Darkfaith

Really? Hmm, they've changed it then. The last time I did a fresh install (end of October), it installed the then-current nVidia drivers, but they were basic drivers only....i think they were the 191.x, but it didn't install the nVidia Control Panel, or many of the OpenGL functions...I couldn't get City working without installing the same drivers from the nVidia site. It's good to hear they've changed that, it'll make the next install much easier ^.^

If you have a 64-bit processor you'll get better performance out of the 64-bit OS (and, as Ryan said, all boxes except the Home Basic include both the 32 and 64-bit OSs).

Yes and no. Windows Update will download basic, but current, drivers for pretty much all your hardware (unless you have something that isn't really standard, like a Belkin n52t gamepad). In most cases this will be sufficient, but there are a couple things where it may not be.

Video card is the big one...the drivers that Win Update installs for your vid card will be the most basic, and in most cases won't include any of the bells and whistles for gaming. However, 64-bit drivers for 7 are usually pretty easy to find these days, MS seems to have ridden the manufacturers hard this time around because 64-bit is starting to become the standard.

Sound card drivers, depending on the card you have, may work for gaming off of what Win Update installs, or may not...there's really no way to know until you're running it, but again...these seem to be pretty easy to find in most cases, for the same reason as vid card drivers.

The rest should run off of whatever Win Update installs.

Yeah, as Ryan said, that's a 64-bit processor, so you would definitely benefit from a 64-bit OS. There are very few programs that won't run under it (I've encountered one so far in 11 months using 7, and it was a freeware program), so you shouldn't have any problems in that respect. Some older programs may need to run in compatibility mode, but Win 7 is pretty good about walking you through that.

And, as for Game Advisor...not a clue. That's probably a new procedure...really, for the purposes of the techies here on the forums, CoH Helper is more than sufficient for relevant hardware, driver and settings reports.

There seems to be multiple possible causes to this issue, and no single solution. If you have no AV we're suggesting disabling non-Windows services one at a time through the Task Manager until you find the one that's causing the problem for you.

Nope, you can definitely activate on a game time card...both of my CoH as well as my Aion account were all activated on game time cards. However, a game card and a game time card are two different things. If the OP has a game card then that can't be used with a box to activate, if I recall correctly. A box and a game card are essentially the same thing, it's just that the card doesn't have any of the physical goodies, and the digital goodies are a bit different. Both, however, need a game time card (which would be marked 15, 30 or 60 day) or a credit card to activate. However, once the account is active using one, the other can be used on the same account for the extra month and additional goodies.

If getting the proper drivers doesn't work (though that is the most likely amd common cause), it's also possible that CoH's default settings aren't agreeing with your lappy. You can either try starting the game in Safe Mode (little check box on the updater), and adjust your settings up from the minimum until it's at a point that it both works and looks decent, or you can try using Tweak CoH to adjust your settings from outside the game. I'd try checking the resolution the game is trying to run in, and make sure it matches your desktop resolution.

I'm using a Logitech wireless keyboard, and was using a wireless mouse with it until recently (didn't switch due to problems, i just wanted one with more buttons ^.^). What brand are you using? Do you have any software installed for them? Has the keyboard been cleaned lately?

Also, regarding Vent and your mic/speakers, Win 7 seems to handle those a little differently than XP did (not sure about Vista). Is your mic part of a headset, or stand alone? Try going to your control panel>Sound and checking the settings. Make sure your mic (or the card it's plugged into) is the default recording device, and the card your speakers are plugged into is the default playback device (and if you're using a USB headset, the headset should be the default communication device). There are also some setting in Vent that can affect both (I had a heck of a time setting up Vent under Win 7 the first time around).

Trenchcoats are available as the three month veteran reward. Once you reach your three month anniversary they'll be automatically added to your costume options.

And, if i recall correctly, we've been told that non-human skeletons have some technical issues that would prevent them from being given to player characters. The closest we've come to date is the Crab Spider backpack of the Arachnos Soldier epic archetype.

For future reference, this type of post is best put into the Suggestions forum. Technical Issues and Bugs is for players helping other players having problems with the game or their computers.

Happy thanksgiving!

Windows update will give you up-to-date basic drivers in most cases, but there are a few (for example, the nVidia vid card drivers) that you should be downloading from the manufacturer's site in order to get the advanced functions that Windows Update doesn't provide. For the most part, it's just vid card and maybe sound drivers, depending on what sound card you have.

You could try temporarily disabling your AV...like I said up thread a bit, it looks like there may be multiple programs that are having the same general effect at the moment. I'm leaning towards programs with active file scanners, like AV programs, not interacting properly with recent Windows updates *shrugs* it's all guess work at this point, but one thing seems pretty clear. It's not CoH doing it, and it's not Windows itself doing it.

I'm glad they got it figured out. I'll try the fix tonight when I get home from school.

At this point, while AVG seems to be the most common, I think we may be looking at multiple programs that have the same sort of effect. What kinds of programs or services does he run in the background while he's playing? Anything that does background scanning at all? You could have him try disabling one at a time until he finds the one that's doing it...a pain, I know, but that's really the only way to figure out which one is doing it. Has he tried disabling desktop comp in compatibility mode yet?

Woohoo! Congratz on getting that figured out!

This is the first I'm hearing about a bug with that, and I had the chiming work for me just last night. I suspect that if there were widespread we'd have heard about it from more people by now, so there may be an issue with your sound settings or drivers. I'd suggest opening a thread in the Tech Forum to see if any of our more tech savy players can help you with this. Please post the results of CoH Helper in your first post, it should tell them what they need to know about your drivers and settings to take a look. I would also suggest filing a support ticket, rather than a bug report, with NCSoft so that they can also take a look at the issue with you individually.

Desktop Composition is what runs the 3D environment for Aero. We've already established that it's possible to disable it upon booting CoH by enabling the option to disable it in compatibility mode, however that's not working for everyone so we're now working on hunting down the cause of the bug to see if it can be fixed.

Now, I just got home and tried turning off gaming mode in the Advanced Settings for AVG...no dice, for me at least. Still freezes without either disabling Resident Shield, or disabling desktop comp on start of CoH.

I'll try disabling game mode when I get home from school. Catharctic, you said you're on Vista, right? While Vista and 7 are very similar, there are enough differences that what works for 7 users (if it does indeed work for all of us) may not work for you. We may have to continue hunting for you.