DoW2 Issue, LF suggestions

[TheDiceman]

I picked up Dawn of War 2 last week, played it for two days (about 10 hours of game play, no problems) and then was out of town for the weekend. I have been playing it since I got back late on Monday and have been experiencing a constant, and generally game ruining, issue. After I play for a while (there is not set amount of time and it does not matter if I am in multi-player or single player) the game seems to lock up. In actuality the game comes to a halt and is still running but everything is going SUPER slow (as in a minute + just to see a frame change). If I alt-tab out (which takes forever) and open the task manager I can see that the game is taking up almost all of my CPU power and the only way to close the game is to force quit. I have reinstalled the game more than once and have updated my video drivers and the problem persists. Does anyone around here have any ideas? Thus far no one has been able to provide any useful fix suggestions. Side note: I have zero issues with any other games I play.

I have an AMD 64 x2 5400 Black (no OC)
2 gigs of Patriot RAM 667
3870 512mb (no OC)
Running Windows XP 32-bit

 

[HAVOC]

Ok. Few Questions.

1,) Is this the retail version or steam version. IS the game patched to 1.2.1?
2.) Have you tried turning your graphic settings down 1 notch from where they currently are?
3.) Do you have windows games live running?

 

[TheDiceman]

Ok. Few Questions.

1,) Is this the retail version or steam version. IS the game patched to 1.2.1?
2.) Have you tried turning your graphic settings down 1 notch from where they currently are?
3.) Do you have windows games live running?

1.) I bought the retail version and used it with my first install only, but as DoW2 is tied to steam I have done two re-installs via steam, never using the disc.
2.) I have not turned them down, I just left everything at auto detect default except for the screen resolution.
3.) I do not have GfWL running on its own, but I do sign in through DoW2 since it is required to play.

Oh yes, and something I left out of my original post, I have shut off all other programs when I play DoW2 so there is nothing running in the background while I am playing and it does not appear to make any difference.

 

[Druid]

Although it likely isn't the issue because you were fine before, please try running the game with lower settings.

 

[TheDiceman]

Turning down the settings made no difference.