City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Updated Compilation of Vista Issues/Fixes

Adar_ICT

By Adar_ICT,
Posted on: 2007-03-12 11:34 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

How old are your drivers? Exactly what is this error message saying?

 

Posted

Is there a way I can run City of Heroes on a standard account without an administrator password?

 

Posted

I just updated my driver 2 days ago. They're the newest available. Actually, before I updated my drivers, at least I got to see the login screen before it crashed. But after I updated the drivers I haven't been able to get past the client and "Loading" bar before i get an error message.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I just updated my driver 2 days ago. They're the newest available. Actually, before I updated my drivers, at least I got to see the login screen before it crashed. But after I updated the drivers I haven't been able to get past the client and "Loading" bar before i get an error message.

[/ QUOTE ]

When you updated your drivers, did you uninstall the old ones first? Use Driver Cleaner in safe mode in-between uninstalling and reinstalling?

Did you also try running the game in windowed mode instead of full-screen? You can change this in the registry or with a utility called TweakCoH.

Also, you might want to also try rolling back your drivers instead of using new ones. Sometimes newer isn't always better. And if you're using any shortcut switches (such as -renderthread and -compatiblecursors), try launching the game without them, see if it makes a difference. I've heard reports that the -renderthread switch can sometimes cause hangups and crashing like this.

Oh, and btw, when the game crashes, does it tell you what module crashed? Or does the game just shut down? You can also try looking in the event log to see if an entry was written (right click My Computer, select manage, click on Event log, then applications).

 

Posted

Another question about CoX and Vista: I have recently begun to receive BSoDs with an 0x8e stop error. If necessary, I can write down the hex memory codes, however I have not done so yet. This happens after I've been in the game about 5 minutes or so.

My wife said it happened to her before the latest issue update. I had played for hours before and not noticed. Now it happens every time I load the game.

I am running an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60
2 GB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce Go 7600

My laptop is from ibuypower. I have it set up for the High Performance Power Plan.

Any questions I will gladly answer, any answers I will greatly appreciate.

 

Posted

I would check to make sure the laptop isn't overheating. This is the most common cause of BSODs in situations like this, so long as you haven't added any new peripherals or updated any drivers.

If you have done either of those, undo what you did and see if the game plays again.

 

Posted

Justice_Man, after my decent desktop crashed, I played CoH and CoV for almost two years on a Compaq Presario 2100 laptop. The original ATI drivers were so bad that I could often see through walls (okay, that was sometimes a useful exploit!) I was generally getting single-digit framerates, but sometimes the framerate was in seconds per frame. The situation improved a bit after I upgraded from 512 MB to 1 GB, but soon became utterly unplayable, probably due to the growth of the CoX client. Zoning became a forever wait, and often crashed by laptop. I had to stop playing, and began building the replacement system you see listed on my sig.

The fact is, there are systems that will never work well for CoX. I wish you well, but suggest you build a system (for about $800 on up to $3,000) based upon an Nvidia 8600 or better card and an Intel or AMD dual processor. It will save you endless online aggravation.

BTW, I no longer have any problems with CoX running in Vista, thanks to Nvidia and Cryptic.

 

Posted

Just a general question on whether or not the CoX folks have commented on future support options for the Vista OS? I know they officially are advising they are not supporting it now but has there been any word on future support?

Thanks for your reply.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Another question about CoX and Vista: I have recently begun to receive BSoDs with an 0x8e stop error. If necessary, I can write down the hex memory codes, however I have not done so yet. This happens after I've been in the game about 5 minutes or so.

My wife said it happened to her before the latest issue update. I had played for hours before and not noticed. Now it happens every time I load the game.

I am running an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60
2 GB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce Go 7600

My laptop is from ibuypower. I have it set up for the High Performance Power Plan.

Any questions I will gladly answer, any answers I will greatly appreciate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another thing that has caused BSoD's in Vista are resuming from Hibernate when using an external USB keyboard, and even the mouse sometimes. I have run into this problem on 3 machines. 2 desktops and one laptop. In all three cases, updating the bios fixed the problem. BIOS updates on newer machines aren't as risky as they used to be, but you should only do it if you are comfortable with it, and the BIOS update actually mentions the problem you are having. On the laptop update (it was a Toshiba), the release notes for the bios update didn't mention an error, but did say updated support for USB devices.

Just another thing you can look at. Remember to be on AC power when you flash the BIOS, and follow EVERY instruction it gives you on your support site. Like I said, it isn't as dangerous as it used to be, but you still need to be careful with it. Each manufacturer has their own ways of handling BIOS updates, which is why I said you need to read their support site and follow their instructions exactly.

