Measuring is knowing: Security Essentials and Fallout Loading Times

[Reginald_001]

So today I couldn't stand waiting 45 seconds for the main menu, only for the game to crash after 5 minutes of playing any longer.

I played with task manager open and saw what was causing ALL OF MY PROBLEMS with Fo4.

 

It was in short, the combination of an Internet connection and Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

With Internet and MSSE on: 45 Seconds load time

Without Internet and MSSE on: 23 Seconds load time.

 

Also, during gameplay CPU is far more stable, FPS is more stable. I think that regardless of me configuring MSSE to ignore Fallout it's hooking into the Flash processes that the game uses for UI's, perhaps assuming that they're 'internet' and thus causing the virus scanner to work overtime.

 

So I disabled the entire fucking internet and that fucking virus scanner.. and guess what.

It loads and plays stably. Just got off a 4 hours un-interrupted playthrough.

 

So just to make sure I wasn't crazy. I recorded two videos of the loading screen, with and without MSSE enabled.

These timings are consistent, regardless of whether one of those intro movies is played or not.

 

 

[Di3sIrae]

Humm i'll test it later. It gets a ton of time to get to the main menu for the first time i open the game, then a LOT less if it crashes or if i quit. If i clear the memory cache before opening the game, seens it runs a bit more stable in terms of crashes.
I think that optmizing FO4 is a war that we will never win...

And war...

War never changes. (TES VI and FO5 will probably be the same and so on lol)

[Reginald_001]

The entire workaround is bothersome. I had already blocked Fallout4.exe in my firewall and it can't get through. So there's something going on with MSSE in combination with an active internet account. I have automatic sample submission disabled but who knows, they might be sending data anyway, which could be the different between and active internet connection or not.