutch said, just too much for your comp. I run Winamp and GW at the same time constantly and have no lag or problems of any kind.

And if you think 36000+ files to decompress is ugly - I just had to delete my gw.dat file and download a new image in order to repair a bad .dat file. It was well over 96,000 files. I had to leave it run overnight. It fixed my problem though. Thankfully I have a really fast broadband connection.
Hehe, thats one of the benefits of 2 computers - Never have to download the whole .dat file again. Just copy it from the other computer.

Raaaaa

Academy Page

Join Date: Feb 2007

AP

D/

I've noticed some problems with winamp and GW running together at times.

The main cause I found though was lengthy playlists. If winamp is just playing a couple of files it should be reasonably ok. But if you're cycling through your entire hardrives collection it can interfer.

But the newer builds of winamp dont seem the same as before, spose thats AOL's fault though :P

Omega X

Omega X

Ninja Unveiler

Join Date: Jun 2005

Louisiana, USA

Boston Guild[BG]

W/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raaaaa
I've noticed some problems with winamp and GW running together at times.

The main cause I found though was lengthy playlists. If winamp is just playing a couple of files it should be reasonably ok. But if you're cycling through your entire hardrives collection it can interfer.

But the newer builds of winamp dont seem the same as before, spose thats AOL's fault though :P
Newer builds of Winamp is just as good as the older versions. They maintain the code rather than trying to bloat it up AOL style. Since the bulk of Nullsoft was canned anyway, they can only maintain it now days.

Since the recent Guild Wars update, running together with Winamp causes problems. That hardly if ever happened before. But then again, that isn't the only problem with Guild Wars since that update.