Updated Compilation of Vista Issues/Fixes
By
Adar_ICT,
Posted on: 2007-03-12 11:34 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I've updated my cursor - thanks, but when I boot CoH its basically in black and white.
I'm running a Nvidia GeForce 7600GT; Vista Business; Intel Centrino Duo; and upadated Nvidia drivers (provided by Sony).
Is there a work around?
It would be easy to say just ... With this Popular Forceware Driver
But you say Centrino.. so is this in fact some laptop?? 
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And oh yeah, protecting all the students there from the evvvviiils of the Internet?
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And keeping the traffic down. Though I suspect YouToob and other video-related sites will pump a lot more data out than CoH.
Most dorms have cable these days. I wonder if it would be possible to get your own internet connection that way?
You can update - maybe if you used the campus network to keep up to date and got a dailup ISP for actually playing?
yea i dont know what to do zloth i would like to play for the remaining 3 and a half weeks i have left this term and then play when i am on campus in following terms in the fall and beyond. It blows dam campus have to block out the ports and what not. I really hope i can get back into the game for the remaining weeks i have.
With Great Power there most also come Great Responsibility!
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But you say Centrino.. so is this in fact some laptop??
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Yes - its a new Vaio laptop.
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Did you have any issues at all with getting the drivers installed? I've seen problems trying to upgrade to beta video drivers from the default-installed Microsoft WDM video drivers. Typically you might get an error during installation, or the installation goes much more quickly than you would expect, or you didn't get the "are you sure you want to install these non-Microsoft drivers" warning, etc.; not necessarily something obtuse, but perhaps just, well, odd.
I would try this: uninstall the nVidia drivers, reboot into safe mode and run driver cleaner, go back into Vista without letting it install the default WDM drivers, and reinstall the nVidia betas. That's what I had to do to get my spare machine running right after an upgrade installation.
BTW, I didn't have this problem with a fresh install, just an upgrade.
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Okay, accomplished all this, old driver deleted, driver cleaner run, new driver installed, same problem.
It's like the game is running "above" the sceren ... so that I can only see the task bar at the top of the screen.
Any further ideas will be greatly appreciated... I miss COV!
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Did you have any issues at all with getting the drivers installed? I've seen problems trying to upgrade to beta video drivers from the default-installed Microsoft WDM video drivers. Typically you might get an error during installation, or the installation goes much more quickly than you would expect, or you didn't get the "are you sure you want to install these non-Microsoft drivers" warning, etc.; not necessarily something obtuse, but perhaps just, well, odd.
I would try this: uninstall the nVidia drivers, reboot into safe mode and run driver cleaner, go back into Vista without letting it install the default WDM drivers, and reinstall the nVidia betas. That's what I had to do to get my spare machine running right after an upgrade installation.
BTW, I didn't have this problem with a fresh install, just an upgrade.
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Okay, accomplished all this, old driver deleted, driver cleaner run, new driver installed, same problem.
It's like the game is running "above" the sceren ... so that I can only see the task bar at the top of the screen.
Any further ideas will be greatly appreciated... I miss COV!
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The only other thing I can suggest would be to turn off desktop composition. Right click the updater shortcut, click the compatibility tab, and disable desktop composition. Honestly, I don't know if it'll work, but can't hurt to try.
Any chance you have a second monitor attached (or the machine thinks you do) and is sending the game screen there? Cause that's the closest thing that comes to my mind based upon your description.
And why do you have a taskbar at the top of the screen?? Put it back at the bottom where it belongs!
That's what I'm saying ... I don't have the taskbar up there ... when the game starts ... the "Loading..." is in the right place on the screen, but, whatever is causing this is displacing the screen "upwards" (no, I don't and have never had another monitor on this system) ...
I did discover this as well ... when I reboot in Safe Mode, the same screen displacement occurs (everything "up" so that only the bottom edge of the "projected screen" is visible on the "display screen").
Why did I ever install VISTA ... geez.
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That's what I'm saying ... I don't have the taskbar up there ... when the game starts ... the "Loading..." is in the right place on the screen, but, whatever is causing this is displacing the screen "upwards" (no, I don't and have never had another monitor on this system) ...
I did discover this as well ... when I reboot in Safe Mode, the same screen displacement occurs (everything "up" so that only the bottom edge of the "projected screen" is visible on the "display screen").
