S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Loading times problem - Hardware & Software

My STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl appears to be stuck on the loading screen for.. well, about 15-30 minutes when I try to play LAN with a friend. Are there any fixes for this? I run the Steam version, and I just installed it. It's the latest version. I eventually manage to get in the game, and it runs smoothly when I do, but I am not exaggerating when I say it takes 15-30 minutes, and it makes playing the game kinda unbearable

You might want to post this in the STALKER megathread.

I did. No responses as the thread moves too fast [editline]6th July 2011[/editline] The same happens if I try to load single player

defrag it and your harddrive Delete all of STALKER's files and re-download/re-install. check your temps using HWmonitor to see if anything goes above 80C, if so your speeds are being throttled. if you have more than one ram stick, i recommend removing one or the other to see if one has gone bad or is slow. do those things in order and that's as extensive instructions i can give without any more information. Otherwise your computer could just load stalker maps slow.

The computer he is using is a school-issued HP laptop. A friend of mine has a similiar school issued HP laptop that is a year older than the one Zondac is using, and he can run Call of Pripyat with little problems on it. (Somewhat shitty performance due to intel GPU though) This issue appeared at first launch, just after he was finished downloading, so I don't see how fragmentation can be the problem. Though since the disk was 24% fragmented we decided to let it defragment anyways. We redownloaded the game as well, though that didn't cause anything to change. The temperatures of those school-issued laptops tend to be low, and generally they are reliable computers. It's only in this particular game that a problem like this has appeared, and it's absurdly severe. We even popped popcorn and ate the whole bag before he finished loading the first multiplayer map. :v: We've tried starting singleplayer, but since singleplayer maps are a lot bigger, It just crashes. (if it didn'd crash it'd probably use like 2 hours to load it anyways) Anyhow, here's the specifications: GPU: Some unnamed Intel HD graphics card. CPU: Intel Celeron P4500 (dual core) @ 1,87GHz RAM: 3GB "standard" laptop RAM. HDD: Some Samsung HDD at 7200RPM. OS: Windows 7 Professional. You might think "Oh but that's shit specifications, that's obviously the reason", but other people with the same computer is able to run this game without problems, and as soon as it is loaded it runs smoothly. [editline]6th July 2011[/editline] I'm a [del]wizard[/del] friend of Zondac if that wasn't clear.

Maybe add STALKER's folder to your AV's exclude list. Your AV might be scanning those files all the time.

[QUOTE=sim642;30936731]Maybe add STALKER's folder to your AV's exclude list. Your AV might be scanning those files all the time.[/QUOTE] Tried it, didn't work

Have you tried running in windowed mode? Other than that i have no idea what else can be done, sorry.

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;30939263]Have you tried running in windowed mode? Other than that i have no idea what else can be done, sorry.[/QUOTE] Done, didn't work... Eh

[url]http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/show_msgs.php?pid=540331&topic_id=m-1-55164764[/url] [quote=rougewarrior198]I actually got it working faster now. I went into steam, clicked on properties under stalker, type in "-prefetching" without the quotations. It is loading much faster now.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;30945604][url]http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/show_msgs.php?pid=540331&topic_id=m-1-55164764[/url][/QUOTE] Tried that too, as a rule of thumb I tend to google my problem before asking anything [editline]6th July 2011[/editline] I'm thinking it's just my computer being an asshole

Well this problem still persists, so I'll just go ahead and bump this thread.