Forgive me, for I am new at this.

I am running SBBS and TWGS via RLogin. I have also set up the DOS version of TW2002. Right now, I'm the only one playing TW on my system. The DOS version runs smoothly, but I'm having processor usage issues with the TWGS version.

When I'm bouncing around the game and trading, sometimes the game gets laggy (I'm on the local box, so there's no network issues involved, it always seems to happen during a trade). If I keep playing it, eventually it completely stops responding. Checking task manager shows tw2002.exe using between 96-100% of my CPU. I found another thread here where people said that the Gold features can cost a lot of resources, so I disabled those. The same thread mentioned uninstalling (including manually removing all registry issues) to fix the issue, so I tried that, too.

Unfortunately, it's still happening. Right now, SBBS is running on my laptop, which has a 1.73 GHz Pentium M CPU and 2 GB of RAM. tw2002.exe's RAM usage, even during the lockup, never seems to go much over 3mb. I have made it through entire days (playing out my whole block of turns) without any issues, but other days, it seems to happen every 2 minutes.

do you have both versions installed on the same machine?
if so then it may be a conflict between the two. do they both run at the same time or do you shut one down while on the other?

Also you might want to shut the server down and manually go into the program thru the my computer> programs> EIS> TWGS> then in all games delete the TWmail.dat files. and see if that helps

Thanks for responding quickly, Vulcan.

No, they do not run at the same time - I'm the only user of my system who uses trade wars (I haven't opened it to the public, yet, because I'm just getting it set up) and I can only play one at a time .

Perhaps some background is in order - this is my first BBS and right now, it's just me and a handful of friends on it.

When you say delete the twmail.dat files, you're talking about the ones in the game folder (i.e., C:\Program Files\Epic Interactive Strategy\TWGS\Game\TW1), right? There's only one there, and it's a measly 5kb (I fully removed the entire program and reinstalled it and rebanged the game in my last troubleshooting session).

I was just playing with it and I spent my whole 250 turns without running into any problems, so I upped the daily max to 700 and gave myself 700 extra turns and made it almost through all of them without any issues, but at the end it started to spike my CPU every time I would change sectors, port and trade (basically every time I pressed a key or enter).

I'm going to reset my turns again and see what happens, keeping a little closer eye on task manager while I'm doing it, this time. I'll report back when that's done.

Okay - I noticed that it seems to be hanging like it's at a pause prompt (if I hit enter it continues) where there should be no pauses, and when it hangs, the CPU usage hovers above 95%. The telnet client I was using (ZOC 5.06) is a little funky in its ANSI emulation, so I switched to MTelnet and it a) seems much faster in general and b) doesn't seem to be displaying the lag/lockup issue at all. I'll test it some more, later, but at this point, I think ZOC was causing the problem.

Okay you may want to go to grimys and get an older version of zoc, prolly the 4.15, and see if that version does better, also it is the last version that the revhelper scripts will work okay with. and any rexx scripts for tw for that matter.

also how big is the hard drive on the laptop? and how much of it is used and how much is free? and has it been defragged and cleaned of any unnecessary files?

Actually, I was considering checking for a new version of ZOC, but if I do pin the problem to ZOC, I will try an older version, too. I don't really use scripts with it, I've done some key mapping with it, though I'm not using anything right now beyond simple F-key macros, and the freezing occurs with just normal usage.

I'm not entirely certain that ZOC is the problem, or the only problem. I will post again when I have more information.

As for the hard drive - it's a 40gb hard drive, with two partitions and no swap file (2GB of physical RAM is more than adequate for everything I do). The second partition is hidden and used as a backup. The primary partition is 30gb, with 12gb free, right now. The drive hasn't been defragged in a while, though I defrag more often than most people do, since I can do it while I'm using the computer for other things. XP informs me that current fragmentation is 3% with an average of 1.03 fragments per file and that I do not need to defragment, but I'll start one, right now, anyway.

Could that be the likely culprit then? I recollect reading about 32-bit+ Windows causing major performance and compatibility issues with manually partitioned drives or such as being manipulated/controlled by an outside auxiliary program. Being as partitioning was devised for DOS and no longer serves much of a benefit in an updated Windows environment.

Partitioning is very important, I suggest if you give advice you make sure it's factually accurate. Nobody can "manually partition" a drive, what would you do... hexedit to track 0? All harddrives are partitioned, even if it's just into one primary partition.

Sigh. Cluebies.

And you should always have a swap file. Even if it's just 100mb, the algo that chooses code to swap out allows your OS to shut down apps much more gracefully. W/o a swap file if you run out of RAM your PC will simply die and require a reboot.

Now for finding the lockup. Next time it happens hit ctrl-alt-del, if you have an OS like NT, 2k or XP it will show the load for each process allowing you to find the culprit quite easily.

