Updated Compilation of Vista Issues/Fixes

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I'm having the mouse pointer problem, but when i right click the coh update and hit properties, there is no target or shortcut tab. what do i do?

Edit: now all of the sudden when i try to connect to a server, it says i have the wrong version and i need to verify files, and when i do, nothing changes. it says cant verify checksum. Darn vista messin up all my games.

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There was a patch today. Did it download correctly?

Let me start off by saying yes I know I need to get a video card!

System:
Windows Vista 32bit Home Premium
Intel core 2 cpu 6300 @ 1.86 GHz
Intel(R) G965 Express Chipset Family
Vid driver version 7.14.10.1147

I am having 2 seperate graphics problems.

1) While playing (moving or standing still) I get walls and objects that will flash in and out of existance. Specific example: In the elevators in portal corp when I stand in front of them, they will flash out letting me see the inside of the vators. Occasionally walls will blink in and out letting me see the mobs standing behind them (the mobs never flash by the way).

2) once in a while when I have my enhancement screen open (only when this specific screen is open) all of the graphics will stop working and random seizure inducing rainbow colors will flash on my screen. I used to think the game froze but this is not the case as I have heard powers and such still going off in the background.

If there are newer driver for this card then my search-fu is off and I can't find them. Any advice and/or tips (other than get a new vid card. I know, I know) would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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yes I know I need to get a video card!

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Then by all means... GET one!

Stop fooling around and face the facts: Get a new (real) video card(sm). 'Knowing' you need a new card is not the answer. Getting one... is. Hit www.Newegg.com and make it happen. Your new card is only a couple of clicks away.

Aight... this is directly from dxdiag.exe itself, the machine name has been deleted for security purposes.

Time of this report: 5/11/2007, 15:21:01
Machine name:
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: VIAK8T
System Model: AWRDACPI
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+, ~2.2GHz
Memory: 1534MB RAM
Page File: 897MB used, 2411MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6000.16386 32bit Unicode

The game runs great, barely any lag, 5-10 second load times. However, what I'm wondering is if there's some sort of glitch in the coding and texture details for Peregrine Island and Grandville. Explanation:

PI - Coming up from the vators every building including the ones in the distance dissapear. What I'm left with is nothing but wide open spaces, roads, and people walking aimlessly around.

Grandville - Same thing though at Recluses tower, and it's funnier because then you have the Arachnos troops standing in mid-air beating there fists and taunting.

Another small problem which I blame on myself needing to upgrade it is when I turn my sound up I get really laggy then. But I think I might just need to upgrade my cheapo 5.1 C-Media generic sound card.

Edit: Never mind on the PI/Grandville thing, a friend of mine told me it's because the camera gets "stuck" in the elevators that causes the problem. Still waiting to see if C-Media or Microsoft release updated drivers for my sound card.

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Stop fooling around and face the facts: Get a new (real) video card(sm). 'Knowing' you need a new card is not the answer. Getting one... is. Hit www.Newegg.com and make it happen. Your new card is only a couple of clicks away.

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PM me your paypal information and I'll get right on that. In the meantime, can anyone else provide any useful information on these problems?

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I think I might just need to upgrade my cheapo 5.1 C-Media generic sound card.

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I totally agree. For $99 (On Sale!) You can get the Best X-FI Soundblaster made.

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Stop fooling around and face the facts: Get a new (real) video card(sm). 'Knowing' you need a new card is not the answer. Getting one... is. Hit www.Newegg.com and make it happen. Your new card is only a couple of clicks away.

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PM me your paypal information and I'll get right on that. In the meantime, can anyone else provide any useful information on these problems?

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<shrug> If you've already tried playing the game in safe mode and cleaned up your system then that's about all you can do. If that isn't working, then you need a video card. If you can't afford one then you need to do some extra part-time work or you need another game.

Have you tried using the -UseTexEnvCombine switch on your desktop's shortcut?

-Wolf sends

First things first... have you gotten the latest drivers? My sister has the same chipset on her laptop and doesn't have any problems with it on recomended settings.

Secondly, run a full system scandisk and defrag. Then open up the CoH updater and "Verify all files." This might take a while so pop in a movie. This happened to me once and it turned out it was a corrupt .pigg file. And no there were no modifications done though how one was getting past the updater and being used in CoH is beyond me.

If none of these work go to your nearest CompUSA or Bestbuy and pick up an ATI Radeon 9800 or the nVidia GeForce 7950 (I believe these two are on par with each other graphics wise). This is all assuming it's a PC as well. If it's a laptop well then better luck to ya.

