After installing patch Q i've had some problems with Live for Speed. It's like the game is REALLY putting load on my CPU. When im online with a full server sometimes the game will "freeze/lock up" for 5 - 10 seconds with the sound looping. Then it sounds like one of the fans inside my computer revs up and then the game returns to normal speed (with me crashed all over ofcourse).
This also happen sometimes when watching a replay with loads of cars in it. Or racing offline with all the AI.
This didn't ever happen before patch Q.

I tried to reinstall LiveforSpeed ie. redownload and patch Q as my old LFS folder was quite old with loads of crap in it.
Also tried going back to older gfx drivers and that seemed to help a little. Doesn't "freeze/lock up" as often now.

My specs:
Intel P4 2.8ghz (533mhz) Northwood socket 478
MSI motherboard 865PE Neo 2-V
Club3d nvidia GeForce 6600GT 128mb AGPx8
2x 512mb Kingston Value DDR3200
windows xp sp2
nvidia forceware 77.72 whql gfx drivers

any idears?

I also play Battlefield 2 which is known to be a resource hog, but I dont have ny problems there. This ONLY happens in Live for Speed

I would guess it's driver related, checking gfx and sound drivers may sort it out.

I think its MSN Messenger that hogs my cpu. In the process manager it sometimes says that msnmsg.exe uses 97% of my cpu power illepall

Ok MSN Messenger wasn't at fault. Been locking up even without MSN running

I can't figure out WHY this is happening. I've attatched a screenshot of what it looks like when it locksup and loops the sound. Nothing wrong in that picture

When I drive though I sometimes see some graphical error in the speedometer. Kinda like when you have an old version of directx or something where the textured are all spiked out. Also does this with the trees sometimes.

I also play:
Grand Prix Legends
GT Legends
Battlefield 2

and none of these games lock up or have graphical glitches? I've also set the apparture size in bios to 256mb which is max. Tried different graphics drivers and updated my onboard sound chipset drivers.

This is starting to bother me as I can't even finish a 5 lap sprint race

are you sure its a fan and not the cd drive kicking in? make sure there is nothing in there. (just one of a number of weird ideas i come up with)
i have had patch Q crash on me completely around 3 times, not sure why though. usually as i leave a server if im mid-crash.

Been racing ALL evening without lockups and disconnects.
I changed 2 things in my settings.

1. Changed skid boost from 3.0 to 2.0 (which is default i think)
2. changed my refresh rate from 75hz to 72hz (monitor is at 75hz on desktop)

Could it be the skid boost thats the bad guy?

tomorrow or sunday im going to do some test to see if its either skid boost or the refresh rate that messed up my Live for Speed.

well skid boost would be to do with the sound, and refresh rates to do with the graphics card,silly question, but it your graphics card 75hz compatable?

max refresh rate of my gfx card is 85hz and my monitor goes to 75hz

lfs is running in 1024x768 @ 72hz

I can make the game crash when I want to. Its the Audio option "Skid Volume Boost". Default its set to 2.0 but if I set it to 3.0 my gave will crash/lockup with 5 laps of a race.

Note to all: Do not fiddle with Skid Volume Boost

unless its only the case with my onboard soundcard on a MSI mobo with Intel chipset

ok to finally put a [solved] on this case. A few days after my previous post my video card died. Got a new one now and no problems at all.

Quote from Sp3cTr3 :

ok to finally put a [solved] on this case. A few days after my previous post my video card died. Got a new one now and no problems at all.

Hehe, here you can see how are driver problems related to almost everything. Your old GFX was probably causing some HW conflicts with your souncard driver, so when soundcard driver was doing some specific operations, it locked up. Now, with new GFX there are no problems.... just my theory....