Lag Bomb and DisconnectsFollow

I havent had any lag to speak of but some questions to clear up some stuff. Does your lag coincide with Sha of Anger groups, alot of people see lag in and around the area even if they arent near the boss, sometimes even all of Pandaria lags when there is a HUGE fight (Galleon is worse for this if he spawns during prime time, practically the entire server shows up)

I mean It could be a number of issues really from bad drivers(video, network card, etc), to a bad sector on your disk, to malware/virus. Could be RF inference with router/modem, or Networking cables shorting etc. Could be server side, a few servers have been having issues this last week.

Best piece of advice I can give would be to do a virus/malware scan ( I use the basic windows defender for AV, since in the last 9 years I've had a total of 1 virus from my own stupidity, and Spybot S&D for Malware) Run a diskcheck on your WoW drive,Defrag is need be. Update your drivers if their is newer ones out, check your router Firmware to see if its out of date. You could try that razer gamebooster from the other tread it closes all Non-essential programs/windows threads while you play.

Some other questions:
Do you have any issues with streaming videos(longer ones) from Youtube or netflix?
Any of your other connected devices on the network having net slowdown issues at approximately the same time? (or is anyone torrenting at or around the same time(one of my friends had this issue his sister would start a torrent and he would get a massive lag spike cause she had her torrent program setup to have WAY to many connections)
Do you have an idea around when you started having the issue, does it coincide with any hardware/software changes on on your PC?
Do you do a lot of downloading? (ISP's like to sometimes throttle bandwidth after a certain amount (usually after 250 gigs a month, rarely happens but I've seen it)

Pretty much when I fix a computer (unless I know the EXACT cause) I start someplace and just go down a list. Narrowing it down til I find the exact problem.

I mean it could be one of many things, is the issue, and unfortunately intermittent anything on a computer is the worst type to diagnose since you have to watch many things at once (CPU and RAM usage, Harddrive activity, network activity, Modem activity, router activity, and In game activity.) to narrow down the cause of the problem, exactly when it happens, then test to see if you can recreate it.

Ohh also check to see if your AV or Malware checker, or Windows update or anything is schedules to update when your having the issues.

Sorry for the lengthy post.

Ok from the sounds of it you were correct with your assumption of the router being the main culprit (it sounds like it) I would definitely look into firmware update on it, also if you're using a Linksys router try going into App and gaming tab on the router, then QoS and turning off WMM support. It helps speed up wireless connections(most of the time). WMM Sets bandwidth off to the side for VOIP services thats constant, but also seems to like to slow wireless connections, but if your playing WoW/Vent/Netflix wirelessly you may want to keep it on. I have a Wifi Bluray in my bedroom that streams Netflix to and I personally never see a hit from having it off.

Also If by chance you have a WRT54G(blue and black case) Linksys resetting it about once a week helps a ton, I used to have one and the damn thing would like to slow down after downloading/streaming a lot of things. I never found the cause of it because wading through google was a pain, found a lot of articles for slowdowns but never and exact match to my problem, but like I said I just reset it once a week and seemed to fix it (Reset as in just unplug it for like a min and plug it back in not a factory reset or anything like that)

But I would start my troubleshooting by Googling "<routername/model> lag spikes" or something similar and just see if there is any threads/articles that might help. I ussually go through a few links just to weed out any bad advice, like Person A says this, and it worked for person B,C but not D, usually person D will find something that worked for him and post it somewhere in the thread.

I fix most of my friends/Families computers regularly (I built most of them anyway) and usually it comes down to, Figure out problem, google solution, ???, profit. Or if its my one friend I just reinstall windows cause he always (95% of the time) has a virus of some sort and its just easier to back up his stuff on my external, scan it for viruses, reinstall windows to be sure its completely cleaned out.

