Zloth

Network Lag

Network lag is a delay in the communications between your computer and the game server. It typically results in “rubberbanding” (popping back to where you were a few seconds earlier) and NPCs jumping around. When you use a power, that power may not fire off for a couple of seconds. If the network lag gets extreme, you can be hit with a map server disconnection.

You can check your network connection in game pretty easily. Use the command /netgraph 1. This will pop a little network graph up in the lower left of your screen. The graph should display a low, green line. Spikes of red are lost packets. If you have a big bar of red, that means your connection is gone. If it doesn’t come back within 30 seconds, you’ll automatically be logged out. Use /netgraph 0 to get rid of the graph.

Causes of network lag:

Virus/Malware
Keep that virus scanner up to date and get those security patches and service packs installed! If you get a virus or worm, it can play hell with your computer and cause all sorts of problems.

Other Programs
There has been a wave of updater programs that think they are so important that they need to be running at all times. Electronic Arts’ Download Manager is the latest I’ve had do this but by no means the only program. Luckily, all these programs can be set so they do not start every time you boot up your computer. Just check their options to turn that “feature” off.

The exceptions to this would be your virus updater and Windows update. Just make sure to schedule those so they update at a time when you aren’t likely to be playing.

Programs designed to use communicate over the internet constantly can also drag down connections, particularly for dialup users who are having a hard enough time already. Instant Messenger programs can use a surprising hunk of bandwidth, especially if you have several open at once. Weatherbug is another common offender. File sharing programs are, of course, right out.

Others along the line
There’s a long line connecting you to the servers and any problem anywhere along the way can cause issues. There could be problems with one of NCSoft’s ISPs, there could be a problem with one of the internet backbones, there could be a problem with your ISP, or you could just have a loose connection on the back of your cable modem.

If you know a good bit about internet connections (like what a traceroute is and how to read it), you might want to look into the support network tool for City of Heroes. It will check your ports and do traceroutes to all the important servers.

Something you might try when you have trouble with lost packets is the /net_error_correction command. Issue the command in game and follow it with 1 or 2 to see if error correction helps. Use /net_error_correction 0 to turn off error correction again.

Updating Problems

A number of problems can crop up with the updater.

Unable to update a file
First off, reboot. Sometimes files get stuck in memory and a reboot will fix that.

Second, do a virus scan. You’re probably overdue anyway.

Third, go in to the directory, find the file, and delete it.

If you still have problems, go in to the folder and delete everything with .old or .new as an extension (unless it’s a file you made yourself, of course). Also, delete the Coh.checksum file.

If there are still problems updating files, try renaming the directory City of Heroes is located in and running the updater again (you’ll have to run it directly instead of via your shortcut). The updater should make a new directory and pull down all new files for it. Then copy these new files in the new directory into the directory you renamed. Now delete the empty folder and rename your folder back the way it was.

Also note that sometimes this problem can be caused by bad memory.

Virus and malware programs are another source for this problem. Keep that virus scanner up to date and get those security patches and service packs installed! If you get a virus or worm, it can play hell with your computer and cause all sorts of problems.


Updater Can’t Connect
This is fairly normal if a major update has just come out but that’s a one night deal. You shouldn't get the problem every day.

If you are using a satellite for your internet, you may be looking at real trouble for a long time. The updater expects connections to be made fairly quickly and, while satellite connections can download quickly, many of them can take awhile to connect. Some folks have had luck by opening the updater, giving it 2 seconds to connect and, if it doesn’t, close the updater and try again. Do that over and over until it works.

If you are using a wireless connection, you may be getting interference. Try connecting directly.

Also, from time to time, hackers will mess with the domain name tables and cause havoc with your internet connections. To fix this, take the following steps in Windows XP

• Go to your Start menu and type “cmd” (without the quotes) in the Run box to start the command prompt.
• Type “ipconfig /flushdns” (again, no quotes) at the prompt and press return.
• Close the window.

Under Vista:

• Go to your Start menu and type “cmd” (without quotes) in the search box. Cmd.exe should be found.
• Right click on Cmd.Exe and select Run as Administrator. Enter your admin password when prompted.
• Type “ipconfig /flushdns” (again, no quotes) at the prompt and press return.
• Close the window.

Firewalls will sometimes cause problems with the updater, too. Unfortunately, they are so varied that it’s hard to diagnose in a general post like this. If you need port information, check ParagonWiki both for what ports the game uses and how to change what port the updater uses.

Note that, if you don’t actually need to update files, you can bypass the updater completely by using the -project coh command line switch.