BTW... where are you guys finding all these switches?

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Secondly, run a full system scandisk and defrag. Then open up the CoH updater and "Verify all files." This might take a while so pop in a movie.

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Shogun comes to mind - or maybe Roots.

I'm also wondering where all these switches can be found. I've been thinking of expanding my demolauncher to also launch the game with whatever switches you like. (Though it would be a LOT better if the switches were added to the Updater itself, IMHO.)

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Secondly, run a full system scandisk and defrag. Then open up the CoH updater and "Verify all files." This might take a while so pop in a movie.

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Shogun comes to mind - or maybe Roots.

I'm also wondering where all these switches can be found. I've been thinking of expanding my demolauncher to also launch the game with whatever switches you like. (Though it would be a LOT better if the switches were added to the Updater itself, IMHO.)

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I don't believe there has ever been an official listing or compilation of the available command-line switches. The ones we know of have been given to us by various devs on an as-needed basis.

And I agree, it would be nice if they were available on the updater like the safe mode check box is.

These are the ones I know of. Feel free to add any I may have missed:

-renderthread [0|1]
Enables/disables multithreaded mode.

-test
Launches the Test Server version of the game.

-cov
Launches the game in City of Villains mode.

-compatibleCursors [0|1]
Enables/disables programmable hardware cursors.

-useTexEnvCombine
Forces an alternate rendering algorithm to be used; can sometimes allow older/integrated GPUs to work.

In addition to the switches above, the following switch can also be used in a shortcut to the game executable (CityOfHeroes.exe) instead of the updater:

-project [coh|cohtest]
Allows you to bypass the updater and launch the game directly from the game executable.

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1) While playing (moving or standing still) I get walls and objects that will flash in and out of existance. Specific example: In the elevators in portal corp when I stand in front of them, they will flash out letting me see the inside of the vators. Occasionally walls will blink in and out letting me see the mobs standing behind them (the mobs never flash by the way).

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This is an issue with the way the graphics themselves are rendered. There are four different boxes in my home with four different cards (two are ATI and two are Nvidia) and it happens intermittently on all four.

<qr>

Hey, all! I just got a Vistas computer, and I haven't installed City of Heroes yet. I'm looking foward to doing so, so I'd like to ask a couple questions first.

1) Does this thread cover all of the issues that are relevant to the Vistas dillemmia?

2) If I do all of the 'assignments' given in the OP, should I not really have any problems, or are there other concerns?

Thank you very much in advance!

There are always going to be concerns because of the countless configurations of computers and which Vista edition you have. Not to mention the type of install was done. Being that you said you "bought" a Vista rig I'm sure it was an OEM clean install which is good. But there are a couple of things you can do to help make sure you cna thwart your system from running poorly.
<ul type="square">[*]Make sure you have no less then 1ghz of ram. 1.5 I recomend, 2 if your really paranoid[*]Make sure you aren't using onboard graphics. While some chipsets are OK for CoH/V, you solve a lot of problems early on by getting a GPU even if it's cheap[*]Same thing with the sound card. A sound card, a good sound card, will offload a lot of stress from the CPU same as a Video card will for graphics. The more stress you offload from the CPU the better[/list]Remember that this is just a recomendation and not the end all be all of what to do but this is what was suggested to me when I first was thinking of getting Vista so now I pass it to everyone else who is thinking of getting Vista.

Just wanted to make more people aware of this great article about vista and HD issues, and this looks to be the right thread.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...ista_cost.html

Is there a resolution yet to the blacked out character models when inside arachnos missions? I have the same issue in Banks and Casino's as well. It only happens inside missions so far. Couple screens of what it looks like:
Pic 1
Pic 2


My system:
EVGA 680i MB (nVidia 15.00 Drivers)
2GB 1066 OCZ Ram
C2D E6600
EVGA 8500GT (nVidia 158.18 Drivers)
Vista Business 32bit

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Is there a resolution yet to the blacked out character models when inside arachnos missions? I have the same issue in Banks and Casino's as well. It only happens inside missions so far. Couple screens of what it looks like:
Pic 1
Pic 2


My system:
EVGA 680i MB (nVidia 15.00 Drivers)
2GB 1066 OCZ Ram
C2D E6600
EVGA 8500GT (nVidia 158.18 Drivers)
Vista Business 32bit

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No. It is a driver issue that only nVidia can fix, and I'm sure it's something of a low priority.

The current workaround is to set your in-game shader details to low for the duration of any problem missions.

Mafalin - nope, that's got nothing to do with anything in this forum. There is no HD content in this game or any other game.

