Texas Justice

OK. Doing a bit of digging on the Dell website gives me a bit more info on your system.

The most recent Intel video driver on the Dell site for the Inpiron 1545 is from May of 2009. CoH will read that as an old driver, and it is. I'm not sure what the time-frame is on drivers being reported as out of date on the launcher screen, but I know it is measured in months, not years.

One of the problems is that OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway, or any OEM) doesn't keep their laptop drivers updated with the most current version of the drivers from the video card (or in this case video chipset) manufacturer. And since they tweak the systems to only allow the OEM drivers, there is often no simple way to install the manufacturer's drivers. A skilled computer technician might be able to force the install of the Intel drivers, but it's not something I'd be comfortable trying to give instructions especially to someone who admits to not being tech savvy.

The other problem is that Intel graphics chips are very low end chips and are not designed to run graphics intensive games. Intel's OpenGL support in their drivers has been very poor for years, and they don't really seem to care how well their drivers support OpenGL since gamers aren't the market they are aiming for.

Unfortunately, you can't replace the video chipset in the laptop, so you are stuck with old drivers.

Download CoH Helper and save it to the desktop.
Right-click on the file after it finishes downloading and select Run as Administrator. Click Yes if asked for confirmation.
Click the Forum Output button at the bottom of the program window and wait for it to finish.
Click OK in the window telling you it has finished.
Come to this thread and use CTRL-V to paste the results in a new post.
Submit the post.

Bye

I'd also recommend updating Windows Vista as it appears to have NO service packs installed. Service Packs include security fixes and other critical updates and resolve several problems.

Since you don't have the Service Packs installed, it's very possible that you havent' done any Windows Updates at all. You can download SP2 through Windows Updates, as well as any other security or critical updates, but it make take running it and installing the patches several times before SP2 is installed.

I'd recommend downloading the SP2 standalone installer instead using this link, saving it to your desktop, running it after the download finishes then reboot and run Windows Updates. After installing the available important updates, reboot and run Windows Updates again, install any available important updates, reboot, repeat until no more important updates are available. Don't install any drivers, especially video drivers, from Windows Updates. Always get driver updates from the hardware manufacturer or your OEM (Gateway in your case).

The nVidia 6150 is a really old card and, being on the low end of the 6000 series, not a gaming card. I've seen lots of problems reported with using the 2xx.xx series of drivers with the 6000 series of nVidia cards. I'm still having good results on my old XP system with the 197.45 drivers and they were the last of the 1xx.xx series released. They also support Ultra Mode so no worries there. Issue 17 brought us a huge graphical update that included Ultra Mode. This was probably after you were last subscribed.

I'd recommend the following:

Download the 197.45 drivers.
Download and install but don't run Driver Sweeper.
Uninstall the current drivers.
Reboot in Safe Mode and run Driver Sweeper.
Reboot in normal Windows mode and install the 197.45 drivers.

A CoH Helper report would be useful.

This was removed during I17 Beta when they revamped the Positron TF. Because his dialog now offers 2 different TF's it caused problems with various "Talk to Positron" and FedEx missions.

I'm not sure if they've fixed any of the others, but I know that the Origins of Power still does this.

You are using an older version of CoH Helper that does not list all of the needed information. Please download and run the newest version of CoH Helper and post the results from that along with a HiJackThis log.

'Nuff said!

From a similar thread a while back:

Turn off Ambient Occlusion completely.

I believe you'll see a world of difference in your framerates.

And just as an FYI, STO runs on DirectX. CoH runs on OpenGL. In other words, just because STO runs fine has no bearings on how CoH would run. Apples and oranges.

The Intel graphics chipset is not a gaming chipset. It also has some rather poor OpenGL support in the drivers.

After you downloaded the driver, did you run the file you downloaded to install the driver? From looking at the Toshiba Support site, their newest driver is from March of 2008. That's still a very old driver and it may not resolve your problems but it should still be the first step you take. You may need to right-click the file you downloaded and select Run as Administrator if previous installation attempts have not worked.

For stability and security reasons, I'd also recommend updating Windows Vista to Service Pack 2. It likely won't help with this problem, but it will help with stability and security issues. You can download the standalone installer from Microsoft's site using this link.

Your video card drivers definitely need to be updated.

I've seen a lot of people reporting various problems with some of the newest drivers, and with a card that old, I'm not sure I'd even recommend the newest drivers.

If it were my computer, I'd start by upgrading to the 197.45 WHQL drivers from nVidia. Those were from April and were the last WHQL drivers in the 1xx.xx series.

You "may" want to try some newer drivers, but I've seen some odd reports of problems from people using older cards and the newer drivers. Anyway, here's a link to the Archived and Beta drivers page. You'll likely have to enter the info on your card and OS in the dropdown boxes but then it will give you the full listing. I wouldn't recommend going to anything prior to 2010 releases for compatibility reasons with the graphics update we got in I17.

Bah! Humbug!

Here is something else you can try since you have a friend that already has the game installed. Have your friend copy their City of Heroes installation folder to a DVD. There is no need to copy the following folders, so you should be able to fit it all on a DVD.

Don't copy the following folders:

Screenshots
Costumes
Custom_Critter
CustomVillainGroup
Logs
Missions
PowerCust

Some of these folders may not exist if your friend hasn't created any arcs in the Mission Architect. There will also likely be a folder that is named whatever your friends log-in name is. You don't need to copy that either.

Once you have these files on a DVD, copy them into YOUR installation folder on your computer. Make sure it is the same folder where it is already trying to download the game.

This should resolve the problems you are having with the slow download. If anything, it will be a quick patch to get you fully current with the current game version, but most likely the only thing you may need to do is Verify Files on the Updater screen. Usually you won't even need to do that.

It's a bit problematic sometimes updating laptop graphics drivers as sometimes the OEM's (in this case Sony) make some tweaks and customizations to the system that won't allow the generic Intel drivers to be installed normally. There are ways around that, but it's not a process I'd want to try to explain through a forum conversation with someone with lesser technical skills than my own.

Looking at the Sony support site for that laptop, it appears you have their most current video drivers. OEM's are notorious for not updating drivers, especially video drivers, unless there is a major problem found within a short time after the laptop is released. They will sometimes not continue updating the drivers while the laptop is still in production if there are no serious problems. I've yet to see an OEM update a driver once the laptop is out of production.

With that said, you can try to install the most recent drivers from Intel for that chipset. Click the link in the previous sentence and save the file to your desktop. After the file finishes downloading, right-click the file and select Run as Administrator. Follow the prompts on screen. It will likely give you an error message if it can't install.

The most recent drivers on the Intel site are only a little over a year newer than your current drivers. Still, that may be enough to help get past this.

Go to your UserCP, in the left column is a listing for Edit Ignore List. You have to type their name in, but most don't have overly complicated names. Just be aware that if someone quotes them that you will see the contents of the post in the quote. You also get a little bar each time you get to one of their posts notifying you that they posted but that you won't see it because you have them on ignore.

If you are using Firefox there is a much easier and more comprehensive method available. There is an add-on called FfVb that is available for free that handles ignore much easier, more comprehensively, and has other features as well. With this add-on, if you add someone to the FfVb ignore list, you don't see their posts, you don't see that they have posted, and best of all you don't see their post if someone quotes them. It's what an ignore feature should really be.

It also has features to ignore specific avatar images, signatures, threads and much more. It's well worth the download just for the fully-functional Ignore User feature.

To be honest, I didn't finish reading the following line from the services section of your HJT report, I stopped when I saw WindowBlinds on the line: