Opening route makes PC unusably slow but was absolutely fine last week

[GaryReggae]

Opening my route causes my PC to become totally unresponsive, so has to be rebooted.
It was quick last week, I could have numerous Chrome tabs, PDFs and Google Earth all open at the same time as Trainz without any performance issues.
As of yesterday, it started being very slow.
I have closed al the background apps such as Spotify and Steam from the system tray.
Updated my NVIDIA drivers.
Scanned my drives, which seem to be OK.
Done a DBR several times in CM
Checked for new Trainz+ updates
Set all the Performance settings (such as shaders) to the lowest.
The route size is 1.6 Gb.
The new sections are only track and AJS stations so no foliage, no water or TurfFX.
The RAM is the weak point of my new PC from last year - only 16 Mb - so I will need to replace that at some point, but if that was the bottleneck then how come it was fine last week? It had all the settings at medium or high then as well.
I have also checked the temperatures and all are between 30 and 50 C.

Trainz Build: 131516
GPU: RTX 3060,
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 4500 6-Core Processor, 3600 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
Win 11 Home

Let me know if you have any ideas.

Kind regards,

Gary

 

[JCitron]

Check your hard disk for errors. If you are running this on an SSD, replace that drive immediately! If an SSD is performing poorly and suddenly, this is a sign of imminent failure.

If your disk or SSD is okay, how much space do you have?

Have you replaced, manually that is, any content on the route? I did that recently and had an awful mess due to the content having way too many polygons and way too high textures for my system to handle. I'm still finding areas where the track disappears and I need to hit pause to bring it back in driver. I thought it was TRS-Plus, but all my other routes are fine except this one which exhibits this issue.

 

[GaryReggae]

Check your hard disk for errors. If you are running this on an SSD, replace that drive immediately! If an SSD is performing poorly and suddenly, this is a sign of imminent failure.

If your disk or SSD is okay, how much space do you have?

Have you replaced, manually that is, any content on the route? I did that recently and had an awful mess due to the content having way too many polygons and way too high textures for my system to handle. I'm still finding areas where the track disappears and I need to hit pause to bring it back in driver. I thought it was TRS-Plus, but all my other routes are fine except this one which exhibits this issue.

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. The HDDScan app has came back all clear on the 2Tb SSD with my Trainz and other game installations. The C drive (SSD) and two other HDDs seem to be fine as well.
I have cleared some space on the C drive as it was about 90% full and after a reboot, the performance seems to be back to how it was last week. Perhaps the cache was the cause.
Anyway, fingers crossed

Kind regards,

Gary

 

[JCitron]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. The HDDScan app has came back all clear on the 2Tb SSD with my Trainz and other game installations. The C drive (SSD) and two other HDDs seem to be fine as well.
I have cleared some space on the C drive as it was about 90% full and after a reboot, the performance seems to be back to how it was last week. Perhaps the cache was the cause.
Anyway, fingers crossed

Kind regards,

Gary

That's good to hear. Run the Windows "defrag" utility to TRIM your SSDs. This will free up blocks and make them available for use and save wear and tear on your SSD. You should run this at least weekly.