Games Taking too Long to Exit

[ModernSamurai]

It has been some time now. Games are taking too long to start and take longer to close. Sometimes it takes 2-3 minutes to close and I have to terminate process via task manager. And even after ending task, window become very slow for a few minutes. And just generally everything feels slower to open. Even Google Chrome takes time to open which used to be instant

My own guess is that it's malware or windows related, or maybe I need to repartition my hard disk drive. Does a windows reinstall fix this issue? Unless it is hardware related.

And also when I go to BIOS, my CPU and motherboard temperatures are 71 and 41 Celsius respectively. I'm not a hardware expert, but I think 71 is a lot, correct? And can it be a factor for everything being too slow?

Thanks.

[emoticorpse]

How full are your drives?

[nullable]

Depending on the CPU, 71 might be a little high. You didn't really list any specs though so, we don't know if it's a desktop or laptop even. Keep in mind the CPU doesn't use speed stepping in the BIOS (as far as I know) so temps may be a bit higher than you'd see on the desktop, while idling, while the CPU is at half speed or some such.

[_I_]

72c was the max for some am3/3+ cpus
i hope you are running a system much newer than that

newer cpus max at 90-100c

bios should be idle temp
use hwmonitor to log min/max temps

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

Those are symptoms of low ram, not enough ram, paging to storage.

Originally posted by _I_:

72c was the max for some am3/3+ cpus
i hope you are running a system much newer than that

newer cpus max at 90-100c

bios should be idle temp
use hwmonitor to log min/max temps

Yeah, 72 and I would have to hit the reset button to get back to the desktop with my fx-9590. AMD actually recommends never going over 60c with this CPU (max is a sad 58c!)

It runs really well though ever since I learned this. Before I was scratching my head "why am I unstable at 60c?" The way I have it setup now temperature maxes out at 39c and this CPU is like magic at these settings.

[ModernSamurai]

I forgot to mention my specs. Intel Core i7-2600K, GTX 980 and 8GB RAM. Motherboard is Asus model P8H61. So my CPU and motherboard are very old.

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

How full are your drives?

The one that has windows installed on it has 30 GB free and another one has 100 GB.

Originally posted by nullable:

Depending on the CPU, 71 might be a little high. You didn't really list any specs though so, we don't know if it's a desktop or laptop even. Keep in mind the CPU doesn't use speed stepping in the BIOS (as far as I know) so temps may be a bit higher than you'd see on the desktop, while idling, while the CPU is at half speed or some such.

You're probably right. It might be higher than that. I also get the beep beep sound when I restart the PC, warning me that the CPU has high temperature.

Originally posted by ULTRAWOKETRYHARDCRINGE:

Those are symptoms of low ram, not enough ram, paging to storage.

So I might have faulty memory? The thing is I always had 8 GB RAM and this problem started maybe last year and it got worse and worse over time. I don't run any background apps when I'm playing games. It's just Steam.

I wonder if reinstalling windows can make things a little better.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Couldn't hurt to bump up to 16GB RAM.
Install at least one SSD.
Clean install Win10 or Win11 (64bit; 22H2) onto the SSD.

When's the last time you ran CHKDSK /F on any HDD's?
And did a full disk defrag of them all?

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by ModernSamurai:

Originally posted by ULTRAWOKETRYHARDCRINGE:

Those are symptoms of low ram, not enough ram, paging to storage.

So I might have faulty memory? The thing is I always had 8 GB RAM and this problem started maybe last year and it got worse and worse over time. I don't run any background apps when I'm playing games. It's just Steam.

I wonder if reinstalling windows can make things a little better.

No, what they mean is that you are running out of RAM. When you run out of physical RAM it takes longer for you to also free it due to the way Windows manages memory.

A process should not appear "closed" on Windows until it has freed up all of the memory it was using, including any in the PAGEFILE. What this looks like if you have an issue freeing memory is that the game or application will show a black screen when you exit, but not close out.

Games these days need more and more RAM, so it would not be surprising if you are running out of RAM if you are playing the latest games. Even Chrome is a memory hog (and it's sisters like Edge).

Reinstalling Windows will not help if that is the issue, only increasing RAM or using an SSD with a bigger pagefile (if you are not already). If you are using an HDD you will also be subject to that drive's speed, when it's time to close out of a process. The speedup and results will be mixed since you are using older hardware...it is impossible to guess what kind of improvement you will have without more precise data.

