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This is apparently an extremely common problem, and there now seems to be a working solution for it. Thanks to OrigamiGuy for finding this out:

OrigamiGuy wrote:The problem comes from Vista trying to meld your system sounds together and add audio enhancements, which is why moving N to a lower place in the sound queue sometimes works. Maratanos's solution of disabling the sound output will also work.

But I needed sound effects for running my ninja around; sometimes I just want to hear the little guy explode. Here's what I did:

1.) Go to Start => Control Panel => Sound.
2.) On the Playback tab, right-click your speakers on the list there and select "Properties".
3.) Depending on your speaker setup and your version of Vista, there should be a tab there called "Effects" or "Enhancements" or some such. Check the box marked "Disable System Effects" or "Disable All Enhancements" or whatever.
4.) Play N lag-free!

I hope this works for you as well as it did for me. Enjoy!

Thank you. I have been looking for something like this for a while.

Amazing you found that out. A big hooray for you and origami!
Thanks guys. Appreciated much!

I get lag too a lot, but I have a different solution, which is kind of counter-intuitive.

I run a full-screen program.

This makes absolutely no sense, because all this does is make N run on my other processor (I have Core 2 Duo). But, somehow, it works. I was thinking maybe that having music playing while running N fixes this, but nope. Running windows media player doesn't work. Running WoW in the background does. Hhhmmmm....

OP's method worked for me - the lag isn't entirely gone, but it's much reduced.

This is really great, thanks! The only problem is that there isn't an 'Effects' option on my laptop. However, simply disabling the sound works fine too, with only one negative side effect...

YAY! lag gone (kinda)

when im in full screen i get ultra lag.

And i mean ULTRA that little counter at the bottom says 40-50

OMG thank you so much i, i was looking for a cure for ages

Just a random bit of trivia: Vista 64x has (as far as I'm aware) no sign of this problem. It only seems to be 32x.
I got my friend into N the other day, and even I can barely play it on his laptop as it skips so many frames - I'll give this a go.

amomentlikethis wrote:Just a random bit of trivia: Vista 64x has (as far as I'm aware) no sign of this problem. It only seems to be 32x.
I got my friend into N the other day, and even I can barely play it on his laptop as it skips so many frames - I'll give this a go.

Although if you're running 64-Bit Vista you probably have a much better computer, anyway.

I'm glad I found this, I've been having problems with lag myself recently. I'm a little confused as to how the problem arose, since it was never an issue previously, but the important thing is the solution Yanni quoted worked.

Yanni wrote:This seems to br an extremely common problem.

Didn't do anything, use Vista, and no lag.

enespanol4268 wrote:Didn't do anything, use Vista, and no lag.

True for most Vista users; what's meant is that a relatively large amount of people who use Vista do experience this issue.

Please refrain from posting if you have nothing to add to a topic.

Uh, N ships with its own copy of Flash Player, it doesn't use your system's Flash Player.

Currently, Flash is on version 10, so yes, version 7 is outdated.

showbox99 wrote:I experienced lag on a 3 day old clean install of Windows 7. I disabled the sound effects, and nothing happened. I hesitantly turned on Grooveshark while playing to test one of the previous comment's claims of lag reduction while playing music, and you wouldn't believe it, NO LAG WHATSOEVER. Thank you, Exüberance.

If you're experiencing lag, turn on music. Grooveshark.com seems to work perfectly for me.

Good luck

I remember people finding this with iTunes in pre-Vista days (not sure if they were Windozers or Macuzas). Of course I never believed it, as I don't believe anything good can ever come from using iTunes.

I have recently purchsed a new laptop, Windows 7 64 bit, and (of course) am having lag issues.
I have tried all the remedies in this topic (disabling sound effects, fullscreen, compatibility mode for XP, playing from Grooveshark, even fully disabling the speakers didn't quite fix it).
It doesn't make a difference between N or Nreality.
If it helps, the lag happens whenever N first comes into contact with a tile, there's a jump in about 2 frames or so when I land on a tile. So playing a map like 30-0 becomes far too difficult.
Watching the frame counter down the bottom, it rarely veers from 8ms/f, which is where it should be, but it does occasionally jump up to about 15-20.

So really I'm at a loss for how to fix it.

EDIT
It works just fine on the original version of N, Nreality isn't quite right.
To get N working, I had my sound effects turned off, compatibility for XP SP2 (I had it on SP3 earlier), visual themes disabled.