I don't hate Windows Vista. In certain aspects it is cleary superior to XP and so far I never had a reason to complain about it. When I first played Team Fortress 2 it played fantastic, my fps rate was over 80. The only issue I had was that the game sometimes suddenly seemed to freeze for 2 seconds.

Until this week I didn't really care about it. Of course, it is annoying to get killed without having the chance to do much about it, but I just thought it was a problem with my Internet connection and let it be. However, when Hitoshura told me that this problem seems to affect other players as well, I tried to find a solution. And that's where the horror began.

I soon found out that the freezing is a problem with Windows Vista and my wireless network. Every 60 seconds Vista is looking for new wireless connections, which freezes the game for me. This problem also exists on XP, however, there it can be turned off easily via the Control Panel. For some odd and unexplainable reasons, Microsoft thought this feature wasn't really necessary and every gamer likes it when his game freezes, so they made it impossible for the user to stop Vista from searching.

After a bit more research, I found a neat little program called Anti Vista Lag, which is supposed to solve this issue. It seemed to work fine when I tested it, but in the next morning the freezing was back. What followed was an annoying day of searching countless programs and commands, which were supposed to fix this problem, none of which worked.

I almost wanted to give up when I read a solution by someone who has the same wireless adapter as me. He wrote that the Anti Vista Lag program only works if you have the XP Drivers installed. I did what he recommended and finally it worked out. Now I can enjoy the game without having to constantly fear that the game would freeze.

I'm sorry if this post gave you a major headache. I posted this mainly for two reasons. First because I had to let off some steam, and second because of the small chance that anyone reading this forum has the same problem. I hope this post will spare him from a very frustrating day.

So, thanks for reading this novel and sorry if my freezing problem caused you trouble while playing. Believe me, it's been just as annyoing for me as it must have been for you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to strangle every Microsoft programmer with their own frilly training bra.

Glad to hear you sorted the problem mate, I had a similar issue in beta with the connection error text. Basically within a minute of joining a server the game would freeze and I'd have to restart TF2. Thankfully someone on the official forums posted a fix that invloved telnetting the router.

Didn't have a clue what it meant at the time, but it fixed it and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Was a real pain in the ar*e.

Anyway, see you server side mate

You won't be able to use that as an excuse now when you get gibbed