Why did I ever install VISTA ... geez.
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Alrighty, go into the nVidia control panel and make sure you're in single monitor mode. Open the CP, click on Display and then look under Multiple Displays for "change display configuration". It should say "Only use one display (Single)", and the display monitor is your main monitor.
Sometimes, and I have no idea why, the driver thinks there are 2 monitors attached and automatically configures itself for a multi-monitor setup. This often happens if the card has an active TV out connector even when nothing is attached.
Again, I have no clue if this is your problem, but it's the only thing I can think of that would displace your screen like that. Hey, you got nothing to lose, right?
I wonder - is City of Heroes trying to play at a different resolution than your desktop? I get the feeling that it isn't the video card drivers, it's the monitor drivers. It sounds like the timings for sending your monitor information are totally off whack.
Let's see.... ah yes, Circ's TweakCoH should be able to fix your resolution up for you. Set it to be the same as your desktop resolution. Same refresh rate, too.
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I wonder - is City of Heroes trying to play at a different resolution than your desktop? I get the feeling that it isn't the video card drivers, it's the monitor drivers. It sounds like the timings for sending your monitor information are totally off whack.
Let's see.... ah yes, Circ's TweakCoH should be able to fix your resolution up for you. Set it to be the same as your desktop resolution. Same refresh rate, too.
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Hmmm... but he also said it does this whenever he goes into Safe Mode. But perhaps you're onto something. Maybe it's a resolution/frequency issue with his monitor -- it's having a hard time displaying whatever resolution/frequency the OS/game is sending. I guess you'd have to figure out what that resolution is and then play around in the control panel trying to figure out why it's going all haywire. If he's using a CRT perhaps the picture isn't adjusted right and he needs to play around with the centering controls on the monitor?
Here's another issue....
I've got my desktop shortcut to the updater set to disable desktop composition. Thing is, it ain't working. I've got the same thing set for Oblivion and, when it runs, there's a message popup in the system tray to tell me it's happening and using alt-tab shows me an old-style program list. When I run the updater I get no message and alt-tab'ing still gives the cool glassy look.
Any ideas why?
Moiread thanks for the compatible cursor fix but I've got a different twist to the cursor issue and hope you or someone can help me. Although I have the cursor, my cursor doesn't register where its supposed to be. As an example, in the server selection screen in order for me to highlight Champion I need to move the cursor below and to the right of it. Another example is when I'm in the character selection screen when I move the cursor to Enter Paragon City all I manage to do is rotate my toons image around. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm running:
Dell XPS M1710
Core 2 Duo T7400
Vista 32-bit
GeForce Go 7900 GS with Forceware 101.41
Have you got the latest mouse drivers for your mouse?
Just loaded Dell's newest touchpad drivers after reading your post but its still the same.
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I wonder - is City of Heroes trying to play at a different resolution than your desktop? I get the feeling that it isn't the video card drivers, it's the monitor drivers. It sounds like the timings for sending your monitor information are totally off whack.
Let's see.... ah yes, Circ's TweakCoH should be able to fix your resolution up for you. Set it to be the same as your desktop resolution. Same refresh rate, too.
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This fixed it. I had my monitor set to 1680x1050. Backing down to 1440x990 worked. I thought I had tried that, but ...
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP!
*heads into game*
Hi. I've done most of the things said here and they all work. Everything seems to go smoothly until the game randomly drops. It freezes the screen with these vertical LINES, and than crashes my computer. It happens randomly and often, now another problem has started on top of that one. The game freezes momentarily than my screen goes black, than I recieve a message saying that my drivers had stopped working but are now up; yet the game doesnt respond. It just stays black. Can I get some help with these, pretty please?
Here are me specs:
Vista Home Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20 GHz
2047 MB (2.00 GB RAM)
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
32-bit Operating System
I, too have gotten the error where the driver stops working - I am running Forceware 101.41 so it comes with the territory of a beta driver - no solution to this as far as I can tell.
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Hi. I've done most of the things said here and they all work. Everything seems to go smoothly until the game randomly drops. It freezes the screen with these vertical LINES, and than crashes my computer. It happens randomly and often, now another problem has started on top of that one. The game freezes momentarily than my screen goes black, than I recieve a message saying that my drivers had stopped working but are now up; yet the game doesnt respond. It just stays black. Can I get some help with these, pretty please?
