Ok for some reason whenever I play Counter-Strike 1.6 I have endless lag spikes. I have a 256mb, 40 gb hdd, pentium4 2 gig processor, and a fairly good graphics card. I made sure tthat I had no programs running BUT counter-strike, and went into the game, and made sure I was using OpenGL. I get into the game. My ping is around 40-60. It might go up to 70 or 80 then goes back to 40ish. Then all of a sudden, out of the randomness of this gay world, it spikes to 200-300 for about 5-10 seconds. Then it returns to normal, but by then I'm dead. It also will completely freeze and spike to 2080+. I don't know why it does this. I have Earthlink High-Speed DSL. probably 728k connection, so its all good. Never lagged before like this. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP???

PS - it also does this with warcraft3exp and diablo2exp.

Nvidia graphic's card?

yeah, its an Nvidia GForce4 Ti 4200 I believe. my ping just likes to spike all the time, and I dont know why. ill show you my processes:

ZoneAlarm 5.X if you use that, that is your problem.

yeh or norton av? it cheks every packet in onlin gaming for viruss
big problems

Yeah, I use the latest ZoneAlarm w/Antivirus version 5.X. I also used norton 2004 for a while but uninstalled it. But I turn off ZoneAlarm when I play games. Why do I still have ping-spikes?

Yeah, I use the latest ZoneAlarm w/Antivirus version 5.X. I also used norton 2004 for a while but uninstalled it. But I turn off ZoneAlarm when I play games. Why do I still have ping-spikes?
How fast is your computer?? You may need more memory, new video card, etc.....

Steam or fps, I'll say Steam. It did it for me too with DoD for a while, now it works just fine.

EDIT: Typos.

About 2 weeks ago I just started this anal lag spiking. Probably from ZoneAlarm. But I shut it down when I play online games, and I still lag. I even allowed it to accept stuff from Steam, Diablo 2, and Wc3 so it never has problems with it. Anybody in the world know how I can get around this??? It's really annoying to play CS when your ping is in the 50's, then for no apparent reason shoots up to 300 and back down again...

How fast is your computer?? You may need more memory, new video card, etc.....
I already explained my computer in the first post. Go read it.

you can try ending the processes that you don't really need running if that would help at all.

I've ended all the process except for the ones that come from the system and arent fishy, and still the same problem. I have come to believe that it IS my ZoneAlarmPro, but how in the world can it still check the packets if I turn the damn thing off? It doesn't make sense to me at all. I have friggin high speed DSL [probably 728k connection] and it still lags. I don't know whats going on, its a load of bullshit. IT's pissing me off. Everyone keeps suggesting the same freakin answers, but only a handful have been able to help me.

-I've run every spyware program I could get my hands on.
-Same goes for adware, trojan finders, worm finders, etc.
-I took the liberty and bought ZoneAlarmPro w/Antivirus [already blocked over 10,000 intrusions in 2 weeks]
-My computer is good enough for online gaming, it was more or less designed for it.
-I use OpenGL for CS and stuff like that...

So far everyone I try to contact for help isn't on. Etanol might know but he's offline, CheshireCat helped a bit but he's afk, and Spitfire only gets online about an hour after I get off!! Lol, this world sucks. I just need someone who can help me. Just scroll up and take a look at the processes again and see whats going on.

It might be your rates also. Check from Steam forums.
http://steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=17

These might also help:
http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=73404&highlight=lagspike
http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=97508&highlight=lagspike
http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=64421&highlight=lagspike