Well I did something similar on a quite old forum and people responded quite favorably to it so I decided I would impart my knowledge here. Update: I've been stickied muhahaha, step 1 in taking over the world: Complete! *ahem* Moving on!
Before you post here, please read the "Read THIS first" spoiler a bit below.
Important info is in spoilers, 'cept for the first spoiler. Else would be my rantings/intro to each section. So if you're just here for a quick fix and don't care for reading... then stop reading this sentence and jump down to the spoilers.
Issues/solutions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are tons... meaning that there can be a ton of different symptoms but generally (and thankfully) from my experience, the solutions generally fall into a few categories.
Oh and once again... If the solution does not work for you, then please do not begin complaining about it. Like I said before, sometimes similar looking problems have different solutions... here goes!
Opeth, I'm looking at you.
You do not have the authority to play MS! Or at least these people didn't.
The solution was simple:
Right click on the maplestory icon and click on "Run as Administrator". Worked perfectly fine thereafter for certain maplers.
This next one affected a ton of GMS maplers who went to zakum.
Apparently another common problem:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dealing with Lag:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So yeah, this section deals with the fixable causes of lag and how to deal with them.
Graphics cards and RAM
Sometimes your graphics card sucks up too much of your RAM for its own good (here's looking at you... uh... well... most of the laptops that are cheap have this issue). These graphics cards are known as integrated graphics cards. On the other hand, dedicated graphics cards will not bug your RAM at all :3 This is a good thing to keep in mind when you're selecting a higher end laptop.
Anywho, so if you're going to be playing a game that's gonna stress your graphics card we should make sure that it doesn't attempt to hog too much of your RAM.
note: If the graphics card is crappy enough even the simplest of games alluding to high end 2d or low end 3d graphics will stress it.
let's get you some extra RAM for your programs to use, the nonpaying way :3
Hopefully you have an extra 4 gigs of hard disk space on your laptop you wont miss. One great solution to your lack of RAM is to allocate some harddisk space to act as RAM. Yes, you CAN do this. It can also be done by inserting a clean or freshly format flash drive and selecting the option "speed up my system using windows readyboost". <- I'll go over this one in a bit.
[SPOILER=Here's how we do it the hard disk way:]
1)Start Menu
2)Control Panel
3)Make sure you view the control panel in "Classic View" found on the left.
4)Performance Information & Tools
5)Where is says "Tasks" on the left. Locate and click on "Advanced Tools"
6)Click on "Adjust the appearance and performance of windows"
7)Click on the "Advanced" tab.
8)In the "Virtual Memory" section, click on "Change"
9)At the bottom of the pop up you'll see "Total paging file size for all drives" Take note of the number next to the word "Recommended". We'll use my number as an example: 1519mb.
10)Make sure that the top box is unchecked. "Automatically manage paging file..."
11)Below that, make sure that the option for "custom size" is the one filled in.
12)For "Initial size (MB)" Take your earlier recommended number and double it and type it in there. In my case, I typed in "3000" <- note I didn't put "mb" in there, just the number. For the "maximum size" option, triple your recommended number... "4500" is what I put in.
13)Please note that this amount is going to be removed from your current remaining harddisk space, so you'll be losing out on about 5 gigs of storage. But, you get free ram, sort of.
14)Make sure you hit ok. :3
Or, you could just go out and buy some better RAM for your comp. And the graphics card isn't too hot either, but hopefully that wont be too bad of an issue.
Before you post here, please read the "Read THIS first" spoiler a bit below.
Important info is in spoilers, 'cept for the first spoiler. Else would be my rantings/intro to each section. So if you're just here for a quick fix and don't care for reading... then stop reading this sentence and jump down to the spoilers.
How I learned about these fixes
was causing the problem. Once again, totally forgot how to fix that issue T.T
Key Notes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Issues/solutions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are tons... meaning that there can be a ton of different symptoms but generally (and thankfully) from my experience, the solutions generally fall into a few categories.
Oh and once again... If the solution does not work for you, then please do not begin complaining about it. Like I said before, sometimes similar looking problems have different solutions... here goes!
Everyone Read THIS First Please
Okay with that out of the way... let's start with what made me decide to type this thing up all over again from scratch >>Opeth, I'm looking at you.
Black Flickering Screen/Outright Crash
This next issue is by far THE biggest issue that occured in the previous forum, and a HUGE pain to fix... though only because of this next reason. If I recall correctly this same issue had about FOUR issues/solutions. Yes, a whole freaking FOUR(ish) separate things about vista could cause this problem. It sucked... majorly. Unfortunately I can only remember two of the solutions off the top of my head... I wrote the original article on fixing this issue on OdinMS's technical help forums. So yeah.
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error
[SPOILER=The "Admin" Solution]![[Image: messedupms.jpg]](http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q191/its15not10/messedupms.jpg)
You do not have the authority to play MS! Or at least these people didn't.
The solution was simple:
Right click on the maplestory icon and click on "Run as Administrator". Worked perfectly fine thereafter for certain maplers.
This next one affected a ton of GMS maplers who went to zakum.
DCing when Zakum dies, or after killing a certain phase.
Apparently another common problem:
error code: 10093
HackShield Initialization Error :0x00000203(515)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dealing with Lag:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So yeah, this section deals with the fixable causes of lag and how to deal with them.
Graphics cards and RAM
Sometimes your graphics card sucks up too much of your RAM for its own good (here's looking at you... uh... well... most of the laptops that are cheap have this issue). These graphics cards are known as integrated graphics cards. On the other hand, dedicated graphics cards will not bug your RAM at all :3 This is a good thing to keep in mind when you're selecting a higher end laptop.
Anywho, so if you're going to be playing a game that's gonna stress your graphics card we should make sure that it doesn't attempt to hog too much of your RAM.
note: If the graphics card is crappy enough even the simplest of games alluding to high end 2d or low end 3d graphics will stress it.
let's get you some extra RAM for your programs to use, the nonpaying way :3
Hopefully you have an extra 4 gigs of hard disk space on your laptop you wont miss. One great solution to your lack of RAM is to allocate some harddisk space to act as RAM. Yes, you CAN do this. It can also be done by inserting a clean or freshly format flash drive and selecting the option "speed up my system using windows readyboost". <- I'll go over this one in a bit.
[SPOILER=Here's how we do it the hard disk way:]
1)Start Menu
2)Control Panel
3)Make sure you view the control panel in "Classic View" found on the left.
4)Performance Information & Tools
5)Where is says "Tasks" on the left. Locate and click on "Advanced Tools"
6)Click on "Adjust the appearance and performance of windows"
7)Click on the "Advanced" tab.
8)In the "Virtual Memory" section, click on "Change"
9)At the bottom of the pop up you'll see "Total paging file size for all drives" Take note of the number next to the word "Recommended". We'll use my number as an example: 1519mb.
10)Make sure that the top box is unchecked. "Automatically manage paging file..."
11)Below that, make sure that the option for "custom size" is the one filled in.
12)For "Initial size (MB)" Take your earlier recommended number and double it and type it in there. In my case, I typed in "3000" <- note I didn't put "mb" in there, just the number. For the "maximum size" option, triple your recommended number... "4500" is what I put in.
13)Please note that this amount is going to be removed from your current remaining harddisk space, so you'll be losing out on about 5 gigs of storage. But, you get free ram, sort of.
14)Make sure you hit ok. :3
Or, you could just go out and buy some better RAM for your comp. And the graphics card isn't too hot either, but hopefully that wont be too bad of an issue.
The Flash Drive Method