GZDoom taking forever to load! HELP!

[Guest]

So, I'm trying to play Doom/Doom II/Heretic through GZDoom and everything was working great until I was messing with the display settings. I am using an Xbox One controller. Everything was fine. then I did something that disconnected the controller. I can't pinpoint what it was. Anyway, hoping to undo whatever happened, I reset everything back to default settings. However, when I tried to re-'enable controller input' it would freeze. I would just see the windows cursor with the blue loading circle next to it. So I would just Ctrl-Alt-Delete' to end program. This happened over and over again. I tried one last time to 'enable controller' and let it sit and sure enough it turned controller input on. Now everything seems to work but when I click to run the WAD from the GZDoom menu, it takes like 5 minutes to load it.. What gives? I have no idea what I did Forgive my Noobiness.. I am not super savvy with computers even though I've been playing Doom since its inception as a wee lad..

[Sacto17pete]

To be more specific... It's taking like 5 minutes to load the WAD after clicking on it, whether it's Doom, Doom 2 or heretic, it takes FOREVER to load.. just yesterday it was loading fine.. Do I need to re-install GZDoom?

[wildweasel]

Can you post us a startup log? Try running GZDoom with +logfile log.txt and then paste the contents of the resulting log.txt into pastebin.

[Sacto17pete]

I will do that as soon as I get home from work, thanks!

[Sacto17pete]

umm, just how does one do that, exactly? ha

[Sacto17pete]

Can you post us a startup log? Try running GZDoom with +logfile log.txt and then paste the contents of the resulting log.txt into pastebin.

Well it seems to have fixed itself...

On a seemingly unrelated note, my AMD Radeon settings program is completely unresponsive..? My computer must sense fear and/or ineptitude because it's slowly rebelling against me!

[Rachael]

This sounds like classic HDD aging, leading to possibly eventual failure. Things might be fine now, but you should definitely put it on your list to replace it when you have the means to do so, preferably with an SSD.

[Sacto17pete]

This sounds like classic HDD aging, leading to possibly eventual failure. Things might be fine now, but you should definitely put it on your list to replace it when you have the means to do so, preferably with an SSD.

Is that normal for an HDD that's only a couple years old? It IS one of those pre-built beginner's rigs from CyberPower, though, that I bought on Amazon in 2016.

[wildweasel]

if you've been repeatedly installing and uninstalling stuff, or downloading a lot and then deleting a lot, your hard drive might be heavily fragmented. Windows has a built-in disk defragmenter, but Piriform Defraggler arguably handles that task better.

[Sacto17pete]

if you've been repeatedly installing and uninstalling stuff, or downloading a lot and then deleting a lot, your hard drive might be heavily fragmented. Windows has a built-in disk defragmenter, but Piriform Defraggler arguably handles that task better.

Yes, I have been installing steam games then uninstalling them upon realization that I want to play and finish other games first.. I was just reading about how that affects the HDD... My friend also JUST told me the other night about Piriform Defraggler, too. I will do that when I get home! Thanks!

[Rachael]

Is that normal for an HDD that's only a couple years old? It IS one of those pre-built beginner's rigs from CyberPower, though, that I bought on Amazon in 2016.

Yes, it is, especially if it's seen heavy use - and even more especially if it's an off-brand pre-built system.

Wildweasel is right - fragmentation has a lot to do with it - but Windows handles that automatically, so that should not be an issue, unless you never leave your system running at all. What may be happening is the disk is starting to develop read errors, and having to move sections of data to other parts (invisibly). These typically get worse over time, and it does not matter the age of the drive it can happen with relatively newer ones, too (often a manufacturing defect).

You might get CrystalDiskInfo (or Smartmontools if you're a power user) and do a quick check to see how your hard drive is doing. This software works by querying the HDD's firmware to see how many errors it has encountered and corrected.

[Sacto17pete]

Not sure if it makes a huge difference, but I always turn the computer off after I play. I'm not sure if you'd call me a "power user", I only play for a few hours at a time, maybe every other night, sometimes not for weeks at a time though. But I rarely let the computer just sit for more than a couple hours when I'm not using it. Should I be letting it stay on?

[Rachael]

It might be good to do so at least on some nights.

It seems like default Windows does it at ~1AM Wednesday morning, so leave it on Tuesday nights, particularly. (Such as tonight)

And yes, turning it off like that prevents the auto defragger from working, so that probably contributes a lot to your slow downs.

[drfrag]

Which windows version? It's not fragmentation, a fragmented hard drive cannot cause a five minutes delay. Windows XP never defragmented automatically, on windows 7 SP1 there was a bug and the task was not executed. Also if there's a power failure in the middle of a maintenance operation you can lose all the data on your hard drive at least on Windows 7. Sure, there are data recovery tools.
You should check your drive smart parameters with smartmontools first, if your disk is failing you'll probably kill it trying to defragment. But this looks like a malware or antivirus problem.

[Rachael]

Ah, yes, malware. That's a system killer, too