Old HDD slowing down PC?

Well partly the RAM is the problem, as the wait when quiting out of games is most likely Windows swapping data from the swap file back to RAM.

But have you tried defragging your hard-drive recently?

And what RPM is your hard-drive?

Its probably Vista, its idea of efficiency is loading everything into the swap file first and then after the games started it then dumps all the trash it preloaded, then it finaly loads up the level into memory like it should have done at the loading screen in the first place but you have to set their waiting at a frozen screen while it does that.

Then again i haven't had problems with games that don't use alot of RAM (like BF1942, BF Vietnam, BF2, Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I also i haven't had any trouble with Oblivion). I only have 2GB of RAM and a Maxtor 7200RPM IDE BTW. But i use an identical drive and memory amount in a Windows XP machine and it doesn't have that problem with any game (it uses only about 10% less memory in game). XP doesn't preload unneeded junk into memory though (it takes up 20% of the memory and if your running only 2GB it has to be cleared out everytime you start a level or else the above happens).

From what you guys are saying it sounds like its my ram. Is having 1gig really not enough for your average game now? Iv only just got my graphics card and i got company of heroes with it. im playing it on max at 1024X768, it runs at an average of about 50-60fps but when alot of action is on screen it can slow down to 40 or even 30fps at times, surly this is not because of my graphics card, could it be my ram (1gig)michael098

1GB of RAM hasn't been enough for gaming since 2004 for XP or Vista and if your running Vista I'd get at least 3gb just to get around the preloading problem or if you have XP at least 2gb (or for company of heroes 2.5gb since that game uses a lot of memory).

With 1gb of RAM your computer is having to swap a lot of files off the harddrive, especially in CoH at Max since that game uses up more memory than the average game.

[QUOTE="michael098"]From what you guys are saying it sounds like its my ram. Is having 1gig really not enough for your average game now? Iv only just got my graphics card and i got company of heroes with it. im playing it on max at 1024X768, it runs at an average of about 50-60fps but when alot of action is on screen it can slow down to 40 or even 30fps at times, surly this is not because of my graphics card, could it be my ram (1gig)_Margulis_

1GB of RAM hasn't been enough for gaming since 2004 for XP or Vista and if your running Vista I'd get at least 3gb just to get around the preloading problem or if you have XP at least 2gb (or for company of heroes 2.5gb since that game uses a lot of memory).

With 1gb of RAM your computer is having to swap a lot of files off the harddrive, especially in CoH at Max since that game uses up more memory than the average game.

Really? that explains everything then, i knew 1gig was not enough but i didn't realise how much more i really needed, that's fine though, ram is so cheap now i can easily get another 1 or 2 gigs, thanks for the help.