Port explorer--cant seem to play games

Discussion in 'Port Explorer' started by Q-ball, May 6, 2003.

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  1. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    hello

    Now that i have the retail copy of PE up[wow that was a learning expierence---thx to help here] and running i started noticing that my games were lagging real bad

    So i got off the internet and went into some single player games.

    Well same thing,

    so i started disabling programs and found out that when i turned PE off that solved my game problem.

    The only thing i did in PS was disable svchost from calling out.

    I havnt used any other feature yet.

    All my games seem to skip and hang up while PE is on.

    Any suggestions??

    It seems like PE resets itself on reboots--am i right??


    Also what is wierd when i had the demo version of PE i didnt have this problem or atleast i dont remember having this prob.


    And yes i have upgraded to the new version,but i had the same problem before i updated also.
     
  2. Patrice

    Patrice Registered Member

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    Hi Q-ball!

    Why is PE on, when you are gaming? Why is it on all the time? For what purpose? I just start PE when I need it. Therefore I never had a problem.

    Regards,

    Patrice
     
  3. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Well ,i use it to stop some ports from calling out--thats the main reason i bought it

    I use blackice firewall and its not the best for filtering outbound traffic.

    So when i have to shut PE down im defeating my purpose for buying it
     
  4. Patrice

    Patrice Registered Member

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    O.K. Q-ball, I got your point. But in this special case I would change the software firewall. When you are gaming you don't see which ports are used (or you have to leave the game). A software firewall is much better, because it guards your computer when you're away from your computer for example. If you use PE as a "firewall" you have to be in front of your screen all the time... So I would go for another software firewall like Look'n'Stop, ZA or Sygate. Why not giving it a try? ;)

    Regards,

    Patrice
     
  5. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Well blackice is a firewall--a very good ids firewall.

    But it uses application controll over trusted programs.

    And once it is a trusted app you have no controll over when it calls out.Mainly it calls back to micrsoft but i just wanted more controll.

    Before others here say get a different firewall i already have
    outpost pro and sygate pro,but each firewall has something i like---blackice being the best with it true ids.

    But i should not be having this problem with PE,it is suppose to use very little memory.

    I might reinstall outpost later if i cant fix this


    regards
     
  6. Pilli

    Pilli Registered Member

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    To be honest Q-bal, I cannot see how PE can interfere with your gaming as it uses little resources.
    Do you have file logging & windows logging running? If so what are they set at?
    I sspying initiated & on how many ports?
    You can reduce the memory usage by going into settings "reduce memory usage" but with your powerful PC I cannot see that would be a problem, worth a try though.
    Can please state the games you are playing - servers etc.?
    My experiance with on-line gaming using broadband has always been affected by the speed of the servers & the Internat as a whole - never by the PC

    Cheers Pilli
     
  7. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Hey pilli

    Well here are some of the games--UT2003,medal of honor
    spearhead,splinter cell--etc.

    My single player games play the same too--jerky.hanging up----all of them play like that


    When i cut PE off they run like they did before---very fast.

    I dont have spying or logging turned on and i did choose reduce memoy usage.

    If i have to put outpost pro back on-- i will ,im just trying to understand this.It could possibly be that PE and blackice dont work well together.



    I would just like someone else here that has PE and plays games to let me know of there expierence.


    Thanks
     
  8. Metallica

    Metallica Guest

    No problems here, Q-ball. Playing Wolfenstein with PE, TDS-3 and NAV running on a system far less powerful then yours. :doubt:
     
  9. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Yeah--ill just have to figure out which of my programs are conflicting with PS


    Thanx for your reply
     
  10. Jooske

    Jooske Registered Member

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    Could have to do with the layered securityu techniques -- ever saw a recommendation to uninstal the firewalls, then first install PE and after that the firewalls again. I know this is quite a thing if you have several firewalls, but it could be a working solution.
    Maybe you like to wait for Gavin/Jason's confirmation in this possibility before you would start all that work i would not be looking for myself either if not really necessary. There might be nicer solutions.
     
  11. Jason_DiamondCS

    Jason_DiamondCS Former DCS Moderator

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    Hi again Q-Ball,
    I've played a lot of games with Port Explorer in the background and it has been fine, and since your are on a 3ghz? machine I can't imagine how it would slow down your system. My work machine is a 1ghz celeron and it only uses 3% of cpu every "update" doing some heavy web browsing.

    Remember when you "block" ports in Port Explorer you don't need to keep the GUI open for them to stay active, the blocks stay active until you reboot, the same goes with spying. Spying on sockets CAN slow down sending/receiving throughput depending on how much data is actually being spied upon, so make sure you aren't spying on a lot of sockets whilst playing games.

    Port Explorer can use some CPU when there are upwards of 500 sockets being created and destroyed within say a 30 second period. Online games however usually only create one or two sockets (especially if its a UDP game) to send and receive data.

    The next release of Port Explorer which will be out in a few days has been optimized even more for high socket counts so I would like to hear your experiences with that when its released. I have noticed a 5 times speed increase when stress testing, plus a lot of other benefits.

    -Jason-
     
  12. Andreas1

    Andreas1 Security Expert

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    Q-Ball,
    have you tried if the problem persists when you *allow* svchost? - being disconnected for the try, that shouldn't hurt.

    Other than that, here's a "reduce-ressource-usage" setup:
    - "reduce memory usage".
    - refresh display rarely.
    - keep "show new/dead ports for x" in tune with refreshing interval.
    - turn off file logging.
    - turn off window logging.
    - don't resolve hosts/ports.
    - don't spy.
    - keep PE minimized.
    While i doubt that the problem lies in there, you could try if your situation improves when you do one or more of these things.

    And if you have PE logs, you can check to see if the games try to open ports (what protocol, how many sockets?)...

