If you're available and would like to help sometime, flash me an email or IM. My info is listed in my Ever since these patches were installed, I can't stay in a game, but frankly I had some similar but less serious issues before the patch. Symptoms: During game setup, there are frequent messages from Gamespy that I've lost contact with one player or another. The other players say they are seeing me as the player popping up as losing connectivity. They resolve after 5 or 10 secs. and I can complete setup, but when the battle starts, the game lags horribly and ultimately freezes. I play Empires: DMW using Gamespy hosting, and it runs perfectly acceptably. Game runs fine in RTW/BI SP battles and should be reasonable on the sets I use in MP, generally medium settings, but even on low sets the same thing happens, so I think it is not related to the machine being overtaxed so much as my connectivity. Things I've already tried: -Exiting/disabling all background programs, including Norton AV, Spybot, BHO Demon, ZoneAlarm, MSN, Teamspeak. Things I've considered doing but haven't yet: -Updating the BIOS, (haven't done so because the update doesn't appear to fix anything important, or related to this). Here is a link to Here is a link to technical info on the I have noted that the Aperture Size setting in my BIOS is fixed at 64 MB, which has been known to be problematic, but the game runs fine in SP battles of large size, so I have a feeling that's not the problem. And the existing BIOS and the only available update for this board do not have a tab to change aperature size (although the original Intel BIOS does, this board is modified by Gateway as a "Lexington" board and proprietary BIOS. I have all the board specs sheets.
-Checked line up/down speed and packet loss, and other connectivity issues using tools from Broadbandreports. All tests returned normal/above average performance in all respects.
-Tried a second NIC in the event the integrated NIC was bad.
-Updating some drivers (I keep the essential ones, like the video card drivers updated).
-Getting a new computer, (haven't done so because I don't want to spend the money just yet).
-Slashing my wrists, (haven't done so because I'm hoping this problem will resolve).
Total War Heaven Former Angel Cherub and Long-Time Contributor