Slow Updating
This one has been vexing us for years. Obviously, if you have BitTorrent or some such running then it could be filling up your bandwidth. Dialup users will, of course, have very slow connections. However, sometimes people with otherwise speedy connections will get very slow downloads when trying to update files. Heaven only knows why.

About all you can do for this is quit the updater, shut down your whole machine (including the router/cable modem), bring it all up, and then try the updater again. If it still isn’t working, you can try the following to see if you can find a better update source.

• Hit the start key and R to bring up the Run dialog box. Put in cmd and press return.
• At the prompt, type “nslookup cohupdate.coh.com” (without the quotes) and press return. You’ll get a long list of addresses. Keep that window open.
• Go to your shortcut you use to run the updater. Right click on it and select properties.
• In the target window, add a space to the end then put in “-ps” (no quotes), another space, then one of the addresses that was found. So the target box might have something like: "C:\Games\City Of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -ps 216.107.250.194
• Click OK and run the updater again via the shortcut. Keep doing this with IP addresses on the list until you find one that works for you.
• After you finish updated, I would suggest putting your shortcut back the way it was. Those IP addresses are subject to change and, if the one you are using does change, your updater will stop working.

If you’ve got a friend that has the update, you can get the files from them. Just copy the files from computer to computer. If you do this via CDs or a DVD, make sure the files are not left as read only files when you copy them over.

Virus programs and malware can also slow down network speed. Keep that virus scanner up to date and get those security patches and service packs installed! If you get a virus or worm, it can play hell with your computer and cause all sorts of problems.

Crashing and Reboots

There are tons of things that can cause crashing. Anything from problems in the game to an ancient joystick you forgot was plugged in to your USB port to your electric company having trouble putting out a steady electric current. Some are extremely difficult to diagnose, like that electric company problem. Please be patient with us and with official support (I would highly recommend using both resources) while we go through the huge mass of possibilities.

If your computer is suddenly rebooting in the middle of game play, that probably means you are crashing. By default, Windows will reboot instead of showing you the rather cryptic and scary Blue Screen of Death. However, as a gamer, you have faced down much nastier things than this and are thus brave enough to face this beast and pull needed information from it.

To do so with Windows Vista, right click on the Computer icon on your desktop (or Start menu) and select Properties. Pick the Advanced Settings option on the left. Select Startup and Recovery. About half way down, you’ll see a checkbox for “automatic restart.” Turn the automatic restart option OFF and you’ll be able to see the blue screens again.

Here are some of the most common causes and what you can do about them.

Bad Memory
City of Heroes uses a LOT of memory, more than most other games, which makes it more susceptible to problems in high memory. People that run into this problem typically have newer computers or have recently bought new memory. Crashes can happen any time but normally happen within the first 15 minutes or so of game play. They can cause lockups and crashes directly to desktop but will more often cause a blue screen of death (or reboot, see above) in a random file. You’ll probably see a different files getting blamed for each crash on your blue screen.

Checking for bad memory in Vista is pretty easy. Go to your Start menu and search on Memory. The Memory Diagnostics Tool should pop right up. Run that and let it run through its tests. You should not get ANY errors at all. Even one error means bad memory.

Checking for bad memory in other operating systems isn’t quite so easy. I would suggest checking out Memtest86+ for a good memory testing program. Again, even one error is bad.

If you find bad memory, you’re going to have to replace it. Check with your hardware manufacturer on how to do that.

Heat Issues
This is another common one, particularly in the summer. City of Heroes hits the video card and the CPU pretty hard, making it more prone to heat problems than many other MMOs so, like the memory issue, it’s not uncommon to see people say they can play WoW just fine but crash playing CoH when they have a heat problem.

Heat issues cause crashing much like bad memory. You can have the game lock up, you can crash to the desktop, or you can get a blue screen of death in a random file (or suddenly reboot, see above). The main difference is that memory issues tend to crop up earlier in the game session than heat issues. My rule of thumb is that crashes after 10 minutes are probably heat and crashes earlier than 15 minutes are probably memory. Note the overlap. That should remind you how accurate rules of thumb are.

You should be getting the dust out of your system periodically anyway, so the best way to check your system for a heat problem is to just try and fix it – namely by blowing the dust out of your system (preferably with a can of air as computers do not appreciate being spat upon). If that doesn’t work, leave the case open while it is running and check to see that all the fans are spinning. If all the fans are running, go ahead and leave the case open and play the game. If you can play the game fine with the case open, you’ve got a heat issue for sure.

Some computer cases need the case closed to keep the airflow at its best so it’s actually possible to worsen heat issues by leaving the case open! Don’t be surprised if you crash even sooner with the case open. However, if leaving the case open does help avoid the crashes significantly, you can be pretty sure you have a heat problem.

