Hi guys - can anyone help with a problem that has manifested itself over the last week or so.

Having been playing online fine - including all the patches - with no problems. Even got round to switching to a gamepad rather than keyboard, and all has been fine.

However in the last week or so I've got a problem in that the game freezes every 5 seconds or so, and I have no idea why. Nothing on my PC has changed - spyware etc shows nothing. LFS is the only main application running - and I'm at a loss.

At the start of an online game it seems to show everyone lagging, and also my FPS has dropped from a good 90+ to mid 50's / 60's.

Attached is the latest replay - any thoughts would be much appreciated!!

Edit: Actually you can't see a lot from the replay - but from actually playing at the time I get the above symptoms!!!

I just watched the replay, and I'm trying to make some logic out of what I can see. I hit Shift+F8 to see what network flow was happening. There's not much to be gleaned there, because the data's all in the MPR rather than from the internet, so latency isn't visible (it's a dynamic display of latency rather than something recorded in the MPR. However, lag definitely is recorded - when ALL communication is lost with another player - and that's what's happening here!

Your PC seems to be churning out mathematics for physics quite fine. It doesn't appear to miss a beat, so I don't think there are any problems there, so it must come down to a network/communications problem. Some of the players are lagging individually, and that may be THEIR network problems, but at times ALL other drivers lag at the same instant and for the same amount of time, and this indicates a problem with your own connectivity.

Firewall? New router? New ISP? Gone wireless? New SSIDs appearing in your neighbourhood? Describe your computing landscape and we'll see if we can home in on the problem.

In the short-term, perhaps try right-clicking on My Network Places, choose Properties. Find the device that's providing you with a connection to the Internet, right-click on it and choose Properties again.

Look for "QOS Packet Scheduling", and if it's there, untick it. Click Okay, count to 10 fairly slowly, load LFS and give it another try. It has APPEARED (for a reason that's beyond me) to have been the source of problems for one member of our team, who was lagging out in a similar fashion to you, but I don't know if disabling QOS Packet Scheduling was THE SINGLE solution, or just ONE of the things we tried. He certainly didn't LOSE connection once it had been disabled, anyway. You may not even have this as a feature, in which case I'm waffling again for no good reason.. again

Hi,
This freezing symptom also usually refer if something is overclocked in your PC.It might running fine with other games but LFS is quite sensible to to that.If you have...try to downlock to default.

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Nothing is overclocked in my PC. As I said I have been playing LFS for a while now and it's only in the last couple of weeks I've had this problem.

Nothing has changed with my ISP as far as I know - 2Mb Blueyonder. I do run a wireless setup at home but again this was running fine beforehand and has done so for months.

I'm suspecting something with my connection - because when I watch my own replay I'm getting 90+FPS and no stuttering, the same as in offline mode, so it's something to do with my online connectivity.

Are there any diagnostic checks I can run to see if I have a problem with my connection? I'm no PC expert so don't baffle me here guys - I've heard mention of packet loss???

SamH - you really seem to know your onions mate - what's this SSID you mention? If I want to try a completely fresh LFS install what do I need to save from the old one so I don't lose my setups?

Again - thanks for any advice 'cos at the moment I'm stuffed for my nightly fix of LFS!!!!

I cant help you with your lag issues....
but if you want to start with a fresh LFS install, you need to backup these folders:

*Settings - contains all your setups
*Skins - All skins for YOUR cars
*SkinsX - Other players skins

Goodluck with your lag issue.

Thanks for that. I saved my settings and went for a complete fresh un / re-install of Patch U, rather than the patch by patch upgrade.

Still have the same problem.

I downloaded a bandwidth / ping tester last night and ran that several times, but nothing major showed up at all, and packet loss was virtually 0% across the board.

So now I'm stuffed. I will try again with AV and Firewall off, but what puzzles me is that I've changed nothing on the PC but now have this problem out of no-where!!!

What might be happening is your wireless network card is searching for other signals periodically. When this happens, it stops sending/receiving packets (thus causing visible lag) while it checks other channels and looks for the afforementioned "SSID". A SSID is an identifier which is sent out by a router, so that you can find it and connect to it.

Typical default SSIDs are "default", "linksys", "untitled", "conexant" and various others depending on what your router calls itself out of the box. Your wireless network card searches for SSIDs and connects to the strongest signal, or the one it's been told before to use. If it's GOT a signal but it's not the beezbollox for strength, it'll habitually keep looking for a better one UNLESS you tell it that it MUST use that specific one. You can do this in Windows, or you can usually do it in the wireless network configuration utility that installed when you installed the drivers for the wireless network card. Sometimes you have to do both.

What make/model of router do you have, and which wireless network interface card do you have?

PS: It's quite possible that the wireless network setup can run happily for months UNTIL a neighbour turns up with his new wireless home networking kit, plugs it in and all of a sudden your wireless network card has "choices" it's never had before.. thus causing problems.

I see what you're saying SamH - I do have a new neighbour one side, but he's around 140 years old so I doubt it's him.

I'll have to check the chav family on the other side and see if they have changed anything. It certainly sounds like what you are describing.

Somehow I need to find the http address that I had to type in when I first installed the wireless setup so the card found the router..........

Will look within Windows anyway and see if I can "order" the card to stick with my router.

The easiest way to sort it is to find the manual for the router. If you can't find that, the next easiest way to find it is to go to Start > Run..

Type CMD[ENTER]
Type IPCONFIG[ENTER]

Look for "Default Gateway". That's the IP address you're looking for

Cheers SamH - will get onto it as soon as I'm able.

Watch this space...........

Does it happen always, or only if you´re using LFS and TS2?

Sometimes i have that problem too, it happens if i start TS2 before LFS.
Shut down LFS and TS2, and restart LFS and then TS2 works fine.

So it also can be that.
Otherwise: Check if your Anti-Vir is turned off.(Norton never gets off untill it´s deinstalled)

Norton AV is running in the background - but then it always was before I had this problem!!!

LFS is the only online game I play so I can't tell - nothing else to do with my Internet connection seems to have any failings.

What's TS2 by the way?

Right - this is giving me the pox now.

I've been through everything to do withmy connection now - searched for other available connections that the PC might be searching for and everything - and have drawn a complete blank.

One thing that seems odd is if I go for a few practice laps, on my own, my FPS has dropped to 60+, whereas before I could get in the high 90's even with a full grid online!

So I'm wondering now if it's not a connectivity issue, but more perhaps something to do with my Radeon 9250 graphics card? Is there anything I can do to check it's working properly (I've already run dxdiag)?

The most baffling thing out of all of this is that nothing has been added or taken away from the PC - it's just "happened"!!!

Quote from Hog700 :

Right - this is giving me the pox now.

I've been through everything to do withmy connection now - searched for other available connections that the PC might be searching for and everything - and have drawn a complete blank.

One thing that seems odd is if I go for a few practice laps, on my own, my FPS has dropped to 60+, whereas before I could get in the high 90's even with a full grid online!

So I'm wondering now if it's not a connectivity issue, but more perhaps something to do with my Radeon 9250 graphics card? Is there anything I can do to check it's working properly (I've already run dxdiag)?

The most baffling thing out of all of this is that nothing has been added or taken away from the PC - it's just "happened"!!!

I remeber my team mate had similar issues with his Geforce3.
After some a year the card started overheating and he had FPS drop due to this.
Nowdays the card start throtling if they start overheating.You can get similar effect when you overclock the card too much.

Nothing is overclocked on my PC - but I will check the vents to make sure there is plenty of airflow - plus I have some spare fans kicking about so I will try it with the case side off and a fan on the card.

Might be coincidence but it has been warmer in the UK recently - perhaps enough just to tip the card "over the edge"......

Okay - thought I would bump this back up a bit.

Not had chance to try any additional cooling yet - but think I have stumbled across another possible indicator.

Just run a few laps offline - no AI cars - just to see what's what. Lo and behold I'm still getting my reduced frame rate, but what does seem noticable is that the game itself seems to be running "fast".......

It's difficult to describe - but for the same lap times that I usually run with the GTi round Blackwood (1.35 ish) the scenery and everything seems to be whizzing past at increased rate! I'm still topping out at 115mph on the straight - and I've been playing LFS for a long time so I've got used to the feel of 115mph - but now it just feels "faster".

Would this be the possible cause of my freezing? That the clock within LFS is out of sync and running fast - so fast that in fact every 5 secs or so it has to take a breather to catch up?

Further thoughts and comments are welcome.......

I had the same problem which I think I've just managed to FIX I had freezes every 5 secs in any online race.

I just updated my logitech software to 4.60 and LFS is now running without freezes. So if you've got a logitech it could be that; if not, I'm sorry

Smells alot like dual core? Im sure someone else around here had the same trouble with the clocks being out of sync. And he was on a Dual core Athlon i believe....

Could you possibly list all your PC components, and what operating system you're running etc..

This will give me and everyone else an idea as to what you're running, and possibly narrow it down. From what you're saying it sounds like CPU issues, but thats a wild guess. Or perhaps even a misconfigured router/modem or some sort of firewall software.

You might have somethiong there Mocky - now you mention it I did download some Windows updates the other week - so it would seem that one of these has caused the problem.

Rooble - how do I list my PC setup and post it on here?

You can obtain a thorough report using Aida32, but being quite old it may not recognise everything correctly. Mind you, a complete report could disclose private data (such as installation keys), since Aida32 is damn good at what it does. Review carefully the data before submitting them, you may end up disclosing too much.
It may also be a bit difficult to find, but if you take a good look with google you'll find it eventually.
Or fish for another reporting tool. Since I'm fine with Aida32, so I know of little else. Microsoft System Information is a much uglier reporting tool. It's part of the operating system package, so you won't have to download anything, but in my very humble opinion it sucks. Or Belarc Advisor, but I don't use it, so I couldn't really say it's good or bad. I just go with Aida at the moment

Okay I just un-installed any Windows updates and fixes that had been installed in the last few weeks - with no change in LFS.

Now going to look for updated drivers and then get the hoover out on the PC case!!!

Or, if you have XP, you could try using a restore point and do a system restore,

Here you find something about it, you could try going back a week or so if you think something significant in your os/software has been changed recently, but this kind of approach - although it may solve the problem - doesn't give an exact clue about the problem itself.

Just done a System restore back to May 1st - no changes were made to my PC and no improvement has happened to LFS.

I'm really starting to doubt my graphics card.........

You could try some benchmark too, at Futuremark you can find some. The most recent ones are extremely taxing (sometimes unwatchable) on my 9600, so I would rely on older versions primarily. Does that happen online? Some users have reported short game freezes everytime someone - for example - pits out, or when certain messages are issued. This happened to my computer too, but since I primarily play offline when I can I didn't bother much solving it.
That kind of problem is particularly taxing when playing (or spectating, as I do sometimes) in Oval Junkies, where there are lots of informative messages, and that could affect gameplay severely.
What about offline gameplay? Is it going perfectly well?