In the meantime, if it bothers you a lot you can use task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) to close the game and exit it by force, a task killer (available on some AVs) that you can trigger on exit, or a script to expedite the process, etc.

[_I_]

if pagefile is on a hdd, yea that will slow things down alot

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes that could be an issue of sorts; as some games take a while to load up and/or close due to it automatically loading data through the PageFile; or in the case of game exit, waiting to release the info from the PageFile before actually closing out the EXE process.

Even with an aged PC like that I see no reason why you'd be using any HDD's in the mix of things; except for low demanding games or for loose files.

If you stick with 8GB of RAM then you will want to go into the PageFile settings and set this to 8GB (8192) minimum and maybe set the max to around 16GB or 32GB.

But the OS drive should be an SSD. There simply is no excuse here; it's 2023! FFS
Any SSD will run your OS and it's process like fluid compared to having OS on ANY HDD type. 1TB SSD is around $49 or less now.

[PopinFRESH]

Which games are you having this occur with? Older games you've had that previously didn't take long, or newer games?

Which OS are you running? Have you upgraded your OS prior to this starting to occur?

A few points to note based on the information you've provided thus far.

• Your CPU is getting very "long in the tooth" and isn't going to be as performant for newer OSes and/or applications; including games
  
• The drive you have Windows installed on only has 30GB free; assuming Windows default settings with auto pagefile this will limit how much space Windows will use as a page file
  
• 8GB of DDR3 memory is not a lot if you have upgraded your system to a newer version of Windows. You can check your memory utilization in the Windows Resource Monitor to see how much of your memory is used and committed, and see your disk IO to see if you are constantly swapping/paging your memory to disk.
  
• If your disk that Windows is installed on is a mechanical HDD (which is what it seems like you're saying), what you are describing is largely normal on newer OSes as they have been tuned toward IO performance of an SSD; specifically in regards to IOPS.
  
• Regarding your temperatures; Given the age of your CPU and I'd wager you've never taken the system apart and cleaned the CPU and reapplied thermal paste, the CPU temp at idle in BIOS is rather high. The Tcase for the Core i7 2700K is 72.6°C so it is also very likely that you are constantly thermal throttling under normal use and heavily throttling under heavy workloads such as gaming. Have you cleaned your heatsync and case to blow out any standing dust? If you're using the stock Intel cooler from that generation you very likely have a dust blanket ontop of the cooler under the HSF that is blocking airflow over the heatsync.

For some better help in troubleshooting as well as potentially recommendations for upgrades, etc. install CPUz and run the CPUz validator then post the link to the results here so people can see what your full specs are including some software configurations.

Given your descriptions of things I'd say you are facing a few compounding issues with the first being thermal throttling of your CPU (clean your system and if you're comfortable with doing so remove the heatsync and clean / reapply new thermal paste). You're also likely regularly swapping due to low memory and this is further impacted by having low free space on your primary disk so Windows is not going to have much space for the page file.

In my opinion, I wouldn't recommend investing in doing upgrades to that system as it is already quite old in regards to gaming and you will find that it will not play new games well moving forward. Secondly, if you haven't already upgraded to Windows 10 you will no longer be able to use Steam normally after January 1st 2024; and just upgrading the OS will likely also be less than ideal as noted above given Windows 10+ are tuned for SSDs. I'd consider starting to look into buying/building a newer system that is fully capable for Windows 11 and upgrading/replacing the system when possible.

[ModernSamurai]

Originally posted by _I_:

if pagefile is on a hdd, yea that will slow things down alot

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

But the OS drive should be an SSD. There simply is no excuse here; it's 2023! FFS
Any SSD will run your OS and it's process like fluid compared to having OS on ANY HDD type. 1TB SSD is around $49 or less now.

Yes I'm using an HDD, while using Windows 10. Didn't mention those things. So more RAM and an SSD should fix things I guess.

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Have this problem with both new and old games. Yes of course 8GB is not good for new games, but some older games from 2017 for example (that were okay in the past) also started to be problematic.

I'm running Windows 10 64 bit, on an HDD. But yeah as I mentioned, my CPU is ancient at this point. Might not be my first priority though.

You're right I never opened and cleaned my case and there might be lot of dust in there. What you're saying makes sense. That can make CPU overheat. I should probably clean it. Don't know how though! But I'll figure it out. Also the case fan in the back of the case stopped working a while ago and I never replaced that. That might be a factor.