(WARNING: Remember how dust is bad? Think how bad cobwebs would be. Or coffee. Be careful leaving your case open! If there’s a toddler in the house, post an armed guard to keep watch.)

Virus/Malware
Keep that virus scanner up to date and get those security patches and service packs installed! If you get a virus or worm, it can play hell with your computer and cause all sorts of problems.

Driver Problems
If you are getting blue screens of death and they point to a particular file each time, find that file and check its properties. If it’s made by the same folks that make your graphics card (NVIDIA, ATI, AMD, or Intel), then it’s possible your drivers are having problems. Assuming there aren’t threads on the forums saying that the latest drivers are bad, try updating your video drivers. You can get them from the manufacturer's website (www.nvidia.com, ati.amd.com, or www.intel.com). Be sure to follow the instructions carefully.

(Note to laptop users: laptops often can not use the latest video drivers. First check with your laptop manufacturer for the drivers. If they don't have them, you might try Laptop Video 2 Go.

If your drivers are already up to date and you updated them recently, you may need to roll your drivers back again. That’s not quite as easy as updating drivers but it isn’t too bad. First, look up a driver cleaner program such as Guru 3D’s and download it. Uninstall your driver then run the driver cleaner program to make sure all the old files are really gone. Then install the older drivers.

Upkeep

City of Heroes (and City of Villains, the two games are officially one game now) is a fairly demanding game. It may be over four years old, but Cryptic and NCSoft have added a lot to it over the years, including physics and fancy graphics options. If you are going to play serious games, you need to be serious about computer upkeep. So here’s a few quick bullet points:

• Reboot every few days! You’re not running a server and it only takes a couple of minutes. If you aren’t running anything overnight, why not just turn off the PC?
• Run a disk check a few times a year. Hard drives are getting pretty reliable so there’s no need to do more than two or three a year, IMHO, unless you move your computer around a bunch. To do a disk check, open Explorer (start key and E at the same time) and right click on the disk to check. Select properties and go to the Tools tab. Select the Error Checking option and, when it asks, turn all the options on. The disk check will take a long time (probably hours). Note that, if you start finding files with the extension .chk in the root of your drive, it’s a sign that your hard drive is starting to have problems.
• Run a disk defrag every month or two. (Many folks run them every week!) You do this much like the disk check, only select the defragment tool instead of the error checking tool. It also takes a long time to run. If you are going to do both, do the error check before you do the defrag.
• Keep your anti-virus program up to date! This game is demanding enough without having some virus pumping out spam emails to the world while you’re trying to play. You can get a great, free anti-virus program at free.avg.com.
• When lightning comes, it’s time to shut down. And by that I mean OFF, not sleeping or hibernating. Turn off the power strip you’re plugged into. Surge protectors are great against fairly distant lightning strikes, but you can still get roasted by close hits.
• Keep your system clean. One of the big causes of crashing is overheating of the computer. Overheating is often caused by dust buildup on the components, especially the fans. Also, if anything is obstructing any of the fans (like, say, a cat plopping down right in front of your PC), the temperature can rise very quickly. The motherboard will probably detect that it’s about to melt before any damage is done and shut down, but don’t risk it.
• Keep your system updated. When Microsoft puts out a service pack, you want it soon. Not having service packs and other critical updates installed leaves your PC open to all sorts of attacks that a virus scanner can’t stop. If you are having trouble remembering, set Windows up so it auto updates.
• Keep your video drivers up to date, as well, but be careful. Video driver releases often add both speed and stability. However, it’s best to check on these forums before updating. Sometimes new video drivers will have nasty bugs. When they do, though, we generally get a topic talking about the problem within a day or two. Try not to let your video drivers get more than a year old.
• Sound cards and motherboards may need driver updates as well.
  

Installation

If you’ve got the CD then just pop it into the drive and install. When you run the updater, it will download the latest version of all the files (it does NOT download one patch at a time) and update them. You can also install the game by getting the latest version of the updater (located at ftp://client.coh.com/US/) and running that. Unfortunately, the last time I tried this (March 2007), the updater was not able to install to directories other than the default directory.

If you are running Windows Vista, it’s best not to install the game to the default directory. The game puts some user data (screenshots, keybind files, …) into the game directory itself and that’s a big no no under Vista. Vista can still run the game fine if it’s located there but it can get a little confusing (see “Missing Files” below).

Also, Vista’s “User Account Control” feature acts to make sure any update of common files requires administrator access. It even notices that the name of the updater is “CoHUpdate.exe”, figures out that you are about to update files, and demands administrator rights. The easy way to get around that is to simply rename the file to “CohStarter.exe” or something like that. Just be careful if/when the game tries to update the updater program itself. You can also get around this by turning off UAC, of course, but that’s a pretty significant security feature to shut down.