Here are me specs:
Vista Home Premium
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20 GHz
2047 MB (2.00 GB RAM)
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
32-bit Operating System
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If you're using the latest beta drivers and did a clean driver install, I'd say you're having an overheating issue.
If you're overclocking, put everything back to stock speeds and try again. Open up your case and clean out all the dust bunnies, paying close attention to the CPU fan/heatsink, the power supply fans, and the video card fan/heatsink. You should also check to make sure all your fans are still working; it's not uncommon for a clogged fan to die, especially the small cheap ones they put on video cards.
You could also try leaving the side of the case off and blowing a small fan into the machine. If everything works fine while doing this, it's another indicator that you're having a heat issue.
Having a little problem here....
I have loaded City of Villains onto the machine, which runs Vista. Immediately noticed that of course, I have no mouse.
Used the fix posted on page one, and that worked, there is now a visible mouse... but with the result that my updater page is now going to load me into City of HEROES. The bad thing is that I do not HAVE CoH on my machine.
Tried turning "C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1
into:
"C:\Program Files\City of Villains\CoVUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1
...with the result that the machine says this is "invalid."
UPDATE: Well, go figure. Its working now, although it says I'm loading into CoH until the moment I select a server, then everything changes into CoV format *shrug*
As long as it works and I have a cursor...
Spent a while just touring around... wow, this makes what was going on on my computer [this is my husband's new Vista comp] look like cave-drawings - and this isn't even an optimal card! Un-be-freakin'-lievable. Gorgeous.
Still have those character-screen and SG-colors-screen vertical-line blues, but I'll worry about that later - at least I can log on.
add the tag -cov to your short cut. Honestly it should not matter the splash screen is just there for start up, it will only show you what you should have access to. Dont think of coh and cov as diffierent games, It is the same game it just lets you have access to different ATs. So the install for coh is the same for cov. The start up screens are different that is all.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
One more thing...
Altho I have turned all my settings except "character detail" way, WAY down, I am having extreme load-times when entering and exiting missions. This has always been a bit of a problem for me, but on a new machine I'm just expecting easier loading times, not ones twice as long.
I am experiencing load-times of 2.5 to 4 minutes - and I'm not kidding, I was sitting there actually timing it using a watch with a second-hand. Sometimes when I try to load in, it just flat-out kicks me offline.
This machine has a 160 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM in addition to that, is using Vista basic "home" edition and has an Athlon 64 chip. I just do not understand this - it seems the more I tweak my system to help out the lag, the slower my load-times are. I can move around pretty well now - but you can forget getting into and out of missions.
I realize this is not an optimal rig to be running this game on, but sheesh. This is ridiculous.
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One more thing...
Altho I have turned all my settings except "character detail" way, WAY down, I am having extreme load-times when entering and exiting missions. This has always been a bit of a problem for me, but on a new machine I'm just expecting easier loading times, not ones twice as long.
I am experiencing load-times of 2.5 to 4 minutes - and I'm not kidding, I was sitting there actually timing it using a watch with a second-hand. Sometimes when I try to load in, it just flat-out kicks me offline.
This machine has 512 MB RAM, is using Vista basic "home" edition and has an Athlon 64 chip. I just do not understand this - it seems the more I tweak my system to help out the lag, the slower my load-times are. I can move around pretty well now - but you can forget getting into and out of missions.
I realize this is not an optimal rig to be running this game on, but sheesh. This is ridiculous.
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I'm know this isn't what you want to hear- but get a shivan......no- wait- sorry- that's for the LRSF- what you really need is more memory- which is something else you probably don't want to hear, sorry.
512 is "barely" enough to handle the graphics beast that is CoV, I know it says 512 on the CoV box but really it's been said before how they can say that with a straight face is shameful.
Sorry.
"I'm not scared of anyone or anything Angie. Isn't that the way life should be?"
Jack Hawksmoor, The Authority.
.... my bad. This machine has a 160 GB hard drive; I think the 512 is in addition to that.
This is not a small machine; hence my frustration at 3-minute mission load-times. You'd think, the bigger the faster...?
What do I know
Sorry, but it stands to reason that they won't 'allow' you to Play Co* on their Networks. Something about... you know... going to classes and getting good grades and graduation... stuff like that. And oh yeah, protecting all the students there from the evvvviiils of the Internet? What were they thinking??