Necromancer: Excessive lag!

[:1]Hi, registered just to post this and see if anywone has any answers for me.

I recently reformatted my computer and of course decided that Diablo 2 LoD would be the first game to be installed. And so it was.

It has worked good (as usual) until about a week ago, when I noticed there were some incredibly incapacitating lag when playing either with or as a summon necromancer, both single and on bnet.

I've figured I get between 2 and 20 FPS at most; although when I stand still in the game, it hovers gently around 73-76 (windowed mode: 120-140)

Now, I have searched until my eyes bleed for a solution and tried out everything I can. I've tried the "2D Mode" trick (won't work, refuses to apply it), I've tried Glide Wrapper, I've tried the AMD Dual Core Optimizer (which seemed to work for at least an hour or so - but not anymore apparently), I've tried windowed mode. I've tried launching both the game and VidTest as administrator. Nothing works!

One thing is for sure, my system is NOT the problem:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ 2.6 GHz

8GB DDR2 RAM

GeForce 9800 GT

Running Windows 7 64bit

Enough to play ALL the latest games, without even the slightest twitch, so why not Diablo 2?

and it's NOT my internet connection, it's outstanding.

Please help, with things like this I am unable to play!



Thanks in advance!|||You listed a lot of things you've tried, have you tried running the game in compatibility mode for XP SP2?

Have you tried forcing the game onto one core via the task manager?

Have you tried running it with "disable visual themes?"|||I play summon necros all the time without lag issues on my XP machine. My guess would be its Windows 7 or particularly Windows 7 64bit.

Try what magic suggested, run D2 in XP virtual mode and see if it is better.

If you dont have it installed you can download it from microsoft.|||1)Update the motherboard bios if necessary.

2)Roll back the graphics drivers about 5 years :)|||I have the same problem. Tried everything in this thread and more. I noticed that the lag increased when there was much sound involved so i tried to turn off the d2 sound. The game now runs smoothly! You should try that OP.

The problem now is that I do want sound when I play, but have no clue how to avoid lag when its on. I have tried two different sound cards. Anyone had a similar problem and managed to fix it?|||Running with a similar machine as OP and experience no problems. I do not run with sound on though besides sound effects. Believe me, you get used to the silence.