• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

GTA IV + Windows 7 + Press key = mini studder?

H

HeXeD

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2001
Messages
286
Does anyone else have this behaviour so far? I have looked through almost every windows-7 thread here and I have seen one person who has the same problem but no mention of anyone else or any troubleshooting. Hopefully this thread can help out those people cause so far I have only had ONE problem with Windows-7... this one. If I can't get my GTA IV fix in within the next week I think I'm gonna have to go back to Vista...ugggg. So here is the info:

Specs:
Intel Q6600 @3.2GHz
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
4G Patriot PC6400
ATI Radeon HD 4850
320G Seagate 7200.10 SATA
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality edition
Logitech Bluetooth Keyboard
Microsoft Habu Gaming Mouse
24" Samsung 2493BW (1920x1200) & 42" 1080p Westinghouse (1920x1080)

Problem:
Everytime I press a key on the keyboard (..and I'm talking about ANY key on the keyboard, even ones not binded in the game and perform no action in the game), the game freezes very quickly. We are talking about a ~250ms pause (1/4 a second). Just say I am in a car. If I use my mouse to scroll around the car, absolutely NO brief pauses or framerate issues. Once I press forward (W) to go, I will get a very brief pause but as long as I hold that button down, the care will keep going faster and faster with absolutely NO skipping/pausing/FPS issues. The second I press left (A) or right (D) I will get another breif skip. When you are hauling ass in a car, once that 1/4 of a second video pause catches up to where you really are, you are most likely going to crash. I cannot play the game in this fashion. If you press a button once, and hold it, you can continue to hold buttons without the pause, but the second you press another button you will get the brief pause or studder. When you hit several buttons the pause/studder lasts much longer. If you are trying to bob and weave from the cops, while pressing different buttons (Up, left, right, run, jump) you might as well forget it because it chokes the video up very badly.

What I have tried to resolve the issue:
1. Reinstall
2. New drivers (went from the 8.12 Vista drivers from ATI to their Beta Windows 7 driver) was a huge PITA to uninstall the Vista drivers from Windows 7, specifically the Catalyst control center.
3. New drivers for my chipset (Vista 64 drivers from the Gigabyte site, seemed to install no problem and the few things unrecognized in my device manager are now displaying correctly.
4. Uninstalled Sound Card and ran without sound. Still studder
5. Tried to mess with the Affinity of the GTAIV executable while it was running. Turned it to only using 1 core.. game ran like complete crap..and it STILL had the keyboard pausing. Tried 2 cores, same thing. When I did this the sounds was completely messed up.
6. Tried to mess with the priority of GTAIV.exe, set it to high and it did nothing.
7. Tried running the EXE in Win XP, Vista, and Windows 2K compatability mode, and Vista and XP compatability did not even allow me to launch the game. Win 2K did basically nothing.
8. Tried a wired, regular, Dell USB keyboard (I have NOT tried a PS2 keyboard yet..)


Of course everyone knows that Windows 7 is beta, and that it is not supported by Rockstar. But I think this could be an issue we find a resolution for if we put our heads together. The only thing I am worried about is not many people have reported having this issue.

Would be a shame to have to ditch Windows 7 for Vista just because of GTA, but I will definitely do it. GTA IV seems to run VERY smooth on Windows 7...provided I hold down the up arrow and drive in a straight line.
 
I do not have this issue with GTA4 and Win7, seems more fluid but still get similar FPS... however, have you tried running it without your CPU overclocked?
 
I was under the impression that GTA IV didn't work at all on 7. I hope I don't have the same problem once I get up an running on 7.

Why not dual boot?
 
damonposey said:
what? a problem while running a beta OS. HOLY CRAP!
Click to expand...

What? A smartass on hardocp? HOLY CRAP! :rolleyes:

No one is disputing that there will be problems with a beta OS or that it is unheard of. See... they have these things called "forums" where people like to help people out, or try to help resolve an issue affecting multiple people. They are not here just so people can be a jackass.

On topic though, I just heard from someone in the gtaforums that fixed this issue. Apparently he chose a diagnostic startup in msconfig and pretty much removed everything from the startup in msconfig. I will have to get home to try this out too, but if this is the case then that means there is some service that is screwing with the way GTA runs. It would be nice to find the answer so I can continue using Windows 7.
 
Lepard said:
I do not have this issue with GTA4 and Win7, seems more fluid but still get similar FPS... however, have you tried running it without your CPU overclocked?
Click to expand...

I have not tried to bring my overclock to stock speeds, but if I cannot fix this with the msconfig fix, I will try to turn my overclock off. One thing that leads me to believe this won't help is just because the game runs abolutely fine if I don't touch the keyboard.. that kinda seems like an oxymoron to me though.
 
HeXeD said:
I just heard from someone in the gtaforums that fixed this issue. Apparently he chose a diagnostic startup in msconfig and pretty much removed everything from the startup in msconfig. I will have to get home to try this out too, but if this is the case then that means there is some service that is screwing with the way GTA runs. It would be nice to find the answer so I can continue using Windows 7.
Click to expand...

I'd be interested to hear if this fix works HeXeD. Please keep us informed :)
 
ok, after trying to deal with this assed up forum for the past 15 minutes, I finally got in to make a post.

The issue is now FIXED. The fix actually was easier than what I had mentioned.

Go to Start>run (or Window button+R) and type MSCONFIG and press enter. Go to the services tab and uncheck "Windows Event Log". Then click "ok". Once it asks you to reboot, allow it to reboot and when you are back into Windows fire up the gaame. It's just that simple. Thanks to the people at the GTAFORUMS for finding this little fix.

I jumped into my game kinda skeptical but once I got in game to my amazement everything was smooth as silk.. well as smooth as GTA IV for the PC can be. It actually feels like it runs smoother than my Vista install (which was only fresh by about 2-3 weeks). Now then again I did installl the new Cat's from ATI and in my previous install of Vista I was just running the 8.10. Yeah, I know, shoulda upgraded but I wasn't having any issues.

So I hope that everyone who has this problem can find this thread easily, and come to a conclusion sooner than I did, but hey, at least I didn't have to go back to Vista. And hopefully I do not run into any more problems like this one.. but you know.. Windows beta probably has a few tricks up its sleeves waiting for me.
 
HeXeD said:
Go to Start>run (or Window button+R) and type MSCONFIG and press enter. Go to the services tab and uncheck "Windows Event Log". Then click "ok". Once it asks you to reboot, allow it to reboot and when you are back into Windows fire up the gaame. It's just that simple. Thanks to the people at the GTAFORUMS for finding this little fix.
Click to expand...

Cool, nice to know it worked! I wonder how the hell Windows Event Log was causing that issue. Weird... Good find dude
 
Pretty interesting. At least it is fixed now, and documented. Hopefully someone reports this to either Rockstar or Microsoft so when Win7 is final we do not have to apply this fix.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top