Alright, I have a bit of a problem when I play Ultima Online. I’ve emailed EA Support but they didn’t have a solution to my problem.
As soon as I start UO, my drive space goes on a continuous drop until I’m completely out of space. I can usually play for an hour or so before I start getting the “Low Disk Space” bubble every 4 minutes (so annoying…) I can still play UO fine, but it’s annoying to have to restart in order to get my space back. I’ve talked to other UO players and no one has had this problem.
Anyone have an idea how to fix it? I’m guessing it has something to do with virtual memory or something like that, not sure though. None of my other programs have this problem. Yes, I legitly bought the game also.
If you need me to, I can post my DxDiag stats txt file.
How much physical RAM do you have? What OS? I’m guessing XP, since you mentioned the low-memory bubble. If you have less than 256k of RAM, you may wish to consider adding more to take the load off the much slower virtual memory. If your mainboard supports it, go with 512k. Much more than that won’t really do any good.
First, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.
How much free disk space do you have? That might be the problem. I guessing the program needs about 1Gbyte free on your disk to store geometry, textures, and the like.
Try setting a maximum value for your pagefile–this will prevent it from growing to fill up your disk, as long as you have enough space for the maximum value you enter. Try and leave at least a GB or two free. If the warning still comes up, then it’s not your virtual memory. (480MB is plenty of RAM, although that’s a fairly unusual number to have.)
If you don’t know how, here’s how: Go to your Control Panel, then System Properties, then the Advanced tab, then click the Performance Settings button, then the new Advanced tab, and finally the Change button at the bottom (phew!). Highlight the partition with numbers in the right hand column (probably C:), select the Custom Size radio button, and set it to… let’s say a minimum of 512 and a maximum of 1024 for now. Restart, then try playing the game and see if you get any low disk space warnings.
[ul]
[li]Free as much space as you can on your hard drive (delete stuff).[/li][li]Run Disk Cleanup (found under ACCESSORIES>SYSTEM TOOLS)[/li][li]Defrag your hard drive (found under ACCESSORIES>SYSTEM TOOLS).[/li][li]Check your Virtual Memory settings. Have Windows manage your virtual memory for you (found in CONTROL PANEL>SYSTEM>ADVANCED TAB>PERFORMANCE SETTINGS>ADVANCED TAB>CHANGE VIRTUAL MEMORY).[/li][li]Restart your computer.[/li][/ul]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Hauky *
**Try setting a maximum value for your pagefile–this will prevent it from growing to fill up your disk, as long as you have enough space for the maximum value you enter. Try and leave at least a GB or two free. If the warning still comes up, then it’s not your virtual memory. (480MB is plenty of RAM, although that’s a fairly unusual number to have.)
QUOTE]
480 is unusual, but 48megs is not (32 and 16) Is the Original Poster sure they have 480MB and not 48MB?
The disappearing disk space problem is an issue I have encountered in EVERY version of Windows I have ever used (and I’ve use pretty much every version…). It seems to be a very generic problem without any specific cause. Or at least, a cause generic enough that it continues to plague Windows updates.
Well, disk space doesn’t disappear magically. It gets taken up by files. Run a utility that shows disk usage before and after running UA and take a look at which new files pop up/grow/etc. Report back to us if you’re still stumped as to where to go next.
I like scanner.exe, but I can’t seem to find a link to it tonight.
Maybe it’s a memory leak of some kind? I’ve had programs that don’t free up the ram properly eat up more and more hard drive space until I shut the offending program down.
I guess I could format and reinstall everything, but that might not work. It’d suck to have to find all my stuff again though. Hmm… I guess I’ll just have to wait until UO “fixes the problem”.
Have you updated Windows recently? Go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com to get XP up-to-date. No guarantees but it might fix your problem.
If the System Managed option doesn’t work for you then set the size yourself. Try 500MB. Again, defrag your harddrive and restart the computer. I’ve noticed that Windows doesn’t necessarily use the free space likely at the end of your harddrive for the swap file. If it sees a gap earlier on it might latch on to that. Defragging will get rid of those gaps and the swap file will go at the end where more room is available. Be sure to restart after defragging so Windows will create a new swap file.
