Graphics freeze momentarily every second

[Cantoris]

Loved this game and played it successfully in the past.

A couple of months later I'm back to try some user-made levels and now have problems. Don't know whether this is due to Dark Descent updates, new graphics drivers, windows updates or something else.

Basically, there is a tiny freeze about once a second all the time during the game - including at the menu screen. It affects the mouse too. It makes the game pretty unplayable.

I've tried reducing various settings, turning off Aero, closing various other apps, disabling antivirus etc.

One custom game I tried kept crashing at the same point early on claiming my graphics card wasn't up to the job (an Nvidia pop-up on the desktop).

OS = Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU = Core2Duo E6420
RAM = 4GB
Graphics card = Nvidia 7600GT
Sound Card = Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium

Graphics drivers are the current Nvidia ones (I uninstalled the old ones before putting the new ones on).

Windows Experience Index:
CPU = 5.3, RAM = 5.5, GFX = 5.7, Gaming GFX = 4.3, HDD = 5.8

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Tanshaydar]

Please do a verifying integrity cache via Steam.

[Cantoris]

Please do a verifying integrity cache via Steam.

Still the same after this, sorry.

[Tanshaydar]

So, actual game works, but custom story doesn't work?

[Cantoris]

No, the normal game misbehaves too - even just sitting at its main menu.

It used to be fine in the past.

[Tanshaydar]

Can you delete Amnesia folder under Documents and try again?
Be informed in this way all of your saves will be gone.

[Cantoris]

Still doing it after that as well

In case it's helpful, here's the stack of the busiest thread in the process courtesy of Process Explorer:

ntoskrnl.exe!memset+0x64a
ntoskrnl.exe!HalPrivateDispatchTable+0x1160
ntoskrnl.exe!__misaligned_access+0x1821
ntoskrnl.exe!KiCheckForKernelApcDelivery+0x25
ntoskrnl.exe!KeSetActualBasePriorityThread+0xc6b
win32k.sys!EngCopyBits+0x1684
ntoskrnl.exe!KeSynchronizeExecution+0x3a43
wow64win.dll+0x4007a
wow64win.dll+0x1beb3
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0xd7
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x2d
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce
wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x429
ntdll.dll!RtlUniform+0x6e6
ntdll.dll!RtlCreateTagHeap+0xa7
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe
USER32.dll!GetDC+0x177
SDL.dll!SDL_RegisterApp+0x2a29
SDL.dll!SDL_PumpEvents+0x22
SDL.dll!SDL_PollEvent+0xb
Amnesia.exe+0x1ac8f2
Amnesia.exe+0x11942c

[plutomaniac]

just run Amnesia until it reaches the main menu without loading a custom story or something and exit the game. After that, attach is again the HPL.log file.

[Cantoris]

Thanks for the on-going help.

Here's the log.

[plutomaniac]

The log seems just fine and doesn't report any problems. The menu should be as expected. Notice that your graphics card can barely run the game ans so that may be the reason. Make sure you have the latest drivers installed:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvis...river.html