Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time running way slow

[Handmade.Mercury]

So I bought this off of Steam, and loaded it up. Everything was fine, played for an hour or so. Today, I got to load my game, and now everything is in slow motion!

It's not lag, it's slow-motion. No matter what I do, nothing helps. Starting a new game is in slow motion, and the only thing that sorta of helps is setting all of the settings to the lowest possible.

I tried setting the affinity to one core, since I thought that this might be a multi-core optimization issue, but Win7 says "Access denied" to the two PoP processes.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Dukefrukem]

Same thing happened to me for other games on steam. Restart your commuter, and immediately load steam and the game, it should work fine.

[Handmade.Mercury]

Same thing happened to me for other games on steam. Restart your commuter, and immediately load steam and the game, it should work fine.

No dice. How soon after booting up should I start Steam and the game? It was the first thing I started up that wasn't an automatic startup process.

[Hotcod]

find where the same games are, copy them, delete it and reinstall. Or at lest get steam to defrag the game files. God knows if it's a steam problem or a game one, I've had no troubles like that on steam and it very rear these days that I'm playing something not loaded through steam.

[Dukefrukem]

No dice. How soon after booting up should I start Steam and the game? It was the first thing I started up that wasn't an automatic startup process.

There isn't a time limit persay, Steam is just hte first thing I open when my computer restarts and it fixes the problem for me. For the record, the same thing happens to me in Hitman 47, Dues Ex and Unreal 2.

[Handmade.Mercury]

There isn't a time limit persay, Steam is just hte first thing I open when my computer restarts and it fixes the problem for me. For the record, the same thing happens to me in Hitman 47, Dues Ex and Unreal 2.

See, Hitman 47 actually runs TOO FAST for me. I believe that IS a multi-core issue.

[Dukefrukem]

See, Hitman 47 actually runs TOO FAST for me. I believe that IS a multi-core issue.

yes I've seen that too. There's a fix somewhere on teh steam forums but I can't find it right now.... argh

[CappinCanuck]

find where the same games are, copy them, delete it and reinstall. Or at lest get steam to defrag the game files. God knows if it's a steam problem or a game one, I've had no troubles like that on steam and it very rear these days that I'm playing something not loaded through steam.

Definitely a game related problem. Don't think a reinstall will fix it. Sounds hardware related, as others have said.

yes I've seen that too. There's a fix somewhere on teh steam forums but I can't find it right now.... argh

If you don't use Win7, this will work:

- Add " /usepmtimer " Without quotes to the end of your boot.ini file as described here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895980 (workaround section)

Explanation here (http://blogs.technet.com/perfguru/archive/2008/02/18/explanation-for-the-usepmtimer-switch-in-the-boot-ini.aspx).

I really tried, but I couldn't find a way to apply this in Vista/Win7.

Have you tried setting affinity through ctrl alt del?

[Hotcod]

If it's a mulitcore issue clt-alt-del out of the game, find the game exe running in the processes tab, right click and pick set affinity. Make sure that just one of the CPUs is checked. May cause a bit of a proformance drop but it clears up any issues that comes from mulitcore... bit of a pain in the ass as you have to do it each time you load the game but it might be worth trying if nothing else is working. At lest you'll rule out mulitcore problems as the problem in this case.

[CappinCanuck]

If it's a mulitcore issue clt-alt-del out of the game, find the game exe running in the processes tab, right click and pick set affinity. Make sure that just one of the CPUs is checked. May cause a bit of a proformance drop but it clears up any issues that comes from mulitcore... bit of a pain in the ass as you have to do it each time you load the game but it might be worth trying if nothing else is working. At lest you'll rule out mulitcore problems as the problem in this case.

Yeah, everyone reported that it didnt work on the Steam forums, when I checked, but I think it's worth a try.

[Handmade.Mercury]

I tried setting the affinity to one core, since I thought that this might be a multi-core optimization issue, but Win7 says "Access denied" to the two PoP processes.

I've already tried it.

[CappinCanuck]

I've already tried it.

What OS are you on HM?

[Handmade.Mercury]

What OS are you on HM?

Win7 Pro x64.