Hey! This is only my second or third thread post, so let me know if this is the wrong place to ask this! Sorry if it is!

I have scoured the web, read guide after guide, and filed thoroughly through these forums to see if I could find anyone who had this specific problem (and a solution for it) and found nothing.

So, I've been told one of the best ways to reduce lag and loading times is to make you Featured Items folder. I did, and it is effectively preventing the files from re-inserting themselves into my computer! Yay! This image will attest to my Featured Items folder's total emptiness:



And these to my general AND security property settings:





(Write is denied for System, Red (Cardinal\Red), and Administrators (Cardinal\Administrators), a.k.a. write is disabled on this folder for all possible users.)

As I said, these settings DO prevent the files from being written into the folder. However, what they DON'T seem to prevent is the game from attempting to read the non-existant files, failing, and then trying again and repeating this process over and over millions of times.

Here is a picture of the events viewed in Process Moniter:



ALL the NAME NOT FOUND events were trying to access the non-existant, un-writable Featured Items files. This image doesn't do it justice; this went on for millions of events, during both loading AND gameplay. It was seriously almost 90% of the events that occured-- effectively way more than would have occurred if I allowed the store to write items and read them into the game successfully. It is gumming up my loading times spectacularly.

Is there a flaw in my settings? Has anyone else checked Process Moniter with a disabled Featured Items folder and seen these results? Should I deny something else in addition to write, like read or read & execute?

Thanks in advance!

just don't deny access to this folder. The program is stupid and stubborn - it simply don't understand "no".
If you clean this folder once and won't allow to fill it again (by enabling store mode during build/buy mode) it shall be nice and clean as a baby If you want to be absolutely sure, just block game access to the web in firewall.

Thanks for the fast responses, guys! I don't think I'll go as far as blocking the game in firewall, but I will certainly restore access to the folder (I was beggining to think this might be better anyhow.) Thanks!



It's not lagging very much at all in-game-- I'm just always looking for ways to reduce a little bit of the game's load time. Thanks, though!



Nraas's Tips for Better Game Performance recommends it as a means to boost game perfomance, as well as being mentioned in several tutorials like this one! There were quite a few other sources that I poured through on various forums and blogs that recommended this too, and I decided to go for it since it's easily reversible and comes so highly recommended. It clearly doesn't work that well with my game, though, so it's back to basics for me! Haha.

Thanks very much to you both!

Edit// Also, nitromon, I'm afraid the peerblock thing is beyond me! All those images were uploaded on tinypic, so I guess your peerblock just doesn't dig that website. I will remember to put images under spoilers in the future, however!

while keeping this particular folder definitely speeds up load game time (as few others also) it has no impact for normal game performance until you direct game to read files from this folder (by enabling store buy/build mode). This folder is also filled by particular updates.

What you observed is program panic 'cause it is trying to create temporary file in this particular folder (and probably just to delete it immediately after) which is suppoused to be writable. Game does such things many times during loading - look how many times it opens, reads, closes, opens, reads.... particular registry keys - and please don't ask me "why?" 'cause I have no idea .

While keeping game "internet capabilities" simple have no sense at this point (until you use store content directlty from the game) denying access to the web costs you nothing. And slightly improves loading time of Launcher (because it show you blank page instead EA one which needs to be loaded) also save your enviroment from your curses when you accidentally hit this "golden button", which is placed directly that way to be hit accidentally.

Oh, that's awesome! Thanks a bunch, I will definitely look into that. For me especially, loading CAS can be a nightmare (less so now than it was before I realized you could compact the thumbnails with MasterController. Good lord).



Looks like it! Yeah, I loaded the game once more without denying access and it went a LOT more smoothly. Huh. Well, guess I'll just remember to clear it before each session!

(And yeah, they are totally sneaky about that button placement, haha. I always play offline with the store disabled because of it. Damn it, EA!)

I'm wondering if blocking connections to EA server(s) will produce a similar undesired outcome
to that you get disabling writing to the FeaturedItems folder, i.e. the game trying over and over
to establish a connection to the server(s). Anybody ever verified if that's the case?

yes, the game simply give up. And blocking game does not produce any significant "loading lag" - at last from my experience. Even if there's a kind of "lag" (while waiting for connection e.g.) it's imperceptible on my low-end machine.

From program behavior which I obviously can only observe from outside there's some strange coding - the game behaves like build from semi-independed modules unable to communicate each other at all. A "deduction" from constant calling the same resources over and over (particular files/folders/registry keys), it's like program simple does not "cache" the data already accessed for further use. But it's just a speculation