Sorry Guyz - ANOTHER Techie Prob Please?

Mancunian

As you will know if you've read my previous post on asking techie questions, I'm not too hot on the technical side of computers other than understanding the components, installing/using/configuring software and using them.

I'm an occasional games player and I've enjoyed playing a couple of games although not for a while. One of them, EA's Total Club Manager 2004 is great and I've played it without problem several times. Since I've been folding I've not been playing ... until yesterday and again just now. What's happening is that every few seconds (5 to 15) the game screen switches back to the desktop and the active games window pauses. If I click back to it from the bottom of the desktop, it carries on until it switches back AGAIN to the desktop and so on ad infinitum! SO frustrating!

I've paused my folding client (GUI) but made no difference. A friend visiting today has no idea what is/was causing it but suggested removing my folding client altogether so I did just that, I quit the program and BINGO! things are now working just fine! So can anyone enlighten me what might be going on here please and is there any way that I can fix this or do I need to quit the program every time I want to play a game? I have plenty of RAM, disk space and processing power (I think) so shouldn't make any difference, surely? It doesn't interfere with my other computing activities, including playing web based games such as online poker or macromedia (?) ones. So why this one? Is there a clash somewhere? Is the ONLY solution to quit the program totally when I want to play games on my machine? I know there are those in the team who do play and enjoy games as well as folding so what am I doing that you are not or vice-versa? You're not quitting folding during your game play time, or are you?

Thanks for any elightenment that you guys can share with me. As always it's very much appreciated.

Cheers
Nick

PS Using a P4 2.4GHz CPU, 3/4 GIG DDR RAM, NVidia MMX 440 graphic card etc and running WinXP Home Edition SP1 with Microsoft's hotfix for the known 8E Stop screen bug - just incase anyone was going to ask.

gibbonsl

try using the console version of folding client

profdlp

gibbonsl wrote:

try using the console version of folding client

That's the answer to your problem.

The Graphical Folding version uses OpenGL to draw the proteins. If your game uses that API they will play tug-of-war with your video.

gibbonsl nailed it for you.

mmonnin

Yeah its probably the OpenGL crap they use. It messes with some games, others its fine with. I always use the console version. If you dont like it in your taskbar, run it as a service and then use EM3 to monitor your status.

Mancunian

Thanks guys. I recon you're both right. I just installed and played *another* game today - Tom Claney's Splinter Cell and that runs perfectly with no problem at all. It could be that the other two games were older (I think) and maybe use a different 'engine' or something? Why both the others (Arthur's Quest and Total Club Manager 2004) do this and Splinter Cell doesn't, despite being more graphically and sound intensive, I can only think it's because it uses Direct X - perhaps instead of this openGL thing you mentioned, Prof?

Well whatever it is, thanks. I don't play the other 2 games that often so I guess it just means I'll have to close down if/when I play the others. It's not usually more than an hour or two a couple of days a week so shouldn't put a brake on my folding TOO much - I hope.

mmonnin

Dont worry about closing FAH when playing games. If you look at your CPU usage while in game, the game will be taking like 99% of your CPU time so FAH MIGHT do one frame while playing. Just remember yo restart the folding client when you are done gaming.

Mancunian

Thanks mmonnin but as you'll see from what I said first time around, the other 2 games won't allow me to play them UNLESS I quit the folding program from the taskbar or it's jumping to the desktop all the time every few seconds. As I said, I don't play them THAT often so it's not going to make a huge difference for me I'm pleased to say. What's more frustrating now is receiving a game (Atari's Act of War - Direct Action) which doesn't support many graphics cards, including NVidia's most popular 4 series and many others. Means buying a new super-dooper graphics card that supports pixel shaders in hardware apparantly. Ok if you have about 100 to 200 pounds lying around the place. Can't believe it doesn't have an option to use a different method of shading or to turn it off altogether but there you go. So it's back from whence it came as soon as I can stuff it back in the envelope. What a waste of time THAT was .... sorry guys, I digress.

Sorry. :hitit2:

mmonnin

You have the GUI, the one with the pics and such. It runs in the system tray by the clock. The console runs in the taskbar like any other program that you open. It send you to your desktop because of the graphics in the GUI. The console is only text so it wont do that.

Mancunian

Hello again mmonnin. Thanks again for your thoughtful insight into my problem and for explaining it in a way that even I fully understand.

I downloaded both versions of the folding program when I first got to hear about it so it won't be a problem to switch over but I'll wait for the current WU I'm doing to complete first. It finishes early Saturday morning so I'll set it to pause after this WU and switch then. That should do the trick I'm sure!