At all costs, I must play Guild Wars! I require your Aid!

Perhaps you could turn of Norton Anti-virus. Running AV programs in the background when gaming can cause slowdown. Also, stop 'Spoolsv' unless you're planning on printing something out when playing and 'PAStiSvc' too, as you won't be using a webcam whilst playing either.

(assuming you have windows XP)

Start > Run

msconfig

on the last tab (startup) click disable all

Hit ok, restart when prompted.

That computer is more then fast enoght to run guildwars, you probably have tons of shit taking up resources in the background.

If that STILL isn't enoght, bring msconfig back up and go to the second last tab (services) and click 'hide all microsoft services'. Only a few (hopefully) will be showing. click disable all and reboot.

This will only work if your on an administrator account, if your not get your dad to do this for you.

Also make sure you don't open other stuff before running Guildwars (like chat programs) and make sure all other user accounts are logged off not just hibernating.

-Fal

EDIT: This will reduce your process count to basicly minium, you can go lower but it's complicated.

How can you say that his computer is "more than fast enough to run Guild Wars"? He only has a 4MB graphics card! Quite frankly that just ain't going to cut it at all, no matter how many processes are closed down.

Hell, I have a few older AGP cards sitting in a draw somewhere, all above the recommended specs, if the person can post if they have an AGP port, then I'll grab one and it's theirs if they want it. Free of charge!

i doubt hes talkin about my computer

hey what is your avatar sniffing

thats an arrow for gods sake....

Yes I was talking about Meneldil's computer. He's just barely beyond the minium, so it should be playable considering his hardware, thus the problem is his hardware.

Have you tried that yet meneldil?

mind tellin me what that ment ? ^^

it meant that, if the vid car is the problem, all they have o do is PM Azagoth and give them a mailing address and the kindhearted Azagoth will post him an older, but still above specs AGP vid card that he is not using to the poor guy.

Meneldil, which driver did you get? the *latest* Nvidia?
youwant one of the older ones, since the newer have issues with guildwars and some of the other games like Black&White2 ect....
somewhere around the 7 or 8 ish i htink are ok, but refer to this sticky for more info, although your not crashing on exit GW, it might have a link to the earlier drivers that are fine...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=25809

so long as you can *see* the website enough to get a hold of the 7.1 something ish drivers, you can dl it and then run it, it shouldn need device manager or add hardware....

*hopes this fixes the problem a little*

I don't think the card he has supports the Unified drivers, I think he needs to get drivers for his specific video card. If it's something with 4meg vram it's more then likely.

But anything that doesn't support the unified drivers couldn't play GW anyways, so it's pointless.

-Fal

1. You need admin access to preform these tasks. This would also include updating a driver.
2. More RAM. 512MB DDR goes for ~$50 Canadian
3. Run Spyware Removal Tools - Refer below
4. Run Anti Virus Tools - Refer below
5. Defrag your hard disk(s) - Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Defragmenter

Spyware Removal Tools
----------------------
Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot Search and Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
Microsoft AntiSpyware: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/ security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Free Anti virus Tools
--------------------
AntiVir: http://www.free-av.com
AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/
House Call: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/


Hope this will help you out.

Hey... the best way to optimize Windows XP is to reformat.

Reformat
Turn off themes
Turn off all unneeded services
Play GW with no running programs in the background (AIM, etc)
When GW is running, goto the Task Manager (ctrl + alt + del) and turn off explorer.exe. You can bring it back by pressing on the "New Task" button and typing "explorer".