READ THIS!

This thread is for solutions only! Please do not post your problems in here. Start another topic instead. Also, please remember that this isn’t your only source. NCSoft keeps an extensive database of symptoms and solutions. If you don’t find your answer in here, look there.

Introduction

Welcome to the Tech & Bugs forum! This is the forum where players try to help players with technical problems and discuss bugs in the game.

There are two big points to remember on these forums. First and foremost – the forum is by players for players. Moderators and developers do join in from time to time but it’s a pretty rare thing. If you are looking for official support, head to www.coh.com and click the Support link to open a ticket. Responses in this forum are from people who think they can help you and are willing to do so. Official support gives researched, professional support. This forum gives off-the-cuff support. (Though we often give support faster and also tell better jokes. )

The second thing to remember is that, just because your symptoms sound similar, it does not mean you have the same problem as somebody else. If your friend gets a rash and it turns out to be from poison ivy, then you get a rash, does that mean you must have rubbed up against some poison ivy? Nope. It could be poison ivy but many things can cause a rash so it would be foolish to just assume that’s what you’ve got. The same thing happens with technical problems. Just because you’ve been crashing and somebody else has been crashing doesn’t mean the crashes have the same cause. For this reason, we generally like to have people start their own topic for computer problems.

Table of Contents
Installation Issues
Upkeep Advice
Crashing & Reboots
Problems Updating the Game
Network Lag
Graphics Lag
Memory Lag
Game Won't Start/Login Trouble
Missing Files (Vista and maybe Windows 7)
How to Post (if these solutions don't help you)

As encouragement they are giving away $100 per day to the three folks who upload the most. Now if they could just get the search working correctly, this might be a nice place to put shots.

Oh man, sorry to see you go Lighthouse. Good luck on those opportunities!

Sweet mother puss bucket....

See, I can help people even when I'm off playing Fallout 3!

That was pretty good! What is he regretting??

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like you guys are way more savvy with demo record than I am....

[/ QUOTE ]
Easy to learn! Check out the Wiki!

Also, WeGame.Com has a pretty good FRAPS-like recorder for free. Seems to be higher quality though I have found the AVI files aren't as compatible as I could wish. For instance, I can't play them on my Xbox-360. (And I so wanted to "play" CoH on my X-Box! )

What's that? Piece of cake??

Ohhh, they just couldn't get there because of another panel. I thought the room was so full they couldn't get in!

Sounds like it went very well - I wish I could have been there!

OK, now it's me who's getting too tired. I expected The Choice to be between ancillary power pools and patron power pools.

Great work yet again, Samuraiko!

[ QUOTE ]
Quite a few of the rednames were disappointed they could not make my panels, but oh, well...

[/ QUOTE ]
TURNING AWAY THE RED NAMES???

I would have found it hard to stay away from the Mission Architect panel, too. Gotta ask them if demo recordings will work inside them, after all.

Sounds like it went really really well! I would go on about that more, but I want to see your I13 bit!

Sooooooo? How did it go???

You're welcome!

Servers going up and down. All devs to their stations! Sorry folks, all workshops canceled... except Dark Respite's.

Quite clever of you to pay off the ISP!

FX titles? I think the FX are the same. Custom weapons are defined in the costume. And again in the MOV commands.

There, got your own topic, good!

Very nice video! Looks like you were having some framerate problems at the torch scene, though?

GGHHHAAAAA!!!!

Zloth turns down the stereo and crawls back into his chair

Yeah, that was it. Might tone it down just a tad.

Aw man, ParagonWiki has done moved and my new guide points to the old Wikia wiki.

Ummm, errr, you know these boards are public and thus get logged on Google and whatnot? Thus your email address is now being put on every spam list on the planet?

(Or do spammers even bother to do that these days?)

Hmmm....

The Fools Gold one on the FTP site isn't bad. Could be a tad confusing, though, because the Fool's Gold district in Steel hasn't played the music since Issue 1 or 2.

What about all the songs that play in the game itself from the boombox? They aren't on the FTP site but I think some barnyard animal has it stuffed inside it.

The Cannonade music is probably the best in the game but it's only about 35 seconds long. Oh wait, there it is again! Heroes5 Loop.

Let's see, villain side.... J35? Idunno, it's got some funky bits to it.

A song called Fort Blood once fell out of Statesman's ham sandwich, maybe you could dig that up somewhere. <ahem>

There's a lot of off-beat stuff in this game! No wonder I like listening to the game music so much. Of course, I don't try dancing to it....

Hehe, if you need people to shut up, play the sound of a Void rifle firing. I know that gets my attention instantly.