Spring RTS Engine

I have a friend who had some serious trouble playing Spring with me last time I visited him. Here's what his problems were.

"Hangs at unitsync.dll, takes ~20 minutes to load passed that, then breezes through the (2 gigs of) maps.

It also says under the server when I [he] connects, that it cannot resolve local IP address (Server set to "localhost"). But I'm [he's] connected to two different networks, both a wireless and a wired.

It also hangs on reading the mod file when he finally gets to joining a game. But by the time the computer gets passed that the server connection times out. CPU runs at either 12% or 90% during that time but the whole computer completely stops responding until the mod file is read (XTA 9, any mod would do it though.) Ctrl+Alt+Del takes a long time to activate during that time as well. "

Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything I should be telling him?

Please post you and your friends' specs, spring versions, moms' pix, OS, networking connections, and any other relevant information.

I don't think my specs are really an issue as my copy works fine.

He's got a gig of RAM... I think a ~2.1Ghz processor. Windows XP (probably home edition.) I'm not sure if the CPU is Intel or AMD. He had like 84-88 gigs free on his HD, 1 drive, 1 partition. As for what programs were running I can't say. He had almost no icons next to his clock, so probably not a lot. I'd have to ask him.

The problem occurred both when he tried a fresh install, with at least 1 map, and when he used the exact same copy as was on my computer (which has 2 gigs of maps.)

Network connection was Adhoc WiFi (11Mbs.)

He's using .75b2, client 0.34. (latest, same as me)

He said something about after getting Java installed it worked a little better but his Java server (version 0.34) wouldn't accept localhost connections. He has very limited access to the internet, so I'm posting on his behalf.

Does he have some kind of demonic antivirus program?
Bust out Process Explorer to get a better look at what's going on.

Ya, if he has norton av, tell him to get rid of it ASAP.

I never had a problem with Norton AV... Though I had to get rid of it when it expired. It was making things messy. And it was pointless to keep having.

I'm not sure what his AV software is.

Norton anti virus is an extreme performance hog.

Internet security suite 2006 can reduce disk access speeds by up to 2600% yes 2 thousand 6 hundred percent! And that's not all, it has a big drain on cpu usage too, and can increase boot up times greatly.

AVG Anti virus faired a lot better. But in the end run the best security practice doesn't involve an active anti virus. It involves a user who knows what to look out for and a well configured system.

That and tasclient regularly lags up for most people anyway.

I was using Norton AV, and AVG, now I'm just using AVG. I found they'd find different viruses, which was kinda nice.

Spring's seldom lagged on the TASClient for me before. But at my next chance I'll ask him about his virus scanner. Since he's almost never online, (such that *I* had to give him Spring, since he didn't have the consecutive time to get the whole thing himself), I doubt he needs a virus scanner that much. Unless he likes opening strange attachments, but I don't think he's that stupid. Everyone knows not to open gifts or take candy from strangers.

1 antivirus = ok
norton antivirus = bad
2 anti virus = horrific
antivirus + extra norton antivirus = wtf

Never have 2 antivirus programs running at once. Each one cancels the other out. A system with no antivirus is better than a system with 2 antivirus programs running. They conflict with each other and scan each other and compound the performance penalties even further. That 2000% drain would sky rocket in the presence of a second anti virus.

On top of that all security benefits are removed once you add a second anti virus and your system becomes even more vulnerable than an unprotected PC.

I don't believe in anti virus and firewalls.

They are evil.

Snipafox wrote:I don't believe in anti virus and firewalls.

They are evil.

Said the man with the massive unchecked infestation.

AF wrote: On top of that all security benefits are removed once you add a second anti virus and your system becomes even more vulnerable than an unprotected PC.

I can't see how that can be true. They both seemed to work for me, and the "2000%" performance loss must be out of 10,000% because I could send both of them on a full virus hunt and still play Spring fluidly as if I'd done it without either. The only time I noticed any discernible difference was in very large battles, it would slow down a little sooner (given the number of units) than it otherwise would.

For some reason AVG scans literally 10x slower than Norton AV. That is, in the time it takes AVG to scan 100 files, Norton has done ~1000 files.

I monitor HD access, TCP/IP, CPU and RAM usage at all times with half second intervals. And neither virus scanner maxed out my HD's read or write capacity, nor did either take up much CPU, even combined. I know in the old days they'd be a dedicated ("don't touch the computer") process, but those days seem to have passed.

Now to be fair, I DID uninstall Norton AV, because it had a glitch once and started sucking up all the CPU for no reason, and I couldn't crash it out, flush the RAM, suspend the process, or drop it's process priority. And since it was already expired, I dropped it. Else I'd just have rebooted and the problem would have gone away.

But I'll ask him about his virus scanner and get back to you. You may have a good point.

http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/other/ ... ows_down/3

This one ahs better stats and a wider range of tests and software:
http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/other/ ... ows_down/5

An explanation on why 2 anti virus programs are bad
http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/3826

A quick story about mcaffee and AVG on the same system
http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Hom ... rams/26060

An article by the same people with an experiment involving norton 2003and mcaffee 7
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial ... /38s07.asp

Wikipedia wrote:It is important to note that one should not have more than one antivirus software installed on a single computer at any given time. This can seriously cripple the computer and cause further damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-virus ... of_concern

2 anti virus programs on the same machine are a HUGE NO NO. no anti virus program is better than 2 anti virus programs.