Its kind of funny really I thought I was doing it the lazy way that way (It is) but one of my friend who moved to New Zealand to be with his wife offered to give me his customers for his in home Computer repair company (just give me his company essentially) and first thing he said was If they have a virus just reformat/install windows because if by chance you dont find every instance of that virus or where its hidden (or if they get the same virus next week cause of bad browsing/downloading habits), they could come after you for a refund and take you to court. So its just easier and safer to err on the side of caution and reinstall Windows since then you know for a fact the virus is gone.

The only thing stopping me from fixing computers on a professional level is that little piece of paper that you get from going to school, which I dont have money to do. Otherwise I have tons of experience Ive built computers since I was 16, and my first PC was a "family" PC - HP 286(pre pentium, windows 3.1) had to teach myself DOS to play games/shareware/etc, then I was given a true DoS systems had 2 floppy 5 1/4 drives One for OS and one for saving (used to play Duke Nukem(the sidescroller), Snake, Commander Keen, and of course Scorthed Earth.

Lol Sorry was nostalgia tripping for a second there.



Edited, Jan 14th 2013 2:34pm by BeanX

I'm in the same boat.

It is sad when big companies decide that their money is more important than people being able to help other people who have problems and don't know how to fix it themselves.

And they always charge some outrageous price (years ago it was like $400 for a 1 or 2 year thing or something like that). I mean, seriously? You should have to dump hundreds of dollars just to be able to work in that field? *rolls eyes* I know the crap, I don't have to prove it. In fact, I know it better than a lot of college kids working at these computer repair joints.

I can't count how many computers I repaired where a friend of mine took said computer to this place, brought it home and it didn't even freaking work. Then they'd take it to me (because I'm starting to get a reputation for this) and I'd take it to my place, hook it up and... well, lemme tell you a story of my most recent.

Older computer, Win95. Woman took it to the repair shop, for a virus problem. Well, she didn't know it was a virus, but it very much sounds like that's what the problem was -- lots of massive slowdowns, random freezing, internet refused to work sometimes, etc.

The guys at the shop claimed it was a virus and that they removed it. She brought the computer home and in her words: "the screen looks all wonky, the modem won't work, and there's no sound, so I just gave up on it and let it sit in storage" I'm like "whaaaaat? Gimme that, I'll fix it."

I take it home and...

LOL.

Okay, what they did was very simple: They reformatted the HDD, reinstalled Win95, and they copied the driver files to the HDD but failed to actually install the driver files. I mean, Seriously? All they did was format and install Windows. Apparently they mistook the Driver File Extractor for the Driver Installation Program. All they did was download a zip (the same zip I downloaded), and double-clicked it... it Extracted the individual drivers onto the HDD... and that's it. These stupid college kids must have somehow thought that installed the driver files, despite the fact they didn't even bother checking to see if stuff actually worked (or noticed the fact the computer is still running in 16-color mode lol).

Oi.

Or then there was the time when a friend of mine had trouble running WoW on his computer. He'd log in, and the computer would immediately crash so he took the computer into the shop since it was still under warranty. They looked his computer over and said "Your video card is bad" after playing with some programs. They uninstalled his MoP Beta because they thought "that might be causing the issue". Seriously? A stand-alone program on the HDD is going to interfere with the video card while its not even running? Where did these guys get those little pieces of paper that claim they know their crap!?

Anyways, over the phone I instructed him to run dxdiag. Everything was OK. I said "Dude, there's nothing wrong with your video card...." and he goes "yeah I was thinking that, that's why I asked to have the computer back and decided to call you". I told him to boot the game up but DON'T log in (since that crashes the system). I said "Okay, click the System Button you see on the login screen and go to the Video section and see if anything looks weird" ... two minutes later and he goes "Um, it says DirectX 11, but I'm running DX10?" and I said "try changing it then."

What do you know?

Boom, works. He boots up and it plays fine.

Idiots (not the friend, I'm talking about the college kids working at that shop).

I have plenty more stories, but I think I derailed/rambled enough lol. But if you really wanna hear em....

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 9:01am by Lyrailis