Moiread

Here is a useful page on Vista services, including descriptions and 'plans' for disabling the ones that are unneccesary.

Speedy Vista

It can be a little tricky to understand the layout, so here's the gist of it.

Services are listed alphabetically. Beside each service, the default setting for each version of Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business) is listed, as well as classification under each 'plan' ('Safe', Tweaked, and Minimal) offered by the site's author. Each service name is also a link to information about that service.

[u]The Plans[u]

'Safe': Disables unnecessary services. There are services that do not affect the user experience in any way. You should not even notice a difference when using these settings, but it is possible.

Tweaked: Many heavy and most likely unused services have been disabled. This is much lighter than 'Safe'. Aero is disabled, but Themes is left alone.

Minimal: All services that are not necessary to every day use and windows update have been disabled. Themes is disabled, Aero is disabled, firewall is disabled. This assumes you have your OWN firewall/AV software installed!

I highly advise that only experienced Windows users consider shutting off services. If you don't know what you're doing, you probably shouldn't do it. As such I will not provide a step by step guide to doing this.

Lord Diov: 21
Khellendrosiic: 23
Hallucinogen: 20
Essex: 24 (-1 for equality's sake)
Prodiguy: 21
The Soviet: 21
Lazarus: CRY MOAR'D
Devious Me: 19
Burning Brawler: 20
Arashi: 22
Halo Inc: PAIN TRAIN'D ( But +2 Awesome)
Billy Boy: 19
Leo Gunner: ARROW'D
Pheonyx: 20
Mithril Zeta: 21 (+1 because I luv ya, hon!)
Cowman: TROLL'D
Moiread Scott: 21
Seikon: MENTAL BLAST HEAD EXPLODE'D
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Mr Grey: 21
Ozell One: 20

What happened to our game, people!!!??? Did everyone lose interest?

Hi again everyone! I've cleaned up the thread and fixed a few minor mistakes. Here's hoping for some sticky.
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MISSING POINTERS

In some instances, loading the game client on Vista will result in your cursors/pointers not showing up. This is an easy fix.

1-Right click your desktop shortcut for the City updater.
2-Select 'Properties'. Make sure you are in the 'Shotcut' tab.
3-Select the 'Target' field. It should look something like this: "C:\Program Files\CoH Test\CohTest\CohUpdater.exe"
4-Add -compatiblecursors 1 to the end of the target, so that it looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1

If you have installed your game to the default location, you can copy and paste the line above into your target field.

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COH NOT USING DUAL CPUs

[ QUOTE ]
CoH is supposed to detect the dual processors automatically but that code is currently buggy. May as well put it in yourself and force the issue. Even hyperthreading processors can take advantage of renderthread!-Zloth

[/ QUOTE ]

1-Right click your desktop shortcut for the City updater.
2-Select 'Properties'. Make sure you are in the 'Shotcut' tab.
3-Select the 'Target' field. It should look something like this: "C:\Program Files\CoH Test\CohTest\CohUpdater.exe"
4-Add -renderthread 1 to the end of the target, so that it looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -renderthread 1


If you have installed your game to the default location, you can copy and paste the line above into your target field.

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Now, I know some of you are saying, "But Moiread, I already have a flag on my shortcut."

No problem! You can use multiple flags on the same shortcut.

My personal shortcuts actually look like this:

LIVE: "C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1 -renderthread 1
TEST: "C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -test -compatiblecursors 1 -renderthread 1

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LOW FRAMERATES

This is a neat little tweak that was posted by Barata. You can see the explanation why this works HERE. Many thanks!

1-Right click your City desktop shortcut.
2-Select 'Properties'.
3-Select the 'Compatibility' tab.
4-Click the box beside 'Disable desktop composition'. ***You may need to select a system build (IE: Windows XP (Service Pack 2).***

This works equally well on the shortcut or the CoHUpdater.exe file. I have the settings changed on both.

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NVIDIA PERFORMANCE TWEAK

This little gem of information was gleaned from the multi-page Vista Users thread. Thanks muchly!

I have tested this with my Nvidia Go 7600 and I did notice an increase in performance. Your mileage may vary. Doing this may also help non-Vista users.


