# Resident Evil 4 / Biohazard 4 slow gameplay



## benbaaa (Aug 20, 2008)

I've got a copy of RE4 (also known as Biohazard 4) for my PC which my wife really loves playing, but the gameplay is very slow. The characters move as if they are wading through treacle instead of walking normally.

Does anyone know how I can speed up the gameplay? (It worked once or twice at the "proper" speed, but since then, we're stuck in the treacle).

I can run Call of Duty 4 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter fine.

System:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.66GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 676MB used, 3267MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Display Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Display Card Memory: 512.0 MB
Monitor: Dell 1905FP (Analog)
Sound Devices: SoundMAX Digital Audio
HW Accel Level: Full

Cheers,

Benbaaa


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Hi Benbaaa, welcome to TSF

Your system specs and page file look ok. As you don't have this problem with other games, have you tried reinstalling RE4?

How much free hard drive space is left? Do you defrag regularly?

Are your device drivers, chipset drivers, MS updates and DirectX all up to date? Any yellow or red flags in Device Manager?

Try playing RE4 at the lowest settings. If it works ok, increase the screen resolution and each graphics setting one at a time until it starts to lag again. Some settings (like anti-aliasing) need to be disabled in order to run games smoothly on lower spec computers.


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## benbaaa (Aug 20, 2008)

Thanks, Koala. Didn't mean to leave you dangling so long without a reply, so sorry about that. 

I thought we'd cracked it - I updated some drivers and a day later the gameplay was suddenly at full speed. We played for two days, and then yesterday, oops. Back to the treacle. I don't understand it at all. My wife played at 4pm (full speed) for a couple of hours. I got home from work, fired up the computer at 9pm and logged in under her profile and it was back to half speed. 

So, in reply to your questions:

Have you tried reinstalling RE4? Not yet, that's next on the list.

How much free hard drive space is left? 55GB free from 160GB.

Do you defrag regularly? Once a fortnight.

Are your device drivers, chipset drivers, MS updates and DirectX all up to date? Yes.

Any yellow or red flags in Device Manager? No, I don't think so. Couldn't see any flags at all, though, so maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Could you walk me through this? *newbie*

Try playing RE4 at the lowest settings. Makes no difference changing the screen resolution. This is about the only thing you can change with RE4 as far as I can tell. It's not like most games when you can configure settings.

Some settings (like anti-aliasing) need to be disabled in order to run games smoothly on lower spec computers. I have no idea how to do that. Again, a walkthrough would be great if you could spare the time.

Cheers,

Benbaaa and Mrs Benbaaa


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## benbaaa (Aug 20, 2008)

I've just noticed that my SoundMax Digital Audio driver didn't update. Tried twice and got the blue screen of death twice. Gonna uninstall, reinstall from the motherboard CD and try updating again.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Your computer is obviously capable of playing the game, but something's holding it back. Was the computer switched off after your wife got it working. Does her XP profile have full admin rights, allowing her to install drivers? Which drivers did you update?



benbaaa said:


> Any yellow or red flags in Device Manager? No, I don't think so. Couldn't see any flags at all, though, so maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Could you walk me through this? *newbie*


Control Panel > System > Hardware tab > Device Manager. A red cross X means the device is disabled, removed or can't be located by Windows. A yellow exclamation mark ! means the device is conflicting with another device or the driver has not been installed.

To disable anti-aliasing (which smoothes out jagged edges to make curves look less pixellated) you need to go into the game's graphics options. If this is a really old game, you might not have this option.

Are you installing the correct SoundMax driver? The motherboard CD usually has a few different versions for 95, 98, 2000/XP and Vista.

Did you copy down the details from the blue screen? If it disappeared too quickly and rebooted, go to Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Startup & Recovery Settings button > System Failure and remove the checkmark from 'Automatically restart'. The full BSOD message and Stop error code will help pinpoint the cause of the problem.


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## benbaaa (Aug 20, 2008)

Hi Koala,

Yes my wife switched off after playing. Her XP profile has full admin rights.

I first updated some drivers using a program called Driver Detective. This program reported a number of drivers as out of date so I just clicked on them one by one to update. How do I find out what drivers I have installed?

Device Manager shows no red crosses and no yellow exclamation marks.

I don't think this game lets you alter anti-aliasing. The only option you get when you click settings is the screen resolution/size.

I've tried updating SoundMAX three different ways now: Firstly using Driver Detective; secondly by going to download.com and selecting WDM_A405.exe (after a google search) and thirdly by using Windows to find and update the driver. All three times I got the BSOD, but didn't note the error message. The message stayed there long enough for my machine to, er, take a dump. Maybe I'll try again and write it down next time. 

There's only one option on the motherboard CD: Install SoundMAX drivers and application. Clicking on this works, but then Driver Detective and PCPitstop.com both say I need to update the SoundMAX driver.


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## benbaaa (Aug 20, 2008)

Maybe this will help with diagnostics, maybe not, but I've uploaded a two pictures of the Driver Detective scan report in my Flickr account:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3040/2799367316_19007dbb33_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3007/2799367414_1047aed8c8_o.jpg

All the devices with red flags I clicked the download drivers button. After I restarted and re-scanned they stayed red.


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