Potential problem with a mod?

tadaensylvermane · 03-25-13, 11:38 PM

I recently started getting game stuttering issues along with near freezeups where I lose all control and mouseclicks and keypresses result in a beeping sound from my speakers. Could this be caused by a mod, and if so how would I track it down as there are no errors generated when this happens?

If you know please reply quickly as I have a ui I uploaded just the other night and if this is a rogue mod its in the ui I uploaded.

This has been happening for awhile now long before I assembled the UI however, since 5.2 dropped. Just want to be sure on wether or not an addon could do something like this. If it can then I must educate myself more about these things before putting a UI up for download.

myrroddin · 03-26-13, 12:46 AM

It is possible, but without more information, it is hard to say for certain, let alone diagnose and repair. I suggest doing the following two things:

In the game's settings, turn on Lua errors (help section?)
Install BugGrabber and BugSack, which catch more errors than Blizzard's default solution and present them in a better way

tadaensylvermane · 03-26-13, 01:19 AM

I have !Swatter from the auctioneer package installed right now, has worked well enough for the past few years. And show lua errors is turned on. The only errors in it's memory from the last couple days is 2 from dominos about a protected function during combat lockdown, and one from grid "attempt to perform arithmetic on a local 'startTime' (a nil value). And I remember seeing them pop on me so I know the window pops when it hits an error.

None of the above errors happened while this was happening though. They were in dungeons. Nothing pops on the screen when this happens, the FPS just plummets and I start moving around randomly, usually autorunning in a direction and every mouseclick or keypress results in a beeping sound.

Even though I'm not getting errors I just want to be sure it's not a rogue mod.

Will try those for awhile, see if it happens again and if I get an error.

myrroddin · 03-26-13, 05:23 AM

I was just working with Phanx about that starttime nil bug, which should be fixed in the latest version of Grid.

Swatter works just as well as BS/BG if you have that. Good on the Lua errors. Are all your AddOns the latest versions, and you have load out of date addons enabled?

If all the above is yes, then do the half and half: turn on half your AddOns, and if the behaviour continues, you know the faulty AddOn is in that half. Otherwise turn on the other half instead. Then cut in half again, and keep going until you find the culprit.

Phanx · 03-26-13, 05:33 AM

That doesn't really sound like an addon problem at all. All movement-related functions are protected and cannot be called by addons, so an addon can't make your character run anywhere.

When the problem happens, can you use the mouse and keyboard normally in other programs, or is everything affected?

Does the problem still happen if you don't have any addons enabled?

Can you tell if the beeping is coming from WoW, or is it the system beep/ding sound from your computer?

I'd actually suggest doing a thorough malware scan on your computer using at least two different tools, and then changing your Battle.net password. The combination of automated movement and inability to use the mouse or keyboard sounds more like a malware issue than an addon issue.

tadaensylvermane · 03-26-13, 02:04 PM

No errors caught yet with bugsack, it did happen once last night after I installed it. Did a scan with malwarebytes, spybot, avast, cleaned with ccleaner. Not sure what else to look for. Cannot move mouse at all when this is going on so it must be affecting the whole thing. The beeping is definitely coming from the speakers and not the computer case speaker, that much is certain. Will look for a few more tools, maybe combofix? I'll ask on other forums. As such though if movement and whatnot is protected then I should be in the clear on mods at least. That was my concern with the ui I uploaded just the other night.

Thanks for help, will search the technical problem on one of the other forums I frequent.

**Seerah** · 03-26-13, 03:48 PM

Originally Posted by tadaensylvermane

The beeping is definitely coming from the speakers and not the computer case speaker, that much is certain.

Phanx wasn't referring to a beep from your motherboard. She meant a beep/ding from Windows if your system or program becomes unresponsive.

If it were lag or a disconnect, your character would continue to run in the direction you were prior to the hang up. Unless the "moving around randomly" is due to you smashing buttons on your keyboard or moving with your mouse and the game getting random packets through to the server.

If the beeping occurs when you try to use your hardware, though, I'm with Phanx. This isn't an addon issue.

Phanx · 03-26-13, 10:03 PM

Yes, I was talking to the "ding" sound Windows plays if, for example, you try to click on the main window for a program that has a dialog box open that you must dismiss before you can interact with the main window. I think it plays the same sound when you change the system volume from the system tray icon (next to the clock).

SDPhantom · 03-27-13, 12:24 PM

While an addon can tie up CPU power to the extent of causing the game to freeze at times, this is most likely the result of either the game being run on a computer no longer capable of handling it, or some background process taking up CPU power the game needs. In addition to running the malware scans Phanx suggested, I would try shutting down any unnecessary programs while running the game and try running the game without any addons enabled to get a base sense of how the computer handles the game itself.

To add a note, Windows and/or the onboard PC speaker beeping (in this situation) is signifying an overload of input in which the current program (or the computer itself) is no longer capable of processing any more. As for your character "autorunning" at these times, it has been known for some games to "miss" a KeyUp event at times and still think a key is being held down. The usual solution for this is to tap the key to have it fire a KeyDown and a following KeyUp event.

While this is the most likely of situations, checking for malware as Phanx suggested is also a good thing to do in general. While most of them gather information (including keypresses) and broadcast it or mess around with your computer's internal settings, some of them can and do give complete control to a would-be hacker.

tadaensylvermane · 03-27-13, 11:34 PM

I doubt its lack of computer power. PhenomII x6 @ 2.8ghz, 4gb ram (only 1333), radeon hd 5770, gigabyte motherboard. I've been running wow maxed out except shadows ever since I built this thing, average around 50fps in stormwind during peak hours. Have a hard time seeing that much change to the game since the patch. I do plan on a 7870 and some 16gb of proper ram in the next month or so. Might even OC it if I can get a decent cooler for it, not sure yet. But stock settings with above hardware has run flawlessly, have even run 2 instances of wow with no trouble. Scans with spybot, malwarebytes, avast have all come up clean... couple tracking cookies with spybot but nothing major.

Not sure it matters but I do use a Belkin n52te handpad instead of the keyboard 95% of the time. Maybe that thing is sticking somewhere? Or it's not registering properly?

Rilgamon · 03-28-13, 01:12 AM

Once I had a similar problem. In the end I found out that I "forgot" my second keyboard that was still attached lying behind my desk that I pressed against the wall with my feet while playing. Check your cables, clean your keyboard and handpad

SDPhantom · 03-28-13, 11:43 AM

Computer stats won't mean a thing if all the resources are being used up, which would take more to do on some computers than others. Perhaps to prepare for the event of it happening again, you can open up the task manager (hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, it'll either pop up immediately or bring up a menu screen where you can access it). From there, go to the processes tab and click the CPU header to sort the list by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice so the highest numbers show first. "WoW.exe" should be using around 90% of the CPU power, if it's higher or lower, it doesn't matter. What matters is if anything else other than "System Idle Process" gets anywhere near there or even above 20-30%.

If you're running the graphics so high, try lowering some and see if it solves your problem. I find that the most graphics intensive areas aren't the most populated ones, it's the areas with a high density of doodads like the trees in Ashenvale and moving at 380% speed around in there. Also a good way to bog down the graphics is moving the camera through fog effects.