Vista slowdown with WoW

Hello,

I have this problem which i can't get my head around, it only happens while I am playing WoW and having it in windowmode (maximized windowmode).

What happens is that Windows Vista slows down to ridicolous speeds, it gets so slow to switch tabs with the "startbar" (the bottom bar on the screen with the start button), it is a bit faster switching with alt-tab but not noticably. If i try to open my harddrive or any folder during this time i can go and make a coffee and come back and it is still working!

As said, this only happens with WoW (or i have only experienced it with WoW) and it is when WoW is in windowmode. Although WoW plays alright, it has good framerates, possibly a little slower but still running at around 45fps-55fps (have vsync enabled).

Any help would be very appreciated, it feels like there is some memory leak or that my CPU/RAM just decides to take a break.

Thanks!

//Svarto

PS: For you people blessed to live in bliss WoW means World of Warcraft and is a computer game.

 

Do you know how much virtual memory you have? Try to set it at 1.5 times your actual physical RAM capacity. Another thing you should try/do is don't use windowed mode - I don't think WoW likes dual cores much. I myself play WoW, and even with the latest drivers for my Nvidia card it keeps crashing (in Vista - it would "reload" the driver) and dropping my framerate to around 10fps while in fullscreen mode until I log off and back into my Windows account.

 

Just to add, my CPU temp are at around 57 at this point and GPU between 70-78. So downclocking due to heat is not the problem, I am on high-performance graphic card (8800 GTX) not the integrated one which is an option in m15x, and I am not in stealth mode (another m15x feature that downclocks GPU and CPU)

 

Ok, how do you change your virtual memory? Yeah, luckily i havent had any problems like that yet, but i am not to fond of Vista so far.

 

The funny thing is, the display driver doesn't crash when I play other games (like World in Conflict) - just WoW.

Anyways, to change/check the size of your paging file (also called the virtual memory) in Vista, follow these steps:

Right click My Computer - select [Properties]
In the window that pops up, look for and click on [Advanced System Settings] - continue through the UAC prompt.
In the smaller window that pops up, click the first button labeled [Settings] - it should be in the section called "Performance"
Now, another window pops up, find and select the [Advanced] tab. Then find and click [Change] in that new tab. screenshot
Almost there - in the NEW window that pops up, your C: drive should already be selected, so all you have to do is select the [Custom Size] radio button, then enter the amount of virtual memory you want, recommended size is 1.5 times your physical RAM. After you enter the number TWICE click on [SET]. You might have to restart - I suggest you do because the change doesn't take effect until you do. Screenshot

Making the virtual memory gigantic will not help you much, but making it a little bit bigger than your physical RAM capacity does.

 

just a wild guess , but worth a try.
disable your WLAN card and see if that helped.