Speed Issues Resolved

Hi all, I have a pretty decent laptop - Dual Core 2 processor & 2gb Ram, but FM '09 and FM '10 have always run pretty poorly for me, I spent many hours doing different defrag things for FM '09 - Have spent this morning going through the forums to try and speed up FM '10 and have finally done it!! I have gone from 1.5* to 5* so thought would tell all how I did it incase it can help you. Tried a few things so could have been any of:

Deleting the 'Football Manager 2010' from the 'Sports Interactive Folder' in 'Application Data'

Changed to windowed mode, but have since changed back to full screen and its still 5* so not sure that made the difference

Used 'Advanced System Care' to do system clean etc, its free software - I ran it before for FM 09 and it didn't make much difference so not sure its that

Downloaded 'Smart Defrag' - Ran the defrags in there, could have helped, although I used Windows defrag when trying to make '09 faster and it didn't make much difference.

Downloaded 'Gamebooster' and ran that, but it shut down some programmes then stopped working so not sure it was that - I'm going to reset now and try loading fm without the game booster and see what happens

So overall I think deleting the Fm 2010 folder was the way forward, I found one of the mods saying it in a post somewhere on here, cant remember where now, it told you how to do it if you have Vista & XP. With XP:

Click on your C:drive or whereever your stuff is stored

Documents and Settings

User Name

Application Data

Sports Interactive

Then delete the FM 2010 folder....I also had the last few fm folders in there aswell without knowing

So I have now gone from 1.5* to 5 wooo!

could it be your graphics card?

Dam! Reset PC to try and work out which of the above were causing the problems, and its gone back to 1.5*! Can't get it back to 5 now? Any ideas?

Joe I don't think its anything to do with the graphics card as the stuff I did above got it to 5 stars, temporarily till I reset!

I keep deleting the FM 2010 folder but it recreates itself every time I load FM, any ideas?

The star system is not accurate enough to be of a guage of the game speed- hence the fluctutaions

Hey Fraz, I played for a bit with the 5* and it was soooo much faster than before! Then I reset my laptop to try and work out which of the above made the difference and its gone back to 1.5* and slow! Cant get it back to 5* aaargh!

Hey, think problem has been sorted again! When I did another defrag with Smart Defrag its now gone back to 5* and processes much quicker....nt sure why resetting it made it go back to how it was before? But defrag only takes 5minutes so can just do it each time.

Final question, how do I play FM without first loading Steam?

Cheers