Freezes on character select, game will load but its frozen, please give suggestions.

[paelt]

Hello:

I have been playing on p99 on and off for 10 years. Same laptop the whole time. Windows 7. zero 3rd party eq programs. Vanilla UI that came with the download. Ive lately had a bunch of problems logging in.

The game typically loads fine right when I boot up the computer. IF the game loads fine, it usually runs well, even for a few hours. If I log out, or /q, I am rolling the dice with being able to get back in. Here are the details of my problem in as tldr format as possible:

Game loads, server select works, I get to character select, and the characters are frozen and the screen stands still instead of the screen spinning with characters moving. If I load the game at this point, the characters barely move, all my hotkeys and preloaded spells are gone, and I cant look around. I can mostly just camp back out.

If I see problems on the character select screen, I try to fix it by logging out or closing the game entirely, but this rarely works. I have sometimes done this dozens of times for 20+ minutes and not had it be successful. Restarting my computer is usually successful, but not 100%.

I have tried quite a few fixes, I even kept notes on what I tried so that I can undo fixes that dont work. Here is what has not worked so far:

-Running in "admin" mode (clicked at top of server screen) in the game itself
-Changing "compatibility mode" to Windows xp service pack 2 or 3
-Changing "compatibility mode" to windows 2000
-Clicking "run as administrator" in these compatibility modes
-Editing the EQ file from "MultiPassLighting=FALSE
ShowDynamicLights=TRUE" to "MultiPassLighting=0
ShowDynamicLights=FALSE" (I saw this fix suggested online but it did not work)

Last night I attempted to download the bgvoodoo2 fix that I saw suggested online. I downloaded it, extracted the files into a new folder, and then moved the four ".dll" files into my eq folder. My game would not launch at all, so I had to move them back out. I do not work in the tech sector and this was the limit of what I was comfortable trying without further help.

I am out of options. Please give me some advice.