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The current workaround is to set your in-game shader details to low for the duration of any problem missions.

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Or play on the Test server. Whichever.

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Is there a resolution yet to the blacked out character models when inside arachnos missions? I have the same issue in Banks and Casino's as well. It only happens inside missions so far. Couple screens of what it looks like:
Pic 1
Pic 2

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Some good news...

I may have missed where this might have been mentioned here or on another thread, but the 158.43 NVIDIA beta Vista 32 driver seems to have cleared up at least my lingering cursor woes. I can now run CoX in fullscreen mode! (I finally got SLI support in a recent previous release.) And every incremental change in the drivers seems to improve my CoX experience. I still need "-compatiblecursors 1," though. No biggie. Hoorah for NVIDIA, finally!

Ok, I'm having a major problem. You see, I got a new replacement computer that has Windows Vista 32-Bit in it. When I just got CoX up and installed, I clicked on the desktop icon and went into the game via the steps it normally takes. When online, the resolution was odd so I changed the monitor resolution to where its suppose to be. I did this twice and when accessing the CoH Updater via the desktop icon, everything went blurry as if it was grey and smudged. The graphics became poor and couldn't make things out very well except for a few things. I thought it might change when I get into CoX, but it didn't as for when I got up to the window where it pops up "Loading" after the CoX Updater, it just stopped, gave me a Program Error window with:
[*]1st Window
Your card or driver doesn't support GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
[*]2nd Window
Your card or driver doesn't support GL_ARB_multitexture
[*]3rd Window
Your card or driver doesn't support GL_ARB_texture_compression
[*]4th Window
City of Heroes Prompt
Detected video card or driver is currently unsupported 256MB ATI Radeon X1300PRO.
The game may run poorly or not at all with your current configuration.
Current system requirements are NVidia GeForce 2 or better, ATI Radeon 8500 or better, or an Intel GMA 900 or better.
(If your card does meet the minimum requirements, you might not have the latest drivers.
Go to www.nvidia.com, www.ati.com, or www.intel.com.)
Do you want to continue? -Yes or -No

(When you click -Yes, it says "City of Heroes has crashed and cannot continue. You may need to upgrade to a supported video card or driver.)

After clicking -Ok, the graphics on the monitor go back to normal as if nothing was wrong. It did work for two log ins and log outs but the third time is when it started to occur.

I download what I "supposedly" need from each website and still nothing as it says "Driver does not match current system. Exiting setup."

Thing is, everything on this computer is brand new and top of the line as its a Dell XPS 410 again with Windows Vista 32-Bit but I'm not sure what it all has for a video card and driver as I'm not that much of a tech on computers LOL.

If I can get help on this by someone sending me instructions on what to do via a PM to me, I'd deeply appreciate it




-Demilion

The Dell XPS 410 comes with these three video card options.

256MB PCI ExpressTM NVIDIA® GeForceTM 7300LE TurboCache6
256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
256MB nVidia GeForce 7900 GS

It also comes with the Aegia PhysX card. So make sure you go to Aegia's website (the link is in the very bottom of of the info window of the updater) if that doesn't help try disabling the Physx card in your device manager.

Start Menu
Control Panel
Hardware and Sound
Device Manager (click yes on the prompt)

You should see it there probably listed under "Sound, video, and game adapters." After disabling it try updating your video drivers. If that doesn't help contact Dell Support, it may take some vicious coersion but eventually you'll get them to help you.

&lt;.&lt;
&gt;.&gt;
No I don't like Dell at all if you couldn't tell from that last line.

A new old problem that is driving me nuts. When I first got Vista I went through all the growing pains and founds ways to get it working. I'm using an ATI Radeon 9800 and was running fine at some of the highest game settings.

I made some changes to my graphics (adding a TV tuner) that necessitated reinstalling my cards (and catalyst control center) and now I am back to the original graphics problems:

Bleached out graphics, seeing through walls and floors when mousing over them, and my cursor is being corrupted after a period of time playing. Oh, and I get crashes too due to memory which suggests that there is a configurations problem where CoH isn't reading my card's memory properly.

The most annoying this is that I know that it can run smoothly since I had it that way with all the same gear. Yes, I'm in administrator mode and have followed all the posted solutions that I can find but something else, something small still needs doing.

Grrr

One thing you didn't mention was reinstalling the drivers, unless that's what you meant by reinstalling the card. Also I don't recall that ATI supports the 9800 under Vista, if I'm correct then you need to set CoH to run under XP SP2 until you upgrade your graphics card.