Now a lot of players over the years have experienced sluggish performance and memory errors while loading in a new map under Windows Vista. For this reason I will provide a brief description of the issues and various different solutions for it.
Common PR performance problems and possible solutions under Windows Vista
Stutter: low frames per second and sluggish performance (commonly cited by players as “lag” which is an incorrect term, as lag is related to network issues causing high ping during play time)
Description to the possible cause of the problem: This could be related to insufficient hardware in comparison to the specified hardware requirements. Although a lot of players have also encountered this unbearable stutter with more than capable machines running Windows Vista. This is due to a Vista feature called “SuperFetch” which is a dynamic memory management component. Basically SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive.” So while gaming this leads to Vista "recognizing a ton of memory being freed while loading into the game and starts filling the leftover free memory on a low-priority background disk thread" which causes sluggish performance while playing a memory intensive map in PR.
Solutions:
- Although 2GB of RAM is recommended to run PR under Windows Vista it is best to have 3GB+ of RAM for smooth performance.
- Another quick and affective fix for this problem is to set textures to medium only under PR graphical options. (This has also commonly fixed the crash into a new map dilemma)
Description to the possible cause of the problem: This is due to memory allocation problem with Windows Vista. Sometimes while loading a new map in PR the engine can use up to 4GB of memory in an instant; this leads to a crash, because that amount of memory isn’t accessible to the game under Vista.
Solutions:
- As mentioned above, setting textures to medium has commonly fixed this problem.
- Hers another fix for this problem for both Windows Vista 32 and 64bit operating systems (Although not recommended, because of MD5 check mismatch, so make sure to backup a copy of BF2.exe before performing this fix):
Deploy crash: Crash after fully loading and deploying into a new map.R.J.Travis wrote:
(You'll need to be an Administrator)
First, you'll need to grab and install Visual Studio C++ Express from Microsoft.
It's free so don't worry.
Once installed, you'll need to update it, also make sure u have latest game
patch installed.
Backup the bf2.exe file, just in case.
Now, click
Start ->Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition ->Visual Studio Tools ->Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt
(dont left click on VS 2005 command prompt though, right click on it and then click "Run as Administrator"
**If you dont run it as Administrator the fix will not work**
Then, once the black Command Prompt box is open, navigate to your battlefield 2 directory.
If you don't know how to navigate in DOS, follow this:
In Vista 32: cd c:\Program Files\ ENTER **or** In Vista 64: cd c:\Program Files (x86)\ ENTER
then usually it's "cd EA GAMES" ENTER
then "cd Battlefield 2" ENTER
NOW WRITE THIS
editbin.exe /LARGEADDRESSAWARE BF2.exe hit ENTER
It should then come up with a "Microsoft copyright or trademark" type thingy, this means it was successful.
Type "exit" and hit ENTER, and it's fixed!
64 bit Vista users can now restart and play, 32 bit Vista users follow the next step...
In a command prompt and once again **Run your command prompt "As Administrator"**
Type this command:
BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 2900 ENTER
Now exit out of that box, restart and you're done!
Description to the possible cause of the problem: This is a common issue with PR v0.8 while running the game with any resolution lower than 1024x756.
Solutions:
- Run PR with a resolution higher than 800x600
- Follow this guide:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f27-pr ... fixed.html
Other tips(Battlefield 2 and gaming in general):
- On Windows Vista, while gaming change your Windows theme from Windows Aero to Windows Classic and make sure to exit Sidebar as it takes up system resources.
- For most online games under Vista you’ll need to right-click the shortcut, go to properties/Compatibility tab, and under “Privilege Level” checkmark “Run this program as an Administrator”.
R.J.Travis has brought to my attention an important detail regarding the fix:
If you perform the fix under a computer equipped with an ATi graphics card, make sure to un-install the C++ program and its additions files after running the fix.
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