Sudden Performance Drop: SWToR

@BAYoung

Try opening notepad and select file open and navigate to launcher.settings and open that way (will need to select all files extensions instead of just .txt)

This is just a txt file are you certain you have the right one called launcher.settings

@proxos666

Cool that worked; I don't have a bitraider folder though.

@BAYoung

Was the setting set as BR or SSN already maybe you already have the non streaming ?

In which case clean boot step will just work

@proxos666

"PatchingMode": "{ \"swtor\": \"SSN\" }"
, "bitraider_download_complete": { }
, "log_levels": "INFO,SSNFO,ERROR"
, "bitraider_disable": true

I changed the bitraider part

@BAYoung

Ok that means you are using non streaming already

good news is no new game download required

Play on a clean boot and see if any change

@proxos666

I'm reaching my wits end.

Clean boot didn't make any difference. Reinstalling my graphics drivers seems to have made it worse because now it starts at low FPS; updating those but it's a 20 minute download right now.

What else is there to do? I'm thinking a fresh install is in order right now and that's not something I want to do; it took 12 hours to update the most recent patch I can't imagine how long a fresh install would take.

I'm open to more ideas; I don't know what else to do. Nothing has worked so far.

@BAYoung

Are you playing any other games are they similar behavior ?

@BAYoung

1. Press the [Windows] Key + [R] at the same time.
2. Copy the following in to the text box and press ok:

@proxos666

Guild Wars 2 seems similarly affected. Presumably World of Warcraft would be as well.

Not sure why but CPU usage while updating GW 2 was 100%.

While in SWToR I opened Google Chrome to get to this page and CPU usage went to 100% again; before that CPU usage was around 50%

At the time of writing this post CPU usage with just google chrome open is 5% and Disk usage is minimal registering 1% highest active time over the last 60 seconds.

I deleted the client_settings file without any significant improvement in the problem.

Also, CPU usage while both Chrome and SWToR are active is around 78% at the time of the alt+tab and below 30% after a few seconds; Disk usage remains minimal.

@BAYoung

Run Malwarebytes or SpyBot just to be certain nothing else is affecting

Just uninstall them later if need

Sorry have to go 1 am here

@proxos666

No problem; will run those and let you know. Sleep well and thanks for all the help so far.

@proxos666

With World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Star Wars having the same issue it doesn't look like it's a game related thing.

Games like Skyrim, Saint's Row 4, Mortal Kombat 9 and Oblivion are unaffected.

I cleared off a few files of adware and malware in my Temporary Internet Files.

CPU usage while in game is high at 80% or higher. 

I ran a check disk on both hard drives without any problems. Boot disk scan is going to be run overnight.

Disk defrags will be done within the next week but beyond that I don't know what else I can do; I want to reinstall my PC only as a last resort. I've considered system restore but there are no restore points to where I didn't have these issues.

I don't believe it's a hardware issue because, and this is supposition as I'm no expert, then all the games should be affected in some way even if SWToR, GW and WoW are the most demanding on my PC, but I do meet the recommended spec for those three games so there shouldn't be an issue. Reducing graphics settings doesn't help at all in either of the 3 games so I've restored the defaults.

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@BAYoung wrote:

@proxos666

With World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Star Wars having the same issue it doesn't look like it's a game related thing.

Games like Skyrim, Saint's Row 4, Mortal Kombat 9 and Oblivion are unaffected.

CPU usage while in game is high at 80% or higher. 

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Have you confirmed what is using the CPU % when it occurs in task manager

proxos666 wrote:

Have you confirmed what is using the CPU % when it occurs in task manager

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Not exactly; it jumps around lot with the game in question using the majority of CPU; I narrowed it down to the paging file and avast anti-virus services. Just tested and it's just Star Wars or the other games using most of the CPU... just alt+tabbed now and CPU was 77% with Star Wars and Chrome using the most of it.

I test with Chrome open because I used to have Skype and a good few tabs of Chrome open while playing without incident.

If you have a a lot of hard drive activity, and the FPS drops occurs when the HDD gets "idle" I think it is swapfile related.

Your games will benefit from a RAM update to 8 GB in any case.

Would be an idea to check your swapfile settings in Windows, I think the activity on HDD stops because whether the file is full, or HDD tends to get full.

Is the Windows swap file on the same physical drive as your games ? I remember reading you having two drives, try reallocating it to the drives which is not your gaming drive.

Side note : This game profits a lot from running on an SSD.

@BAYoung

Interesting you mention avast see here

@proxos666

That post doesn't tell me where to find anything xD Call me dense but I dunno what they're on about.

I installed avast from an installer I downloaded years ago and let it update to the current version; regardless, do you think reinstalling it is the next thing to try? I've never had trouble with it before.

@BAYoung

Simplest thing is uninstall avast see if the games are still the same

can always install avast again later

@proxos666

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@proxos666 wrote:

@BAYoung

Simplest thing is uninstall avast see if the games are still the same

can always install avast again later

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I haven't done that as there's already a marked improvement on CPU usage since the Avast Service thing was disabled in the clean startup.

I checked if Windows did updates on the days leading up to and since the last time it ran really well and it's not an update; prior to 09-10-2015 the last update Windows installed was in August.

Since it's only the online games being affected could it be an issue with Network components? I'm ruling out the card because if it was a failure there it would be immediate and complete rather than a slow degradation, but perhaps the fault is in the network cable itself?

If not, what else can I look at?

@BAYoung

If there is an improvement with avast disabled

Is there still issues ?

No issues now.

I don't know how or why but there's no issue in SWToR at the moment. Whatever the problem was it's fixed... don't know what happened. Any ideas?

@BAYoung

Can only surmise maybe a combination of high memory usage and avast tying up resources

Just ensure you have a form of Antivirus installed even if just Microsoft Security Essentials

@proxos666

Don't know what it was; glad it's fixed though, whatever it is.

I'm really grateful for all your assistance though. It went above and beyond anything I've come to expect from anyone on the internet so thank you very much!

@BAYoung

Welcome Mate, Just glad to hear things are running better for you now.

MTFBWU