Post by sinbold on Apr 10, 2007 2:22:40 GMT -5
After talking with several folks about the excellent thread on Guru on how to defrag your GW file, I thought I'd post a link to it here. Now some of you are saying, "I defrag all the time, I don't need this." The problem is that Windows WILL NOT defrag your GW file because it's too big. Don't believe me? Check your log next time you defrag- it'll say the GW file wasn't defragged. A very large (3 gig +) fragmented file will cause lag when your PC has to jump from one fragment to another. Ever wonder why you might get some lag and your connection speed dot is still green? Fragged file may be the reason. I lag all the time after zoning because I only have 256k of RAM, and this defrag program eliminated a ton of my in-game lag. My first run of the program showed my file was in 1,400+ fragments. I've since gotten it down to 3 fragments.
Anyway, enough of my yammering.... Here's the link to the forum. Look for the program called "contig"- it's all you need- and follow the directions in the post to the letter. Skip the "Power Defragmenter GUI" and go down to the "Alternate" part. It looks like this:
Alternate ===> Bad lag? Try this.
www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10037429
Quote:
Even if you defrag your drive regularly (and face it, most of us don't), apparently the process often skips your GW.dat file because it is too large, ungainly, doesn't match the algorithms, whatever.
Anyway, Vyk has been suffering from horrible lag with Factions - in fact, increasingly bad lag since she installed the game. So we've been looking for a solution.
Thanks to this thread (see below), I learned that some peoples' lag is due to caching issues from a very large, unwieldy and badly fragmented data file - as we've been downloading all these streaming updates, the problem has only gotten worse.
What to do? A small program called Contig works as a single-file defragmenter, and is quite easy to use.
Download it here.
Unzip the exe to your C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory.
Click Start -> Run -> 'cmd'
At the command prompt, type: contig -a "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.dat" (this is assuming you installed it to the default directory). This will tell you how fragmented your file is.
To defrag it, run the same line again but without the -a flag. You might need to do a few passes to get it down to its minimum file size.
Anyway, enough of my yammering.... Here's the link to the forum. Look for the program called "contig"- it's all you need- and follow the directions in the post to the letter. Skip the "Power Defragmenter GUI" and go down to the "Alternate" part. It looks like this:
Alternate ===> Bad lag? Try this.
www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10037429
Quote:
Even if you defrag your drive regularly (and face it, most of us don't), apparently the process often skips your GW.dat file because it is too large, ungainly, doesn't match the algorithms, whatever.
Anyway, Vyk has been suffering from horrible lag with Factions - in fact, increasingly bad lag since she installed the game. So we've been looking for a solution.
Thanks to this thread (see below), I learned that some peoples' lag is due to caching issues from a very large, unwieldy and badly fragmented data file - as we've been downloading all these streaming updates, the problem has only gotten worse.
What to do? A small program called Contig works as a single-file defragmenter, and is quite easy to use.
Download it here.
Unzip the exe to your C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory.
Click Start -> Run -> 'cmd'
At the command prompt, type: contig -a "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.dat" (this is assuming you installed it to the default directory). This will tell you how fragmented your file is.
To defrag it, run the same line again but without the -a flag. You might need to do a few passes to get it down to its minimum file size.
