Tex

Newegg shows that the EL1352-03 has one PCI-E x16 and one PCI-E x1 expansion slots. They are probably low profile given the small size of the case.

But, in the interest of actually helping the OP get the game working with what they have, have you tried using the game's 'safe mode'?

Go to www.nvidia.com and if you have not done so previously, select your region.

Then, click "Download Drivers":

Then, for option 1:

Product Type: GeForce
Product Series: GeForce Go 7 Series (Notebooks)
Product: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M
Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit
Language: <Whatever you want>

And click SEARCH

This is definitely a problem with you graphics drivers.

Looks like HP has newer graphics drivers available than what you have installed

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/biz...kId=135&mode=3

You could also try Intel's drivers:

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/

Try adding -useTexEnvCombine to your CoH shortcut.

See the Intel section of the following message:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219502

Also, even if it is brand new, it is possible that the video card drivers may be out of date.

See these threads:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=231628
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219502

If you are only having this problem when opening a contact window or some other windows, then this may be a problem with your video card drivers. There is a newer version than the 6/7/2010 version that you have installed. You may want to try it.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

I would suggest trying to update your Intel graphics drivers. You can find the "Intel Driver Update Utility" here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Default.aspx

Also, I suspect that you may need to change your shortcut to force the game to use the simpler rendering path:

cohupdater.exe -usetexenvcombine

Tim, this sound like a video driver issue. But, you've stated that you've updated your video drivers. The latest drivers from NVidia are 258.96 released on July 19th 2010. You may want to try a slightly older version (go back one or two or three versions) to see this is only a problem with the most recent video drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

aticfx32.dll is definitely part of the drivers for your GPU.

Since you are having stability issues with the latest drivers from AMD/ATI and you would rather use the official video drivers from ASUS, my advice to you would be to let ASUS know of the issues you are having with their video drivers for you GPU. You should also make sure that they know that City of Heroes uses the OpenGL API (not DirectX) so they know which part of the drivers to look at.

"Technical Issues & Bugs Discuss technical questions and/or bugs here! This is NOT a forum where official technical/QA support is available. To report a bug use the /bug command in game. For technical assistance email support@coh.com."

<emphasis added>

Lobster, have you checked your 'Wait for vertical refresh' setting in Catalyst Control Center? If it is set to 'Always Off' that may interfere with the game's vsync settings.

I don't know where Jeto got his/her information. But CoX should be fully compatible with 64-bit Windows. The issue usually stems from OpenGL drivers not being up-to-date.

It is most likely a problem with the AMD/ATI OpenGL drivers for Mac.

You might have more luck asking in the Mac Users forum:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=582

In case you misunderstood, I was referring to your video card drivers, not your video card.

Driver Version: 6.14.0010.4421
Driver Date: 11/3/2005 4:42:40 PM

You need to update or re-install your video card drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Since it sounds like most people who are having problems with this are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, could it be a problem with Aero? I seem to recall some players had previously reported problems with Aero and CoH.

Your video card drivers are very out-of-date. You might try updating them. I don't know if this will alleviate your updater problems.

Then I take it you have your water effect set on low quality? That should be normal at low quality water effect.

Just re-read your post. Yes, that is to be expected at the low quality water effect.

Please make sure that ATI's Catalyst Control Center is not trying to override the application settings.

Right click the red ATI icon in your notification area and select "Catalyst Control Center". In the "Graphics Settings" tab, expand the "3D" option and select "Anti-Aliasing" and make sure the "Use application settings" box is checked. You may need to look at other settings in the 3D settings area and see if they are trying to override the game settings which may interfere with the game.

If your CPU has to wait on your video card/GPU to finish processing data, then you will never see 100% CPU utilization. If you are seeing 100% CPU utilization, then your GPU may be sitting idle waiting for data from your CPU or you may be perfectly matched where your CPU and GPU are running full steam.

Also, the "Vertical Sync" option will force the GPU to wait for the vertical sync before flipping buffers and this could also cause the CPU to wait on the GPU.

You might try reducing graphics settings to reduce the load on your video card/GPU so it can keep up with the CPU.

While the game does use at least two threads which should ideally be busy most of the time, the CPU usage on a dual-core machine may never reach 100% CPU utilization due to other factors.

This is definitely a problem with the video card drivers. If you've updated your BIOS, you may need to re-install your video card drivers (possibly uninstall/reboot/re-install/reboot).

Start by updating your video card drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_197.45_whql.html

I would still like to know what kind of video card/GPU and video drivers LegendaryJMan is using to play CoH.