Major Slowdown

[NeoCloudstrife]

Hey there, I'm new to this forum
I wanted to ask a question to see if anybody could help me here, as i wasn't sure if this has anything to do with PCSX2 itself, or just some problem with my computer.

Anyway, Before Christmas this year, PCSX2 worked particularly well for me. On Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, and their Final Mix Counterparts (which is normally the only thing i use PSCX2 for, besides the occasional FF game and others when i'm particularly bored) I would get speeds that weren't Completely full all the time, but were fast enough so that I could enjoy using the emu to hack codes, which is my thing that i do I'd say it ran at about 40-50 FPS in normal gameplay, which is just over useable without being annoying.

So anyway, recently, I've been up to a whole lot of different things, and so hacking got pushed aside for a while, and thus i didn't use PCSX2. A few weeks ago, i decide to have another go at the whole Coding stuff again... So I got out PCSX2 once more, only to realise that the FPS count had dropped from about 40-50 to 4-5

After Countless Attempts at fixing it, i got to where i am now. I've deleted Basically Every unnecessary thing that's been on my hard drive since I got the laptop last year. I've uninstalled Countless programs that i'd really liked to have kept, and After ending literally every unnecessary process in task manager, the Emulator can still only render about 20 FPS in places where it used to be able to do 100 FPS or so...

I've tried literally everything i can think of now. I've used every different version of PCSX2 (including playground), i've cleared up my hard drive, i've virus scanned, i've messed around with the PCSX2 configuration, and even deleted my appdata folder, which contained Vital data i can never get back now....

I just have absolutely no idea what to do now... Why is this happening? Can anyone suggest absolutely anything? It's Like my computer has suddenly just quadroupled its CPU consumption, since it seems kinda sluggish outside of PCSX2 as well. is it likely i have some undetected virus? Have i installed something without knowing it that somehow makes another Process Take up more CPU? Maybe it has something to do with PCSX2 playground, Since it's been Deteriorating Ever since i downloaded it. Maybe it even has something to do with the ISO's I've been using.

Perhaps it's just Inevitable Computer degradation brought on quickly because i overuse the Laptop.

Anyways, Here are my Specs:
Type: Laptop
Manufacturer: Acer
Model: Aspire 6920
Rating: 4.6
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T8100 @ 2.10GHz 2.10GHz
Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB
Graphics/Video Card: nVidia GeForce 9500m GS 512MB
Windows edition: Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1
System Type: 32-bit Operating System

My Dad's Desktop PC, which has slightly Faster processors (Quad 2.4s) Still runs PCSX at the same speed it always ran at, which is about 60FPS most of the time, even with PCSX2PG. My laptop used to be able to keep up, but now I have to opt to use the PC whenever i wanna use PCSX2.

Just one final thought, I do a lot of Turning it off without shutting it down, if you see what i mean. Does that do permanent system damage? is there a quick fix for anything i've mentioned, or for anything anyone else can think of?

Some helpful input and discussion about this would be very much appreciated, And thanks For reading this rather long winded Post

~Cloud

[hendrixboogie]

I've had the same thing happen to me! I don't have a solution, but I used to get 60+FPS, but now it is 50 and less FPS. I've tried different builds, but they all result in the same FPS.

[LuisR14]

Just one final thought, I do a lot of Turning it off without shutting it down, if you see what i mean. Does that do permanent system damage?

yes that can do some damage to your pc (and some other stuff that i'm not gonna go into).

have you tried defragging your hard drive?

[NeoCloudstrife]

Just one final thought, I do a lot of Turning it off without shutting it down, if you see what i mean. Does that do permanent system damage?

yes that can do some damage to your pc (and some other stuff that i'm not gonna go into).

have you tried defragging your hard drive?

I've tried the Vista Defrag tool and another program. apparently my harddrive is healthy now. (I have 2 partitions)

And about the damage, how much can it do? i may have to research this...

[LuisR14]

yes go ahead and research it, (i don't wanna explain it right now )

[Air]

You're probably using the DEBUG version of GSdx.dll.

[NeoCloudstrife]

Actually, i've probably tried every graphics plugin with every different config now...

[Air]

There are few logical explanations for the the slowdown then. It's not a hardware failure. That's for sure (hardware never gets slower.. it just stops working). It's not a hard drive thing either. That might slow down start up of windows or some programs, but never execution of graphics rendering or emulation of a PS2.

It could be you're using Debug versions of the DX runtimes, which is optional if you have the DXSDK installed. It could be that you have some very nasty spyware installed, in which case your whole computer would be pretty slow (not just DirectX stuff). If you don't use SpyBot, or have Norton Antivirus as your (pretend) virus/spyware protection that that's most likely the problem.

Those are about the only options.

[NeoCloudstrife]

Thank's a lot
I know i've downloaded a lot of those DXSDK for the sole purpose of bettwer graphics, which was probably a bad idea, right?
I use about 4 different anti-vius softwares, so this can't be the case

Thanks once again, i'll see about deleting some DXSDK type stuff, see if i get some speed back

[Elanzer]

I use about 4 different anti-vius softwares, so this can't be the case

That can be very much the case if they're all active runtime scanners.

Simple solution is to just check your CPU usage while playing PCSX2, and also because this is a laptop it probably doesn't deal with constant 100% CPU/GPU load temperatures properly (most on the market don't), make sure you're not doing anything dumb like sitting your laptop on a blanket, pillow or anything that could insulate it. If your laptop gets too hot it will throttle itself down to much lower clock speeds.