Also, building a completely new PC is not an option at all. Not in this economy that my country is in. You won't believe how much that would cost me. But getting more RAM and an SSD I can probably do that.

[_I_]

more ram wont solve it, it will help a little if its using more than it has
windows pages everything now, ssd will help more

[Bad 💀 Motha]

At the very least; any sort of SSD will help out in a very huge way.
With OS and PageFile on the SSD; pretty much everything you do on the system now will be much more fluid.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by ModernSamurai:

Originally posted by _I_:

if pagefile is on a hdd, yea that will slow things down alot

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

But the OS drive should be an SSD. There simply is no excuse here; it's 2023! FFS
Any SSD will run your OS and it's process like fluid compared to having OS on ANY HDD type. 1TB SSD is around $49 or less now.

Yes I'm using an HDD, while using Windows 10. Didn't mention those things. So more RAM and an SSD should fix things I guess.

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Have this problem with both new and old games. Yes of course 8GB is not good for new games, but some older games from 2017 for example (that were okay in the past) also started to be problematic.

I'm running Windows 10 64 bit, on an HDD. But yeah as I mentioned, my CPU is ancient at this point. Might not be my first priority though.

You're right I never opened and cleaned my case and there might be lot of dust in there. What you're saying makes sense. That can make CPU overheat. I should probably clean it. Don't know how though! But I'll figure it out. Also the case fan in the back of the case stopped working a while ago and I never replaced that. That might be a factor.

Also, building a completely new PC is not an option at all. Not in this economy that my country is in. You won't believe how much that would cost me. But getting more RAM and an SSD I can probably do that.

Understood in regards to the economy and costs of building a wholly new rig. I was more pointing out that I'd not recommend dumping a substantial amount of money into a system of that age considering the limitations you'd have in doing so would be wasteful imo. Getting a SATA SSD is a relatively cheap addition which would substantially help the general responsiveness if you reinstall your OS on the SSD rather than using your HDD for the OS.

Which motherboard do you have? That would have been in the era of Z68/Z77 which is just prior to the adoption of M.2 and before UEFI boot support for NVMe. You can get a decent 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD fairly inexpensively.

Step 1 however would be to first clean the CPU heatsync and replace the exhaust fan. Do you know which case you have and/or what size fan your rear exhaust fan is? If not try to measure the frame of the fan. Should be something like 80mm/90mm/120mm/140mm; most likely from that time would be either 80mm or 120mm. You can get a new fan for around $10 - $15 USD. Even before that I'd recommend dusting off the CPU cooler as it probably looks something like this where you can see there is essentially a "blanket" of dust on the top of the heatsync fins which blocks airflow down into the fins.

https://imgur.com/a/z3YD5T0

Canned air / air duster (don't tip the can while dusting as it will spray the liquid propellent) should blow the dust out of the fins fairly easily.

If you have a 120mm fan I'd personally recommend the cheaper Noctua NF-P12 which is about $15

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-redux-1300-high-Performance-Award-Winning-Affordable/dp/B07CG2PGVG/

Then, after doing that look at getting a reasonably priced SATA SSD like a WD Blue SATA 1TB for around $50 USD

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-SA510-Internal-Solid/dp/B09ZYQ84CM/

Other than those things I'd save any other money you'd put toward upgrades and set it aside for when you are able to do a new build. Again, with those temps in UEFI/BIOS I'd strongly suspect you are constantly overheating your CPU and it is thermal throttling to prevent damaging itself. The fact you haven't ever cleaned the system and your exhaust fan is broken would also heavily point toward this as your primary issue. Fix those things first and see how things work for you before going to spend more money on other upgrades.

Also, another potential thing to be aware of is those stock Intel coolers are notorious for having the worst retention system and it wouldn't surprise me if one of the retention pins broke or came loose and is not holding the heatsync secure to the CPU. If you find that is the case then look for a decent CPU cooler that isn't crazy expensive as a replacement. There should be a plethora of options around the $50 USD price point which would easily be sufficient for your CPU.

As an example the Cooler Master Hyper 212

https://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Silencio-Anodized-Gun-Metal/dp/B09KX9V4CT/

Good luck and hopefully once you've cleaned the dust out and replaced the exhaust fan you'll be back in business to at least where you were before noticing this issue.

[Your Local Shiny Eevee]

i was wondering what c meant until i realized *in thought* "HOLY ♥♥♥♥ ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT CELSIUS?"
LIKE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ YOU COULD USE YOUR COMPUTER TO BOIL WATER AT THAT POINT