I would not expect TW to care much about partitions. The partition was made with an Acronis tool, and seems to cause no other problems. I added the second partition when my laptop spontaneously combusted (BSOD at boot, every time) resulting in a full restore of Windows. That was last July and I've had zero major issues since then.

I've read opinions both ways on the swap file, and I find the benefits of not having one vastly superior to having one (my disk i/o shot through the floor when I turned it off, it was pretty impressive). I've been running 2GB of physical RAM with no swap file for about 9 months without any memory related issues (I'm a web developer, most of the time, and I run SQL 2005 Express, IIS, 1-3 instances of Visual Studio 2005 and various browser windows regularly without ever exceeding 2GB of RAM usage). Yes, a lot of the RAM is "wasted" by being locked by processes that are not actually using it, and a swap file allows windows to move unused reservations to the disk, but RAM is cheap and I have it in spades. Regarding the culprit, you must have missed this from the first post, so here it is again: "task manager shows tw2002.exe using between 96-100% of my CPU." It's not a complete lockup (other processes are still able to compete successfully for processor time), but TW is obviously vastly overusing my CPU.

By the way ... if any of this sounds like I'm being an Butt, I apologize - that's not my intention, so please don't take insult.

On a possibly related note ... I have read that some things do not always cause SpeedStep processors to shift when they should. I've noticed that sometimes my CPU reports its speed incorrectly (as 50% of it's actual speed, which is the lowest or idle "step"). As an example, when the computer is mostly idle, Windows often reports the following in the "Computer" area of the system control panel:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
798MHz, 2.00 GB of RAM
Physical Address Extension

(By the way - consider that a revision of my earlier statement, I have a P4M 1.6, not a 1.73. Whoops. Wishful thinking, I guess.)

You ding bat, I was referring to something other then Windows controlling the aspect of the partition(s) and allocations, you want to mince non-issues as usual then you can byte me, while you are at it.

I was under the impression he is using other programs to manually control his OS, as he had mentioned that he is hiding a portion of his drive which is not a normal Windows function (that I have so far heard of), advised he is not using a swap file (unless he was referring to the Windows controlled VM, which if so, why not just say it as such), and is the only one having these issues with Windows; being that I have personally yet to hear of something occurring in this nature that was TWGS related, other then having to do with massive alien processing that bogged down the server, (and this does not seem to be the case.)

Windows controls the Virtual Memory/Paging within it’s own OS, which I would imagine would not matter if the drive itself had a swap file assigned to it through a driver utility program or not. Additionally you can manipulate and crack a drive through the FAT either via a designed program or through personal experience and time consuming dedication to obtain desired results or retrieve information located on that drive should there be a need for it.

Alright ... so, I played a batch of 700 turns in Mtelnet and no issue - tw2002 never broke 5% CPU. Same test with ZOC and I've got problems.

Here's the current scenario:
The port I am docked at asks me how many units of cargo I want to sell, it suggests 75.
I press enter, to select 75.
It says "Agreed, 75 units."
<pause>
<CPU usage hits high 90s and floats there>

If I press enter again, I see this:
We'll buy them for 4,521 credits.
Your offer [4,521] ?
Agreed! We'll purchase them!

Note that it has skipped past the next prompt and entered the default value (because I pressed enter). If I press enter again, it tells me how many credits and empty cargo holds I have and asks for my command. Now the lag starts to set in - warping to the previous sector to buy another batch of goods to sell takes just a little longer than normal. When it asks me how many units of cargo to buy and I press enter to accept 75, the cycle is back (high 90s CPU). This time, I have to press enter twice before it continues, but when it does, it continues all the way to asking for my next command.

At the next trade, it starts to skip keystrokes. I have to press enter four times when asked how many units to sell before it asks me how much to sell them for (but it does actually ask, this time).

The next two trades seem to work properly.

Then back to lag, extra keystrokes, etc.

After a dozen more trades, the game starts going slow enough that the screen output resembles my old 2400 baud modem. I have to start calculating every key stroke to make sure it took my commands, or I'm re-porting at the same port over and over again without changing sectors. It starts to pause other places (during moves, etc, not just at trading).

Eventually, commands stop working entirely.

I'm growing more and more sure that it only happens with ZOC.

RexxCrow was correct to assume that I was using a third party tool to repartition my hard disk and "hide" the second partition from Windows. However, my swap file is disabled in Windows, not by any abnormal method.

That said - I think the problem lies in the communication between the tradewars application and this particular telnet client (ZOC 5.06). The problem doesn't seem to occur in windows's standard telnet client or in Mtelnet 1.1. I do not think anything particular about my system is causing the issue - SynchroNet and several DOS doors seem to function on my system as well as anywhere else. I could try testing ZOC with another TW server, but I think I might have trouble finding someone willing to reset my turns enough to get any decent testing.