Sudden FPS/Memory Issues, can anyone help?

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Hi, i’m not very tech literate so i hope someone can suggest what’s going on here.

I have a gaming laptop, here are the specs (Copy paste from speccy)
(i know it’s not the best, but it gets the job done and up until now has been brilliant with 0 issues)

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 9750H @ 2.60GHz
Coffee Lake 14nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Single-Channel DDR4 @ 1329MHz (19-19-19-43)
Motherboard
MEDION NH55RAQM (U3E1)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Unknown)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (CLEVO/KAPOK Computer)
SLI Disabled
Storage
931GB TOSHIBA MQ04ABF100 (SATA )
238GB NVMe SAMSUNG MZVLB256 (RAID (SSD))

Up until now i’ve been playing dragonflight very comfortably, ( on my SSD - the C drive) with processes like Discord and Youtube running in the background with no issues and decent FPS. not anything amazing, but it’s smooth and not laggy.

Last night after playing wow with no issues, i loaded up the sims 4 (big mistake) which is on my HDD (d drive) and it went glitchy for no reason at all. Skipping, laggy etc. I had a bad feeling, so loaded up wow, and it crashed, couldn’t even log on.

I noticed there was a Nvidia driver update, so updated it. I could play wow then, but it was incredibly low on fps, and still crashing. I have since rolled back the driver, but it changed nothing. I’ve updated it since, so i don’t think it’s a driver issue.

I checked the memory usage, and it was sitting at about 90-100%, it never used to. it used to sit at around 75%. I also noticed, while monitoring the task manager, that all the disk memory while playing was being pulled from the D drive. The SSD was sitting pretty, doing nothing, despite double checking that the c drive is where wow is.

I had a old copy of wow on my D drive, so i got rid of it, thinking that might be part of the issue. It’s playing a -little- better now, and the memory usage is sitting at 80%, unless i fly into valdrakken where the memory surges to 100% and the FPS tanks and freezes. I can’t have any other application open if i want to be able to play with a modicum of smoothness.

Surely it should not be pulling disk space from the HDD if it’s installed on the SSD? I really don’t know what’s going on here, and am looking for some suggestions, because there’s 0 reason for it’s performance to suddenly tank like this (other than the sims utterly poisoning my machine - never touching it again lol)

Any advice would be really welcome.

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I am not entirely following your explanation as you seem to be confusing memory (ram) and storage (hard disk, ssd) usage. And I have no idea what you mean by “disk memory”.

Couple things:

  • ~240 GB SSD is very small by modern standards. WoW alone can take well over 100 GB which is almost half. Add Windows and other programs and you might be running out of SSD space. SSDs can get slower when they are nearly full. Many installation programs also create temporary files on the operating system (usually C) drive so it might have been Sims 4 installation filling the disk.
  • Check your current disk usage from file explorer → This PC which shows the drives, their size and available space.
  • To clarify what you mean, maybe you could upload a screenshot of the task manager showing the issue. Use Imgur or similar service and paste the link using the PREFORMATTED TEXT option (looks like </> icon in the message editor).
  • Did you get any error messages when WoW crashed?

Based on the information you provided and how I understood it, it sounds like your C drive might be full or nearly full and it can cause all sorts of issues. If it’s nearly full I suggest trying to remove unused programs, games, temporary files etc.

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Hi, yeah i’m not too well versed in this stuff ^^:

I currently have about 50 gig available/free on the SSD, I try to make sure it’s not filled. It was running just fine on that before the incident. I don’t have a lot on it other than wow. Sims 4 is on my D drive, (i have a partitioned drive) along with classic wow, as they function just fine being there and don’t need a SSD.

no error messages that i saw.

Here’s a link to the device manager - sorry had to take a pic from my phone. one shows the current programs and the other shows the Disk space issue (it seems to be using hard drive disk space for memory and not the ssd?)

https://imgur.com/ISzEyiN

https://imgur.com/ad0CiW7
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50 GB free space should be enough so that probably isn’t the problem.

The task manager and WoW’s disk usage doesn’t actually show that WoW is using the HDD, just that something is using it.

I somehow had missed that you have a laptop: double check that WoW (and other games) use Nvidia GPU rather than Intel GPU. In the picture Intel GPU seems to be used so that might the problem. I believe this can be done in Windows’ Settings → Display → Graphics Settings or in the Nvidia control panel. Although I don’t know details as I have never actually owned a laptop with multiple GPUs. I think you might be able to change GPU directly in WoW, too, though I am not entirely sure.

You RAM (memory) is also pretty full, though that shouldn’t cause outright crashes but it might slow things down. Once you have checked the GPU settings you might want to try to close any unnecessary background programs to free some memory (Steam, Discord, Teams, other game launchers and so on, web browsers can also eat lots of RAM so at very least close unncessary tabs and maybe restart the browser).

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check ram especially if pins are clean if they aren’t clean like smudge on a pin being dirty can even cause stability issues, use cleaning cloth dipped in alcohol to clean it but keep alcohol away from anything that is plexi or acryl incase you are watercooling or have anything of that material.

This game uses a lot of ram these days it might be worth doing an upgrade, since you only have 8 gb ram, altho it would not hurt to test your ram and check if its dirty on the pins as that can defiantly effect stability or even cause it to not post, been there.

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Hi, I went into the game settings and made sure the game is using the Nvidia card. I’ve gone in Geforce and made sure it’s optimised there, but it’s not changed anything.

What’s confusing me is how one game glitching out can suddenly tank the performance of the entire PC, when literally less than 2 mins before I played the demonic sims 4, wow was running fantastically. I’m so confused, but I really appreciate the help!

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Don’t do this.

That is very very unlikely and “fixing” has high risk of damaging components, especially when disassembling the laptop if not already really familiar with the process. Dirty pins would not be causing slowdown or reduced FPS either. And how the heck pins would even get dirty inside fully assembled laptop? Sure, dust gets almost everywhere but between tightly placed connectors? Not goinmg to happen.

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You mentioned the crashes, did you get any error messages from WoW or elsewhere?

Check also Windows Event viewer (you can find event viewer when searching using the start menu search). Especially look for any errors mentioning display driver or nvlddmkm, but if there any other errors happening around the same time when wow crashes they might shed some light.

Check both “Application” and “System” logss. There are probably hundreds of different messages, most of them can be safely ignored so just focus on the time when the crash happens.

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don’t troll

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I’ll have a look at those, luckily it’s only crashed the once, but I didn’t see a error message. (doesn’t mean there isnt one of course)

Currently the game is playing ok-ish, outsisde of Valdrakken. Valdrakken never used to bother me, but now it’s a fps tank. I’m at least grateful that it’s somewhat playable, though dragonriding is sketchy. i’ve turned down a lot of my graphics (sad face)

I doubt the pins need cleaning, but if it comes to that i would have it done by a professional anyway as i’m the type who would break it haha :slight_smile:

So i found the crash error, and this is what it said in the event viewer:

The program Wow.exe version 10.1.7.51754 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
 Process ID: 388
 Start Time: 01da021bf529fb10
 Termination Time: 72
 Application Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Wow.exe
 Report Id: fb49ac68-0154-4cff-bd61-d6d049c83845
 Faulting package full name: 
 Faulting package-relative application ID: 
 Hang type: Unknown

And i’ve found 2 for the nvidia together:

The NVIDIA LocalSystem Container service terminated with the following error: 
A generic command executable returned a result that indicates failure.

and:

The NVIDIA LocalSystem Container service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 6000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

This one iv’e found three times, once on the 18th when this started, and twice on the 19th

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Open up Task Manager and see what using all your memory. But i will say right now. you need more ram, 8GB is NOT enough in 2023 not even close plus thats single channel meaning your losing a good bit of performance. If that is DDR4 then you can buy another 8GB stick for less than 50 euros on ebay or amazon (is that a thing in EU?)

As for the HDD activity thats called windows page file if you dont have enough ram it uses your HDD/SSD for swapping memory and it seems your windows set that up to use your mechanical drive causing stuttering and issues.

You can change that very easily by Right clicking the start button and clicking on “system” then on the right side go to “Advanced System Settings” and under performance click “Settings” then click on the second tab called “Advanced” then on the bottom its called “Virtual memory” click on the button that says “change” then uncheck the box at the top that says “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” then under D Select “No paging file” and go to C and make one for 16384MB then click set and that “should” fix that problem after a reboot.

But i strongly urge you to upgrade your ram to 16GB atleast.

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Have you checked your HDD (Mechnaical drive on D) for errors? A sudden large increase in activity and crashes could indicate there’s an issue with the drive itself. If the drive is struggling to seek/read/write due to age or damage that woud increase activity wihch will bog down the system and can result in crashes.

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I considered doing that, but after some googling I found that doing this can severely impact the lifespan of the SSD? Unless i’m mistaken.

Checking the status of the D drive is something I need to do, so I will get back to you on that.

edit; ran a check on the d drive, it’s fine.

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How did you check the drive? Windows’ own tool is unlikely to find hardware faults.

You can use tool like CrystalDiskInfo to get more details about the drives and their health.

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

Download the Standard edition unless you want anime girl version. If the program lists drives as OK/healthy then fault is probably not the drives. If there are yellow or red warnings then there might be some issues, but depends on exactly what value is triggering it.

Note that the SMART stats the program lists are not 100% reliable either.

I personally don’t really have other suggestions for you as of what might be cause and trying to troubleshoot over forums is quite difficult. If everything else fails you can try to refresh or reinstall Windows.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-fresh-start-0ef73740-b927-549b-b7c9-e6f2b48d275e

You can also create a new Windows installation media and use it if you so desire. No matter what you do take backups of everything important. You should have backups always as sometimes hardware can fail without warning or something else happens to make the data inaccessible.

Ráevelyn’s suggestion of RAM upgrade is also a good one, 8 GB is not very much for WoW especially since Windows and programs running on background will use it as well, though obviously you were happy with the performance before the recent issues.

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Hi, i really appreciate all the assistance, and understand it’s very hard - i tend to be the person who gets the very odd problems!

Im thinking I may just take it to a local repair shop, and ask them to investigate - and while they are at it, install some more RAM. Its a bit of a nightmare and I think whatever’s wrong with it, it’s outside my ability to fix. thanks again for the help tho :slight_smile:

UPDATE: For no reason whatsoever - the game is now running as smoothly as it was before. i’ve done nothing to it, not sure what’s happened. The only difference I can see, is that now it is pulling 0 disk memory from the D disk drive. Either way, i’ll get some more RAM, but I am utterly stumped!

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Something similar happened to me an hour ago. I was immediately kicked out of the game due to insufficient RAM memory, twice. It has never happened to me before and I think it could have something to do do with me starting (and closing) Diablo IV some time ago. I rebooted and now it works perfectly again. Diablo seems to have some issues that eats up all the RAM and doesn’t release it after the game is over.

Worth trying a reboot and hope it solves the problem

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it won’t. you got to remember modern SSD’s are rated for hundreds of Terabytes written thats a huge amount. Plus they also have warranties and windows has built in measures to not wear out an SSD.

I had no doubt your drive was fine, the issue is it’s slow technology and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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