Prototype Lag Fix

I wrote this guide on how to fix lag in Prototype a few years ago, back when I was suffering the wonderful OS that is Windows Vista... If you're still using that OS, this could still be of help. Luckily I'm suffering Windows 7 at the moment and I haven't had any lag running Prototype on that so far, but I'm sure there is enough lag to go around.

I wanted to put this here because I had trouble with Prototype, and finding a solution for the lag took me a good few hours of searching.

Hopefully you'll find this post before you have to do the amount of searching I did.
Prototype is a pretty awesome game, but I've noticed a lot of people on forums complaining that it lags on their machine, usually machines that can run other high spec games with no problem at all.

The high end specs for Prototype aren't extremely demanding, and on my average machine (laptop) I can run it pretty well. I only get hiccups of lag when I have 4 or 5 tanks and the whole army up my ass (god bless being able to punch a helicopter out of the sky).
However, when I first got the game I had a number of problems; the cut scenes were skipping, I had to run the game on the lowest settings and also had to run it on it's lowest resolution. It was still very laggy even when I did that.

This fix obviously won't work for everybody, it's a good idea to take obvious steps first, scan for viruses, make sure you have the correct specs and clean up your computer (I would suggest ccleaner for cleaning up all the random stuff on your computer and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Malware check-up, I've used them both often).

Something else I would suggest to do on Ccleaner (or Run -> Msconfig -> Startup) is to change which applications run on windows startup. I had a huge amount of things clogging up my memory in the background. You can see what is running by going to the task manager (CTRL + ALT + DEL) and then going to the processes tab. You can also close them here, but be aware they will all reappear if you restart windows. To edit which applications are enabled on startup, just go to tools in Ccleaner. Be careful with what you disable, make sure to only disable the things which you know you don't need on start up. For example: things like Winamp, Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger and any other application like that.

Another thing which I did was to turn off Vista's desktop window manager, this takes up quite a significant amount of memory in the background. DWM is what gives Vista windows 3D affects and transparency etc - it's basically just for show and you don't really need it all, especially when playing a game. If you like some of the shiny effects on vista I would suggest not disabling this, here's how you can disable it:

• In the start menu, type "Services.msc" into the search box, without quotes.
• In the list that comes up, scroll down until you find "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager"
• Right click, and then select stop.
• If you'd like to disable it permanently, right click again and go to properties.
• Click on the general tab and change the start up type to disabled.

 If that doesn't work, here's another thing that you can try (this worked really well for me):

Go into Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager (this is on the hardware tab in XP).

Obviously, this is all the hardware installed to your computer. Click on Human Interface Devices. This is stuff like your mouse and keyboard... and anything else you might have plugged into your computer.

The goal here is to get rid of all the stuff you never use... Personally I deleted them all and if I accidentally deleted the mouse/keyboard driver, I just unplugged and then plugged them back in. Vista automatically reinstalls the driver and lets you use the device again - I assume the same happens with XP, but be careful.

I had a good 5 or 6 HIDs installed that I didn't use, and upon playing prototype again I was able to set at maximum graphics, the cut scenes didn't skip any more and there was no menu lag at all. A huge difference. No more lag.
This is might not work for all your prototype problems, but it's worth a go if you're careful, and if you've tried everything else. If it did work, enjoy the game!