[ QUOTE ]

With NVidia, another setting if you use FSAA, is to NOT use the FSAA setting in the game. It works ok, but does not give the same performance if you set this setting in the driver. Open the NVidia Control Panel and turn Anti-Aliasing to 2x,2xQx,4x, etc, whatever setting you normally like to use, then in the game turn off FSAA. This setting can make an impact on some video cards by a factor of doubling the speed and keeping the anti-aliased screen.

[/ QUOTE ]

1-Open your NVIDIA Control Panel. (I open mine through the computer's Control Panel which can be accessed via the Start Menu.)
2-Select 3D Settings.
3-Click "Adjust Image Settings With Preview".
4-Click the radio button beside 'Use The Advanced 3D Image Settings' and click the 'Take me there' link.
5-Find the Antialiasing Setting and select your desired setting.
6-Disable FSAA in the advanced graphics settings in game.
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It has also been noted that there are FPS hits when using Bloom and Depth of Field with Nvidia cards. Disabling these effects may increase your performance.
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Lord Diov: 22
Khellendrosiic: 23
Hallucinogen: 20
Essex: 24
Prodiguy: 20
The Soviet: 21
Lazarus: CRY MOAR'D
Devious Me: 19 (-1)
Burning Brawler: 20
Arashi: 23
Halo Inc: PAIN TRAIN'D ( But +2 Awesome)
Billy Boy: 20
Leo Gunner: ARROW'D
Pheonyx: 19
Mithril Zeta: 21 (+1)
Cowman: TROLL'D
Moiread Scott: 20
Seikon: MENTAL BLAST HEAD EXPLODE'D
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Mr Grey: 21
Ozell One: 20

Zeta, you're such a doll.

:: rolls D20 ::
Sorry Devious.

Lord Diov: 21
Khellendrosiic: 23
Hallucinogen: 21
Essex: 26
Prodiguy: 20
The Soviet: 26
Lazarus: CRY MOAR'D
Devious Me: 21
Burning Brawler: 19 (+1)
Arashi: 20
Halo Inc: PAIN TRAIN'D ( But +2 Awsome)
Billy Boy: 14 (-1)
Leo Gunner: ARROW'D
Pheonyx: 20
Mithral Zeta: 20
Cowman: TROLL'D
Moiread Scott: 22
Seikon: MENTAL BLAST HEAD EXPLODE'D
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Mr Grey: 19
Ozell One: 21

Oh my goodness. When did I get to be so popular?

You can rez yourself, right Laz?

Lord Diov: 20
Khellendrosiic: 20
Hallucinogen: 20
Essex: 21
Prodiguy: 21
The Soviet: 20
Lazarus: 9 (-1) Sorry guy. Looks like you're the next to bite it.
Devious Me: 20
Burning Brawler: 19
Arashi: 19
Halo Inc: 15
Billy Boy: 17
Leo Gunner: ARROW'D
Pheonyx: 17
Mithral Zeta: 18 (+1) 'Cause you're just so damn good to me.
Cowman: TROLL'D
Moiread Scott: 17
Seikon: MENTAL BLAST HEAD EXPLODE'D
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Mr Grey: 19
Ozell One: 21

Lord Diov: 16
Khellendrosiic: 21
Hallucinogen: 18
Essex: 21
Prodiguy: 19
The Soviet: 21
Lazarus: 12 (-1)
Devious Me: 20
Burning Brawler: 18 (+1)
Arashi: 19
Halo Inc: 14
Billy Boy: 16
Leo Gunner: 13
Pheonyx: 15
Mithral Zeta: 17
Cowman: 3
Moiread Scott: 16
Seikon: MENTAL BLAST HEAD EXPLODE'D
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Army of Grey: 16
Ozell One: 20

Props to my Guardian homeboy, just cause he's so badass.
Shots to Lazarus...'Cause he can totally come back from the dead, right?

[ QUOTE ]
Frankly, never really seen what you guys think in Tom, therefore a plink to him and a heal to Arashi, the only girl besides Essex on this list.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, that's wrong. I'm one of them female sex as well.

((I was really interested in this from the title, but you have WAY too many rules to follow. Sorry to say I won't be joining.))

