Pol.exe CPU usage of 90%+

[YumYumPB&J]

I posted previously with a skipping issue that hasn't been resolved yet. After re-installing FFXI and finding no solution, I found a post by someone on Killing Ifrit that is outdated but is very similar to my problem. Essentially her computer's CPU usage spiked to 90-100% while running FFXI which caused a lot of lag and skipping. I've noticed that mine also reaches into the 90%+. While idle and running Mozilla Firefox my CPU usage is only 4%.

I'm at my wit's end with the skipping. If it's in any way connected to my CPU issue, I'd love any suggestions to lower it. Also, it runs at Normal Priority and I've checked my DMA (I've learned a lot from googling, lol ; ; ) and that's configured as it should be for XP.

[Blubbartron]

Your computer specs would be helpful in this case. If your cpu isn't particularly powerful, you could max it out very easily. I've got an E6750 (dual core) OC'd to 3.2GHz, and I still hit like 35-40% when I bind the process to a single core. Granted, that's running a resolution of 1680x1050 and oversampling by 10% to improve quality.

Long and short of it, we need more info in order to help. Anything and everything can give a clue as to what's going on.

[The Stig]

Are you on a Pentium 4? I had a laptop with a Pentium 4 3.0ghz and had the same issue. I just ignored it and tried my best to play in the end, but I do recall somewhere someone saying it's possible an issue with how FFXI works with the Pentium 4.

[SnickySnacks]

Given that I ran FFXI on an 800mhz WinME machine for 4+ years, believe me when I say that FFXI can run on some amazingly crappy machines.

On my newer Vista64 machine it runs very well, however when I installed Comodo Firewall I suddenly got stuttering (the game would pause for half a second every 5-10 seconds) which drove me nuts. Even though I was only using 25% of my CPU there seemed to be no way to get Comodo to play nicely with FFXI and 1 of them ended up uninstalled.

So, as Blubbartron said...It'd be good to have your computer specs, what operating system you're running, and any "always on" software you're using (virus scanners, firewalls, etc).

[YumYumPB&J]

It's a Toshiba Satellite

Genuine Intel(R) CPU
T1350 @1.86 GHz
1.86 GHz, 504 MB of RAM

Video

* Graphics Processor / Vendor Intel GMA 950
* Video Memory Dynamic Video Memory Technology 3.0
* Max Allocated RAM Size 128.0 MB


The laptop has never given me a problem before. I've since tried to "tweak it" (i.e. changing the Virtual Memory space).

[SephYuyX]

Looks normal to me.

[YumYumPB&J]

Here are some pics of Task Manager:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...ght43/PicI.jpg

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...ht43/PicII.jpg

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...t43/PicIII.jpg

[Purrrfect]

Its a single core, so when pol has shit to do it grabs all it can get. So unless you're in your moghouse or farming your cpu usage is gonna be up a bit and in wg it is probably gonna stay near 90%. The video isn't helping your case to reduce the usage much either. and with 128mb of ram I bet it is swapping to virtual memory constantly, which could definitely cause hiccups.

[theo]

I used to run with an AMD 2.2 Ghz processor. My pol.exe was at 99% almost the entire time. That was at 1280x1024 resolution. What you're describing sounds fairly normal for an older single-core machine.

[Pun]

I had the same problem as you did. My old computer was a 1.6GHz single core, and had 1gig of RAM. FFXI would take up 96% of my CPU while running. I can only say that FFXI is processor intensive, especially with older CPUs. My newer computer has a 3.0GHz dual core, and FFXI never uses more than 40% at any given time. I'm not too qualified to give advice as to what you should do, but I can tell you that the massive increase in processor power was the only thing I found to fix the issue.

[YumYumPB&J]

My main confusion is that I never had this issue before. No skipping, barely any lag (minus Besieged and Dynamis).

This is Task Manager with FFXI running:

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...ght43/FFXI.jpg

@.@ I'm going nuts trying to figure it out.

Most effects in the game and in FFXI Config are currently turned off or low but to no avail. No shadows, no footprints, no weather.

[Blubbartron]

If you haven't tweaked any settings to higher quality recently, it's possible you got some malware or something that also wants processor time. I'd recommend running whatever app you have to see if there's anything there. If you don't have anything, Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware are both quality, free programs. Should find links to them in the sticky if you don't care to google.

[YumYumPB&J]

I downloaded the Spybot Search & Destroy and it found some Virtumonde viruses. O.O I know I had had a virus before but I thought my Norton Anti-virus had taken care of it. It was a Vundo virus or something.

[Blubbartron]

Not familiar with that particular brand of virus, but if you found and deleted some stuff successfully, it's worth seeing if your problem has been resolved.

[Akucaen]

One thing I've never understood is why POL uses 50% of both cores on a dual core CPU and 99% on a single core. Both my Athlon 64 x2 4400 and my C2D 2.66 hold POL at 50% with both cores in use with no other.

It's not a multithreaded program and despite using both cores, will not go over 50% total usage on both cores.

I've just always thought it strange.

[The Stig]

50 processes + less than half GB of ram + not a very powerful processor on XP

I had 17 processes + 512mb of RAM + P4 3.0ghz and was getting the same, on XP, I super tweaked my laptop (processes graphics everything) and was still not able to squeeze more performance. This is also running via 640x480 and a lot of things turned down.

Hard luck in way, I was not able to find a fix for it. Just lived with it. =/

[Charismatic]

My FFXI ran smooth on a 1.2GHz P3 PoS a few years ago.
That's really the only input I can give... doubt it's at all helpful but thought I'd throw that out there.

[Jingseng]

I used to run with an AMD 2.2 Ghz processor. My pol.exe was at 99% almost the entire time. That was at 1280x1024 resolution. What you're describing sounds fairly normal for an older single-core machine.

^this

Describes me as well... and that was with a nvidia 7800gt graphics card (256mb dedicated on crappy agp) and 2gb of ram on a desktop system.

FFXi IS extremely processor intensive (and since they used to expect you not to alt-tab out, it's not surprising... they don't exactly expect you to be running and accessing many other apps at the same time)... can turn down settings (which makes the game hideously undetailed and pixelated on laptop) and try to kill as many processes as you can, but...

[Delayed]

I downloaded the Spybot Search & Destroy and it found some Virtumonde viruses. O.O I know I had had a virus before but I thought my Norton Anti-virus had taken care of it. It was a Vundo virus or something.

To reply towards this, your other questions seemed to ahve been answered by the other posters...
the vundo strand is very nasty, runs many instances of spyware/malware at once in the background and is an extremely bad source of lag and congestion in your computer. There was a thread in the tech forum that a user posted exactly what you should towards getting rid of it, but i don't remember where it was, i'll post or update this post with the original thread for that information. I'd try doing that and see how your computers performance increases and then try doing any other tweaks afterwords.

Edit:

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/tech/...ng-me-off.html
there's the link, it talks specifically about what you had mentioned and the steps to remove. Hope this works

[Halion]

If by chance you coincidentally stopped using a controller, make sure you turned it off in ffxiconfig.