:: BEFORE YOU POST - Common Solutions Inside ::
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2005-09-26 11:34 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Ok Im having some problems with the updater. I have uninstalled and installed this game 5 times using my discs and my bros discs. I have updated Direct X and graphics drivers but still to no avail does any of this work. Everytime I go to load the COHupdater.exe it throws a windows error up and I cant seem to figure out why or how to fix it. I have downloaded and installed the cohupdater.exe file from here and that doesnt work either... SOMEONE PLZ HELP!
Da_Govenah
*hides under bed* is it gone yet!
i really would kill my self if i typed all that..
But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
Hi! Great info here, but i'd like to add a note of caution to two things:
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Routers and Cable Modems
Turn off your devices and wait one minute. If you have both a modem and a router, turn the cable modem on and wait until all the lights stabilize. Turn the router on after about two minutes.
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Sadly, this can be dead wrong. Frex, if you're a home machine with a dynamic IP on your router, chances are high that the modem is assigning an IP via DHCP to whatever MAC it sees when it powers up.
English? If the network connection is being annoying, then all your stuff should be on FIRST. Power everything down; power up your router and your computer; after that's done, power up the cablemodem. The modem will see your router and say "oh hi, i remember you, here's your IP." If you're lucky enough to have missed a lease renewal or suchlike, and the modem powers up first seeing nothing, your router's IP will be nothing. Bleah.
Secondly, NMAP and similar:
Do not go blasting around your network with NMAP haphazardly, or at least without warning someone... ESPECIALLY if you're on some kind of academic network! Before you scoff, please allow me to introduce you to a long list of students who got access revoked or outright expelled for being "hackers," due to the idiocy of ignorant administrators. If you Nessus or NMAP your way around your campus, especially not knowing how easy it is to turn on "Full Frontal Assault" mode, you may trip some alarms and/or scare some people. Be careful.
Okay, I seem to find none of my problems on here that relates close enough so here goes. I can load the game fine and all that but when I get to the character selection screen it doesn't load up any images of my character. Then when I go to a game area I see nothing but grey everywhere and names of other characters floating all around the place. Can someone please help me out?
Gaming on an LCD
Thanks to BillzBubba for taking the plunge with one and everyone who helped him with it. 
But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
For those with LCTMS (Lost Connection to Map Server) or other pin-related issues:
A great little freeware program to use is PingPlotter. Very easy to use, just type in the server you want to traceroute to (for instance cohupdate.coh.com for the update server) and you can see very easily what your ping is.
Now, of course the network tool provided by the fine folks at Cryptic/NCsoft works well, but the nice thing with this is you can leave it running and it will not only show your current ping, but your average and also the min and max at each point on the traceroute. You can also dump the graph to an image. The ping interval is adjustable to as low as once a second. Anyway, figure I'd offer up this tool as I was troubleshooting my own connectivity issues.
And a hint: if you have any Torrent clients open, I'd kill them before playing the game. I was getting pinged by folks even though I had no torrents hosted on my system. In the matter of a few hours, ZoneAlarm stopped 6500 pings directed at my torrent software 
Installing video card drivers:
From Add/Remove Programs, uninstall current video driver software. All of it.
Reboot, and cancel XP's auto-install of your display adapter.
Run Driver Cleaner from http://www.drivercleaner.net/dc.htm to remove leftover files.
Before continuing, DISABLE all antivirus and internet security packages as they can interfere with a proper driver installation.
Install latest Manufacturer driver or Omegas from www.omegadrivers.net
For ATI, go to www.ati.com and choose Drivers and Software, pick your Operating System, then which type of card you have. If you have a laptop with an integrated card, choose Notebooks with ATI Graphics.
For Nvidia, go to www.nvidia.com and choose Download Drivers and pick which selctions fit your card/system.
For Intel cards/chipsets go to www.intel.com and choose Support and Downloads, Browse by Product, Graphics and find your video chipset.
In game, disable bloom, depth of field, water fx. (For ATI and Intel specifically, but will boost performance for Nvidia as well.) This is not a necessary step, but will increase your overall performance greatly.
In game disable Full Scene Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering.
Exit game and bring up driver advanced settings.
Find 3D.
Set your driver to manage FSAA and AF.
Set to your liking. 4X/4X works well for me, although I'm currently on 6X/8X.
Enjoy.
For general system cleanup, read through this.
Hope all this helps someone.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Network Traffic Tools
In some instances, the issues you may be experiencing with the game are a result of failed connections along the way to the servers and not simply a problem on your machine.
The following tools can be downloaded and run to test the stability of your routing/connection to the various CoH servers.
