Aggravating pauses when opening and closing apps

[TimPoet]

Like when I start FEAR it just sits there with a black screen until I hit CTR-ALT-DEL then most of the time it starts up, sometimes it goes to the WIndows Task Mgr screen.
And then when I close the game I have to conjure up the Task Mgr screen and kill it that way, THEN it takes at least 30 seconds to kill the TMgr screen and another 30 seconds to start the next app!!

Aaaargh!!!

Please tell me there's a cure for this plague.

TIA

[ktkendall]

I would be for spyware/virus, and other processes or apps that are running in the backround that are causing conflicts, then a full chkdsk, and than a good defrag in safe mode, and see if that all doesn't make a difference. If not then at least you'll be able to rule those things out. Also be checking event viewer under system and applications to see if anything is showing up in there that may point you to the root cause.

[juppy]

Are you using the most current video card driver for your video card? If not, you might try a different video driver. I only suggest this because of my own personal experience with another game that did about the same thing (Half-Life 2). It would take forever to load and sometimes it would stick on a black screen until I'd hit the Escape button.....then it would play fine. I just put up with it until one day I updated my video driver and I noticed that the problem was suddenly gone. If you're already using the most current driver then I don't know what to tell you to try.

As for the long loading and closing times between apps, you're probably not going to get rid of that. My machine is working great with HL2 now, but when closing out, it takes a good 40 seconds to a minute before I can do anything else. It's just due to the fact that games take up a lot of memory now, and before it can totally close the game out, it has to get rid of all the files that your game stuffed up in the memory in the first place so it could run right. Same on the opening time....it's in the process of putting all it's files up in the memory for quick access during gameplay.

[TimPoet]

Well, the problem seems to have resolved itself.

Actually, this is a new build that hasn't been connected to the internet yet. So there would be no adware/spyware issues.

I installed a bunch of apps, like adaware and spybot and all that stuff and then updated my Nvidea drivers from progs I downloaded to my thumb drive at another computer and then it quit the faulty startup problem. It still takes awhile to release when I quit playing the game.

Thanks, guys, for the input.

[ktkendall]

I remember diong a new build one time and just happened to check how fragmented the drive was after just doing windows and all needed drivers to get the box up and running nicely and it was really bad, so I defragged right away, and have since made it a habit on all new installations.

[TimPoet]

Yeah, I'm on top of that. Defragged twice already.

[piff263]

fear is a demanding game so sometimes it may take a while to start and close fear
sometimes i have to kill the power to close the game
update fear and it while run so much faster i had same problem tell i updated to version 1.08
of fear it makes a huge diffrence