Problem: Zoo Tycoon running really slow

[DinoThePower]

Hey all.

 

About a month ago, I was finally able to get my hands on an official English version of Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection after using a buggy French version for so long. For awhile, everything was working as it should. But then I went on a little hiatus from ZT for a few weeks, and when I started playing it again recently, for some strange reason, the game runs a lot worse than it did before. My big zoos containing hundreds of animals now can hardly even run anymore. To make things worse, when I exit out of ZT, now my whole computer runs a lot slower than it should. The only way to fix this and get it back to normal speed is to restart it. 

 

So, does anyone know what I can do to fix this? It'd be much appreciated. 

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

I've just done some cleaning on this little laptop I'm using.  Have you defragged your hard drive lately?  Also, get rid of any temp files and clear your cache.  There are several optimizing programs out there.  As to ZT, how many .ztd files do you have in your game.  The uppermost limit for files is 350, and with over 50 files in the updates folder for the Complete Collection, that means you probably should have over about 280, some machines can handle far fewer files.

[DinoThePower]

1 hour ago, Savannahjan said:

I've just done some cleaning on this little laptop I'm using.  Have you defragged your hard drive lately?  Also, get rid of any temp files and clear your cache.  There are several optimizing programs out there.  As to ZT, how many .ztd files do you have in your game.  The uppermost limit for files is 350, and with over 50 files in the updates folder for the Complete Collection, that means you probably should have over about 280, some machines can handle far fewer files.

I have about 246 ZTD files in the ZTUPDATE file, for what it's worth.

 

I'm aware of the 350 limit for ZTDs, so I've resorted to combining a lot of my ZTD files together. Does that have something to do with the slow down? 

[(Admin)Cricket]

If you're running the Complete Collection, your user-made .ztd files should go in the dlupdate folder.  The ZUPDATE and ZUPDATE1 folders are usually reserved for official game files.  Now, I don't know if that would make a difference in the performance of your game or not.

[DinoThePower]

Just an update, I decided to reinstall Zoo Tycoon to see what would happen and now everything's working as it should now. Hooray! 

[Yellowrose]

That's good news. when you do uninstalls and then do a reinstall like that you should run the ZT registry cleaner and do a system reboot after the uninstall and before the reinstall just to be sure your registry is clear of old ZT entries and your system cache is cleared. the registry cleaner will do your registry and the system reboot should empty your system cache. the do your reinstall and that usually helps to fix any slow downs. But not always I have found over the last 20 years the number of fonts you have installed on a system and the number of programs in general including games can slow a system down a little because of the amount of items it has to look through to find what it needs.

 

So for the next time you need to do a reinstall pop over to the ZA ZT1 downloads site and under utilities look for the ZT Registry cleaner and give it a run after your uninstall.

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Very glad to hear that DTP.