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By: Terra Dagger

Edited By: Taz and King Zonk

Coded By: G@mer

Special Thanks To: Chipp54, Boy Hits Car, Darmadia and BlitzAceSamy

Do you have a slow computer? Are you experiencing lag in Runescape? I have! I have lost trades, Weapons, and even have died in the Wilderness because of lagging. Here are some ways to make your computer faster! There are lots of things that can slow down Runescape. Here is a list of things that can slow down your machine so you can't run Runescape all that well.
Pop Ups, Ads, Adware, Spyware, and Viruses. These are all covered in this Guide as well as some other things.

Less Use of Memory

Ever find yourself with ton of programs running and Runescape running slow.
Computers get most of their speed from RAM which Random Access Memory. Well, everything on your computer uses RAM. Listening to music, watching videos, have advertisements running. You could be doing anything, virtually, and have it slow down your computer.

Solution: Exit out of all the excess programs that you are not using. If you are running really slowly, then don't load High Detail. Don't listen to music or watch videos on the same computer that you are playing RuneScape on.

Pop-up Blockers with Windows

Pop-ups, we all hate them. They can install Adware, Spyware as well as tons of stuff we probably don’t want. With windows XP, you can go to Tools in your Internet Explorer, then click on Internet Options. From there, go to the Privacy tab. There, it should have at the bottom the window “Pop-up Blocker”. It has a square you can check that says Block Pop-ups. Check that box.

Are you still getting Pop-ups? Well, go to Tools, Internet Options... and click on the Privacy tab again. Go to the bottom of the window and click on Settings. Another window should come up. Go to the bottom of that window and click on the drop down list's arrow. Then click on High: Block All Pop-ups (Ctrl to override). Close the window by clicking on the Close button or X out. It should close and then close that window. ( By Ctrl to override, it means that if you want a Pop-up to pop up and you clicked on a link for it to pop up, then hold Ctrl then click so the Pop-up will still come up)

If you are not using Windows, then the chances are very great that your ISP will have a Pop-Up Blocker. Also, if you cannot find any other method, there are some toolbars that you can download from the internet, but it is not very recommended that you do so. Most Tool Bars come along with Viruses, Adware, and Spyware built right in themselves thus, defeating your whole purpose.

Don't Like Those Ads?
(If you are Pay-to-Play, you may skip this section)

I am pretty sure no one likes the advertisements on the top of the Runescape screen when you are playing. I know that you can't really get the bars to go away, but what I do know, is that you can easily make them so that it doesn't use as much memory so you can use the memory on Runescape. (For memory terms, refer to Less Use of Memory). Some of them, can not be helped by this method, but then if you are even able to log-on to Runescape, then that should be no problem. Some of the ads at the top of the Runescape screen use a lot of memory to run. As I said before, you cannot really make the ads go away, but make them so they don't use up as much memory. Right click the advertisement (remember, Right click so you don't make a Pop-up come up, unless you are blocking them) and highlight Quality. Another list of options should come up. The list should have the following: High, Medium, Low. Click on low and you will see the graphics on the advertisement look a bit cruddy. Believe it or not, you just tricked the ad into using less memory. Also, thanks to Boy Hits Car for this information: If you Right click above the "?" right off the ad and select "reload", then another ad will show up, but it will not change.

Adware and Spyware

A lot of people download many things. A majority of those things out there on the Internet (I would say about 90%) come with Adware and Spyware. These slow down your computer down up to 500%. Once Spyware gets on your computer a hacker may be able to do whatever he wants with your PC. This is usually how Child Predators and Identity Thieves get to their victims. Generally, as I said, you get these things from programs that you wanted to download and these were embedded inside of it. There are dozens of programs available to download which protect you from these menaces. Following is a small sample of some programs that you can download:

Windows Defender. (download)
It has been tested, and is free of advertisements. By running this program every couple of days, you can make sure you don't have any Spyware on your computer. If you do find any, this program allows you to destroy it.
A program called Ad-Aware. This program allows you to destroy all the Adware you find by scanning your machine with this same program. It is very effective and again has been tested.
If you kind of have a problem with not downloading things, then you can download from Download.com, it is a Microsoft trusted site and you may find several neat downloadable many programs from it.

Viruses

Viruses are very annoying. They can do most anything to your computer. Many ISP's have virus protection, but for those who don't you should know: You can get a lot of viruses. You can get them from e-mail, even from visiting other sites! (they can be attached to cookies). The fact is, you can't really protect yourself from them without some anti-virus software. There are commercial and free software. As you can expect, you have to pay a subscription fee for the commercial software, unlike the free software. But in general commercial software *is* better than freeware. The choice is up to you.

Some free anti-viruses: AVG and Avast.
Some commercial anti-viruses: Norton and McAfee.

When To Run Programs

We all should know that by now, you shouldn't be running many programs at once. Some people think its okay. Most programs are okay, but some aren't. Programs that are good, would be generally programs like Microsoft Office, some Messengers, some HTML documents. Well, some aren't good to run. If you buy some software programs, and they are over $10, then they probably take up enough memory to make you lag. The point is, if you don't want to lag, use one program at a time. Don't be running Adobe Photoshop or virus scans or Spyware scans all the time. It will lag your computer pretty bad, because the scans have to look through every file in your computer and Photoshop takes a really long time. Sometimes on Photoshop, I can't even use things because I have too low memory and it's the only program running.

Hints Given by RVers

Darmadia wrote:

If you have Windows XP pro, press on the "Start" icon in your left corner of the screen and choose "run". Write "gpedit.msc" and press OK. On the left of the new window that popped up, scroll down "Computer configurations". Then open "Administrative templates". Then double-click on "Network" and open "QoS packet scheduler". Now you should see something called "Limit reserved Bandwidth". Open it and choose "Enable" in the new window. Then choose the "Bandwidth Limit %" to 0 (Zero). Press OK and restart your computer. By doing this you will release 20% bandwidth used by some windows components that don't really need it..

Runescape Windows Client doesn't lag as much as IE6. Here is where you can get it, or by clicking on Extra Files on the Runescape Main Menu.

Well, I hope that you can have a better time running Runescape. Thanks for reading this guide.

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