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Posted

Ok, I've been having this problem for awhile and its really starting to bug me. I have just installed a Vista upgrade disk on my computer a couple weeks ago and fixed the mouse cursor problem. I have 2 Nvidia 7950GT SLI video cards with the 32 bit Vista drivers. It says I have old drivers when I run CoX and my game crashes randomly every 5-15 minutes saying that the display driver has stopped responding. I'm not sure if this question has already been answered in this forum before, but I'm not searching through 500 pages of posts for it. I'm being annoyed by it, especially when in a team and having to ask the leader for an invite back because my game crashed. Can anyone answer my problem to this issue? (Try to keep it simple, not a computer expert.)

Thanks -Spoon

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, I've been having this problem for awhile and its really starting to bug me. I have just installed a Vista upgrade disk on my computer a couple weeks ago and fixed the mouse cursor problem. I have 2 Nvidia 7950GT SLI video cards with the 32 bit Vista drivers. It says I have old drivers when I run CoX and my game crashes randomly every 5-15 minutes saying that the display driver has stopped responding. I'm not sure if this question has already been answered in this forum before, but I'm not searching through 500 pages of posts for it. I'm being annoyed by it, especially when in a team and having to ask the leader for an invite back because my game crashed. Can anyone answer my problem to this issue? (Try to keep it simple, not a computer expert.)

Thanks -Spoon

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't use SLI. It's pretty much that simple.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure if this question has already been answered in this forum before, but I'm not searching through 500 pages of posts for it.

[/ QUOTE ]
And adding your question to this thread instead of starting a new one is helpful for others how exactly? It got to be 250+ posts because of people tacking questions and not fixes and workarounds to the problems they found to this thread.

Please everyone, if you have a problem start a new thread.

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Posted

I lost my question to quote, so I'll just ask it again.

Is it possible to run Vista on a standard account?

 

Posted

Errrr, huh? Standard game account?

 

Posted

No, Standard Vista account

 

Posted

You can, technically, but it will prompt you for an administrator user name and password to elevate the game's privileges.

Yeah, I'm colorblind, and I talk about it a lot. Sorry.

VICTORY: Zephyr Cyclone - 50 El/El/El Blast
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VIRTUE: Galaxy Beast - 17 Warshade

 

Posted

Is there a way for it to NOT require a password?

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Is there a way for it to NOT require a password?

[/ QUOTE ]
Not really, unless you turn UAC off.

Then again, this was posted recently... It's worth a shot if it's a big deal for you, but I don't know if it will work with a standard user account as well as it does on an administrator account.

Yeah, I'm colorblind, and I talk about it a lot. Sorry.

VICTORY: Zephyr Cyclone - 50 El/El/El Blast
VICTORY: Schysm - 36 SS/In Brute
VIRTUE: Galaxy Beast - 17 Warshade

 

Posted

The CohUpdater program does require administrative privileges to run, yes. The workaround I posted can be triggered by a standard account, but you do need to provide administrator credentials to the task in order for the task to fire off CoH with admin creds.

Kam

 

Posted

ATI OWNERS:

All my problems have been fixed with the Catalyst 7.5 driver. Don't ask me why, but it is true. I have never crashed once.

I run it in Vista mode - I have nothing turned on in the compatibility tab for the shortcut to the game or the updater.

Yay!

My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
All my problems have been fixed with the Catalyst 7.5 driver. Don't ask me why, but it is true. I have never crashed once.

[/ QUOTE ]
WHAT!? But.... but.... my nVidia 8800 is still crashing! Just once every 5 hours of play or so but I'm fairly certain it's a driver thing. Can it be? ATI drivers that are more stable than nVidia?? What's next? Will the Oakland Raiders go through a whole game without a personal foul??

 

Posted

Checked on the overheating issue. I am able to consistently reboot the system and do everything (except play CoX) right away, so I'm shying away from heat being the culprit.

I will check on the BIOS flash option and see what happens there.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Checked on the overheating issue. I am able to consistently reboot the system and do everything (except play CoX) right away, so I'm shying away from heat being the culprit.

I will check on the BIOS flash option and see what happens there.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but a heat issue may not present itself unless the system, including the graphics card, is under full load like it is while playing a game.

Now if you're having troubles playing CoX, but no other games, or if you run a benchmark program like 3DMark06 and have it loop for an hour or so with no troubles, then it's probably not heat. But you just can't rule heat out simply cause the machine boots up and you can surf the web and check email, etc.

 

Posted

Has anyone heard about the issue with vista kicking people of and the screen being black out but u can still hear the game and fight to i have been having the problen for a while?????