Lord Diov: 16
Khellendrosiic: 19 (-1)
Hallucinogen: 17
Essex: 20
Prodiguy: 16
The Soviet: 19
Lazarus: 13
Devious Me: 20
Burning Brawler: 17
Arashi: 16
Halo Inc: 14
Billy Boy: 16
Leo Gunner: 13
Pheonyx: 15
Mithral Zeta: 17 (+1)
Cowman: 12
Moiread Scott: 15
Seikon: 7
Coldfire Kaiser: HEAD SHOTT'D
Army of Grey: 15
Ozell One: 18

Wow, this is hard. In the end though, it was a tossup between my Guardian homeboy BB and my Paragon U flame Zeta. I flipped a coin and Zeta came up heads.

My shot was completely random. Sorry Khellendrosiic.

Also, I think it's completely AWESOME that you guys included me in this.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Inventions has been touted as something that shelved level 50's can partake in. Level 50's that have completed all their story arcs already. Please, how can both of those occur? Level 50's can not experience IO's if they are locked out of acheiving specific rewards because they happened to hit the level cap before I9.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly my concern as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

/signed.

Gotta agree with Lady S here. Why do we have to go to another site for this?

[ QUOTE ]
My son, I keep away from the "graphic" games because he's only 7. He doesn't need to be exposed to that until he's got a firm grasp on the concept that things on TV or movies or video games are not meant to be done in real life. I'm as pleased as punch to buy games like Donkey Kong, Pokemon or Mario Cart till the cows come home for now.

[/ QUOTE ]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, this little statement I've put in bold, is why Sky_Hawke is a good parent. This right here is a parent's job. To teach children the difference between reality and make believe, and to explain that things that happen in 'make believe' aren't neccesarily acceptable in 'reality'.

Good on you, Sky_Hawke.

Anyone who says that video games are responsible for the problems with their children is someone who isn't raising their children.

"We are what we pretend to be."

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Last time I checked, pretend was PRETEND.

[ QUOTE ]
Aslo it wouldnt suprise mew to see a child hero academy or private school that teaches young children to control their powers and become heroes for the city.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, in my main's background I invented such a school: Roserock Academy in Talos.

Also, I'm pretty sure I read something somewhere about an academy. Maybe it was in one of the comic books. I'll see if I can find it.

They seem to dissapear as well, but won't resummon...

I love my base. It's awesome, and would be a very cool place to hang out. Unfortunately...No one hangs out there. Why? Because there's no reason to.

I would really like to be able to change the titles on our over 25 characters, just once...

Here are Rylie Hayle and Lady Moiread.

Both are girls, as I am a girl...But I sure would appreciate it if you might draw one of my characters.

:: smacks Servere :: Stop being an [censored].

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Good enough for me. That puts me at 22 months instead of 20, qualifying me currently for one more reward!!!! :: dances and cheers ::

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So where have you got this structure from? Or have they indicated it's one per three months?

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Well, the first one is for three months...

You're right. >_< I shouldn't assume because it makes an [censored] of you and me.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hey Xandra. I did re-re-re-peruse the Dev digest, but to little avail. So then, how DO they know?

[/ QUOTE ]

I PM'd CuppaJo asking if vet rewards were going to be calculated based on what it says on the NCSoft account page, or on actual total time PLAYED (which of course are 2 different things because of the free months). Her reply was this:

[ QUOTE ]
total time played

you only see paid time on your screen - on my internal account screen I see that, and total time.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know how "official" you'd consider that, but it was good enough for me. I posted this reply a week or so ago in one of the other seemingly hundreds of thread already on this subject.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good enough for me. That puts me at 22 months instead of 20, qualifying me currently for one more reward!!!! :: dances and cheers ::

Panel One (Bubble, Ms. Liberty): You're never going...ugh...to beat...ooof...me. You don't have it in you.

Panel Two (Bubble, Naughty Nadya): Would you care to make a wager on that, Libby?

(Panel two sound, following the action line: Whoosh!)

Panel Three (Bubble, Ms. Liberty): You just don't get it, Nadya. Justice will always prevail over...

Panel Four (Bubble, Naughty Nadya): Would you !@#$ing shut up already!?

(Panel Four Sound: Whump!!!)