<ul type="square">[*] Windows 2000 and XP - ftp://ftp.coh.com/support_tool/netinfotool_XP2k.exe [*] Windows 98 and Millenium - ftp://ftp.coh.com/support_tool/netinfotool_98me.exe[/LIST]
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These links no longer work. Apparently they now have a single tool for any version of Windows. The following link works:
ftp://ftp.coh.com/support_tool/netinfotool_allos.exe
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Gaming on an LCD
Thanks to BillzBubba for taking the plunge with one and everyone who helped him with it.
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Unfortunately this link looks dead 
Hmmph...I'll have to look into that.
Here's a couple other tests:
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Drive Fitness Test (DFT) to check your harddrive.
And Prime95 to check your CPU.
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But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
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Gaming on an LCD
Thanks to BillzBubba for taking the plunge with one and everyone who helped him with it.
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Unfortunately this link looks dead
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Looks like the thread is gone. (or my search-fu is just weak this morning).
But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
Here is my performance guide. Following all the steps within will not only fix a GREAT many issues people often have with Windows, but should also greatly increase your overall performance and gaming experience.
Be well, people of CoH.
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First Person Camera View
Sometimes, the camera views get messed up and you end up in First Person view.
When you zone the game resets you to a default camera angle and position, this 'bug' happens because at some point you hit 'b' to enter first person mode, and then hit 'b' again to leave it, for some reason the reset on zoning picks up on the 'b' and sends the camera back to first person as the default position.
Here are a few solutions:
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I tried all of these, over and over again (except the mouse wheel, as I don't have a mouse wheel), and nothing worked until I tried this:
1. zone.
2. DO NOT hit the "b" button, page up or down or any othe button.
3. type /camreset in the dialog box and hit enter.
This worked for me when nothing else did, and the fix was permanent.
I'll [i]almost certainly[/i] be happy with I7....."SOON(tm)"
Too bad "Maturity" isn't an Enhanceable power.
Anybody with a bow is okay in my book. ;-)
@Linuial
Starfire/Hellfire
Liberty, Infinity & Protector
Would be NICE if the so-called SUPPORT did things like this instead of depending on the paying beta testers.....
HEED his advice regarding NMAP, it can be used nicely but start using it promiscously and you will likely get a nasty response from the network admins.
thank you SO much for this guide! it helped me through a couple problems! 
I'm sure I overlooked it but I'm going to ask anyway.
Where's the "guide" to adding both games to the same start program icon?
well, they're both run off the CoHupdater.exe. The problem you need to solve is that when you registered your CoV, you'd have wanted to link it to your CoH account. that way you'd get 12 char slots per server, and you'd be able to access both your heroes and villains from the same game.
Assuming you have both games "adding" one to your NCSoft account and "upgrading" that one with the code from the other, just run the game CoH or CoV. You should have 12 slots per server and when you choose a slot to create a new character you will be asked Hero or Villain. Once the character is there on the server, when you choose it and enter the game, the game will go to the correct area, Paragon City for heroes, Rogue Isles for villains.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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Exiting Arena or Mission
If you are stuck and can't use your exit button for any reason, try this command:
/requestexitmission 1
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Just a note, but this command only lets you exit completed missions. If used in an uncompleted mission, you will receive an error message. /leaveteam will let you out of an uncompleted mission, but also quits your team.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
Right... so what do you do when you've tried all this stuff and the game still freezes? AMD 64 X2 4800+, 4GB of RAM, GeForce 7800GT... I've run through everything I can find, and CoV still locks up when I try to create a character. Usually in the actual creation stage, where I'm tinkering with costume parts. Run Windows Update, updated the graphics drivers, updated the motherboard drivers, etc. etc. etc.
Any word on this data/old_data issue? I get stuck on the loading banner, and I don't have either of these folders.
I hate to repost but the other post I posted on may be pushed back soon. This may help connection problems with University users.
Ok Guys. I hope this may help out University users. Well first thing, look for a program called NMAP. It scans networks for opened/closed ports and such. Well port 2106 was open for us. However, it said port 2104 was FILTERED. The tech guys locally didn't find it, rather I did after a week of tests. Well I was pretty convinced this was the problem, so when I talked to the first tech guy, I didn't take no for an answer. I went back and asked for them to look at it. Then we went to his boss I believe and after 30 minutes of discussion, they decided to take my idea of port 2104. Well gladly, it was 2104 . He disabled it and I got on immediately. This may seem quite obvious for most. But what the tech guy told me is that the packets from COV looked SIMILAR to packets of a P2P program. Therefore it was HARD for them to even figure it out. I'm not sure P2P program it was similar to. Well so I hope this will help out. For those with University access who CAN'T get on, take my advice and run NMAP. Discover the port that is being Blocked/FIltered and have them help run diagnostics by temporarily disabling it and then tracking EACH packet until you find the one from COH/COV.