    HTH,
    Andreas
     
  13. Jason_DiamondCS

    Jason_DiamondCS Former DCS Moderator

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    Some good points Andreas! Sometimes if you block a windows service from sending/receiving they don't know how to handle that and try forever to keep sending the data. Trust microsoft for the programming that assumes because it is a service it can do whatever it wants ;) . But anyhow, unblock any ports you have blocked, and don't spy on anything and see if that helps at all.

    -Jason-
     
  14. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Hey guys

    Looks like some great advice.

    This is my setup then what is happening

    3.0ghz pentium
    Via p4b400-fl
    512 kingston hyper x 3500 ram
    80 gig-8meg cash wd
    Pny ti4600

    Now i did a fresh format--[it was really time for 1] after installing xp pro i installed all the updates .

    I installed the hyperon drivers for via and the 43.51 drivers for video.

    Now PE was the first program i installed then i installed solder of fortune 2.

    With PE on i went to play a game and still the same thing was happening in single player mode---it was skipping and jerking and the sound was crackling a little.

    So i got outa the game and turned PE off--went back into game--still singe player--and it ran very smooth--no prob.

    This is wierd--i just dont know--because this is a extremly fast computer.

    It does the same thing with medal of honor--jerky,until i turn off PE.

    Now im still using the same drivers for my video card that i used before the format.Dont know if that could be a problem or possibly the hyperon drivers for northbridge.


    regards
     
  15. Andreas1

    Andreas1 Security Expert

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    Q-Ball,
    could you try some of my suggestions from above (or if you have done so, report your findings), and/or post some logs from PE?
    TIA,
    Andreas
     
  16. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Ok --ive tried it all --i already had it set up like that.

    Well ive been testing it in single player mode with PE on--so i wasnt even on the net.

    - keep "show new/dead ports for x" in tune with refreshing interval.--I wasnt sure what this 1 was.


    Are you guys using xp pro??
     
  17. Andreas1

    Andreas1 Security Expert

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    I was just meaning that if you refresh the display every 10 seconds but specify that you want to show dead sockets only for 3 seconds then either the 3 or the 10 seconds value will be ignored, which could maybe cause quicker refreshes than intended or some processing overhead...

    I am using W2k pro - but i don't have any games, so i'm just trying to give some theoretical advice without being able to test much...

    Still one to go ;)
    have any PE logs?

    got some new ideas: does your hdd sound like being busy more than usual (if it is, then you could try sysinternal's filemon to find out what is being accessed by whom)? What does Windows taskmanager say about CPU usage?

    (In some minutes, i'll be off for tonite - me being GMT+1, but i'll check back here tomorrow)

    CU,
    Andreas
     
  18. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Its really not a big deal.

    PE is a great running program--ill just turn it off before i go into a game

    I really think the problem is between PE and my northbrige via drivers .

    I may just sell this MB soon and get me a canterwood board.

    I dont have any PE logs being i had turned that off.

    With everything running in background--my cpu usage jumps from 0-6%
     
  19. Andreas1

    Andreas1 Security Expert

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    that's weird.
    i'm running out of ideas. i can only hope that there is enough information on the table that Jason (or whoever) is able to figure out what could be behind it (or that someone else shows up with more suggestions).
    Sorry that i couldn't help more, :doubt:
    Andreas
     
  20. Jason_DiamondCS

    Jason_DiamondCS Former DCS Moderator

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    Hi QBall,
    I run Windows XP Pro at home and havn't noticed any slowdown issues with PE. I don't really run Port Explorer whilst I play games but I have done some occasional spying of sockets on various games (Warcraft 3 / UT2003) and didn't notice any "slowdown" at all. How would you describe the slowdown? A constant slowness or does it alternate between being fast then slow and if it alternates does it slow down at the same interval?

    I am using Hyperion 4.45 drivers on my KT400 AMD board and NVIDIA DETONATORS 43.45, somewhat similar to your setup except you have a hyperthreading CPU :) . Is Hyper Threading enabled for your CPU? You would think with HT enabled and Port Explorer only using the integer parts of the CPU your games would not be affected at all since they are mostly Floating Point based.

    All I can offer at the moment is you just don't run Port Explorer in the background whilst your gaming and/or try and find whatever conflict on your system is causing this (if there is one).

    -Jason-
     
  21. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Hello again

    Well its not as much as a slow down as it is a jerkyness in games.

    Im talking about single player games,it seems like the games jerks about every 2 sec.

    But its no big deal--like i said ill just turn it off in games.I took blackice off and put sygate pro and system safety monitor so i good to go.


    Truly thanks for the help anyway andreas and jason
     
  22. Jason_DiamondCS

    Jason_DiamondCS Former DCS Moderator

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    Hi Q-Ball,
    Ok, I also use Sygate Pro and like it a lot, seems nice on resources and is one of the best software firewalls. I was just wondering if the "jerkyness" corresponded to each "refresh" of Port Explorer or not. But I guess it doesn't matter. Have fun with your system :)


    -Jason-
     
  23. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Hey jason

    I thought about that too and changed it to 30 sec.
    But that didnt work--well maybe with updates it will work in the future in games.
     
  24. Jason_DiamondCS

    Jason_DiamondCS Former DCS Moderator

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    Hmm very odd then since Port Explorer does absolutely nothing inbetween updates (unless File Logging is enabled) so I can't see how Port Explorer could cause any slowdown! Not a major problem though, just make sure you keep getting upgrades to drivers for your new hardware... there are always new fixes with relatively new hardware :)
    -Jason-
     
  25. Q-ball

    Q-ball Registered Member

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    Hello jason

    Well i really dont know what i did ,but PS now works with all my games.Just dont understand it,but hey--it works now!! :D
     
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