GTA San Andreas is slow and freezes?

[maximdymok]

Ok, so I was doing tags, and I had to minimize the game a lot to look at the map. Everytime I have to press Esc and pause it, otherwise when I minimize it I can't click anything on the desktop. So, when I press Esc, I hear the normal sound of an option being selected, but the screen goes black, and none of the menus show.I can't hear the sound of menus when I move my mouse around, or when using the arrow keys. Clicking does nothing. I press the Wndows button, and exit to start menu-but most of the screen is still black, and only the start menu can be seen. I press ctrl+shift+esc for task manager, but can't see it. I have to either press ctrl+alt+delete or lock my computer( win key and L), and then I see task manager. I have to end GTA-SA process, but the game won't be saved, and I have to start over. I have a slow Vista laptop, but I think it matches required settings- 1.6 GHZ intel core 2 duo, 2 gb ram, and only 256 mb video memory.It plays normally at the highest resoluton, i think 1280x768 or something like that. I have no programs or unneeded processes running at the time- only explorer.exe dwm.exe, crss.exe, winlogon.exe and of course gtasa.exe. I tried changing the game to lowest settings, but that made it freeze even more. Any way I can stop that? My disc isn't scratched or anything. Oh, and I think I have V1.0 .Don't say get a new pc though, I'm happy with this one, plus SA is the only game I have lags with. And I defragged my hard drive, so it should be fast-but it still froze. Thanks for any help.

[lil weasel]

Simplist fix is to Print off copies of the Maps put them each in a Page protector and use a China Marker to tic them off as you find them.

 

here are the best maps I found:

 

http://hem.bredband.net/708145/jumps.html

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/tagsmap/index.php

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/snapshotsmap/map.htm

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/horseshoesmap/map.htm

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/oystersmap/map.htm

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/importexport/map.htm

http://gta-sanandreas.com/guides/hiddenchallenges/map.htm

 

There is also a program called SAMA:

SAMA Location:

topic: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=220426

http://www.filefront.com/14307199/SAMA.zip/

 

You say your Video memory is 256? Is it Shared or Dedicated?

[maximdymok]

n use-well thx for the map. also, it says graphic memory in use-148 mb, maximum graphic memory- 358mb. dont know what dedicated meANS

[lil weasel]

There are two kinds of memory in a computer.

RAM which is used to run the programs, etc.

And on upper grade systems Video RAM, which is used only for Video.

 

To save money some builders leave out the Video RAM and have the system take a bit of the memory from the System RAM to use for Video (shared).

 

Some programs need more video memory than the shared RAM system can supply.

Then you would have a problem, the game won't run correctly.

[maximdymok]

Oh thank you!!! Well that means i have dedicated+2 gb system RAM. Well as I said, there is absolutely no problem with gameplay, i can even max out draw distance and its still fast. The only problem is this glitch with the pause menu. today it was kinda normal, only froze 2 times and i managed to get 40 tags. also, i tried all compatibility modes - win 95(said GTA Sa can't run on windows 95), windows 98(can't store anything like controls and save games, probably can't find the location of files on vista), xp(works, but freezes even more) so i just left it without compatibility mode.maybe theres some way to change the pause menu theme, like to something simpler for the pc to load? like black text with white background?