Windows 7 and City of Heroes
By
Adar_ICT,
Posted on: 2009-01-11 08:37 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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Was gaming tonight on vista7 and was stable although low FPS. However after several hours, I threw a "wglmakecurrent failed" error and crashed. The only reason this is note-worthy is that is an OpenGL error according to everything I can find on it. I hope that doesnt bode badly for things to come. (Yeah yeah, I know its beta.. lol)
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If your running NVidia, grab the 185.xx drivers that are running around, they work better with Win7 on most cards.
ATI drivers are still a bit back and forth, since the ATI cards adhere to more of the DX10.1 and WDDM 1.1 hardware specifications, so for Win7 there are newer features that tap the ATI cards that are non-present on the NVidia cards.
Good luck...
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Well, it is really nice layout. Too bad it doesn't recognize that I have a video card and hence cant update drivers for it. 
Manually or with Windows Update. Device manager doesn't even show any video in there.
The error message that I get everytime is something like "Could not find a device to match these drivers" or some such.
What I've tried: Win7 64 and 32 bit (couple times), flashed bio's, updated chipset drivers, newest nvidia drivers, older nvidia drivers, changed compatibility mode where appropriate, removed vid card and reset cmos.
Posting this from my main comp, so don't have a cohhelper log right now. But basic spec's:
AMD Athalon 3500+
1gig ram
XFX 6800XT
ASUS Barebone V2 AE-1
I had seen a few pages back that someone had it running on slightly less specs. Guess mine is just gimp or something.... 
Anyway, if someone has a nifty little trick for this, that would be cool. But if not, I'll just send in my report and reload XP....
[/ QUOTE ]Its possible they drop support for your card. I know that happened to me when vista first came out. I had to find haxed drivers for my video card and motherboard. They worked for a while then I started getting heat problems on th card so I upgraded.
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Why in the world would they drop support for a card that exceeds the requirements for running the OS? I had no problems finding drivers for my 6600GT.
[/ QUOTE ]They (Nvidia) done it with the geforce 5 series cards when they are perfectly capable of running aero and vista quite nicely. My guess is that they want folks to spend more cash to upgrade again.
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Ya NVidia doesn't realize how many notebook users are out there that when forced to upgrade because of their FX drop in drivers, will pick ATI next time.
In NVidia's defense, they changed the Vista driver code base to optimize around features only in the 6xxx and newer cards, which was good, but also stupid for them to stop development on the FX series.
I know MS is working to get NVidia to shove FX drivers for Win7, even if they are just updated drivers from the Vista FX drivers.
(PS anyone that needs drivers for Win7 and a 5xxx series card can just grab the Vista drivers from the NVidia site, or goto www.laptopvideo2go.com and grab any of the 96.xx to 99.xx drivers, and they will work fine on Win7.
My Spouses older laptop has a Geforce5600 Go and the Vista drivers from the NVidia site work great under Win7, and is getting 10-15fps more in CoX over Vista and XP, so there is hope even for the older stuff.)
I grabbed the 185.20 x64 vista driver the TheNetAvenger mentioned and have totally lost the crashing.
I gamed all day 12+hrs with three clients running (minimum graphics settings) without so much as a hiccup from the OS or game. Everything works, no hacks. I'm still short a few board drivers but given that I have an nforce chipset, many things are covered with the nforce win7 beta pack. All in all I'm very please, although I'm still looking for ways to make it use even less system resources (like always).
Quickspecs: Lanparty SLI-DR MB (tempermental about memory), 4gigs DDR 400, 7900 GS video, Athlon 64 fx-53 (2.4GHz, single core, the weak link for multi client gaming).
Its crazy solid for a beta. I'd happily keep it if it was given to me. However I also feel not the least inclination to purchase it, I dont see any gain.
Avenger, can you point me to a thread, or share the details you know, about optimizing the nvidia settings for vista vs xp. I'd like to know where the differences are, as I often troubleshoot both. My searchfu turned up nothing useful tonight but if you can just point me somewhere I'm more than happy to read.
Every time I try and load up CoH after upgrading from vista64 to windows 7 64 theres something wrong with the video. Loading screens come up fine, but I get black lines thru everything else, CoH is the only program. CoD WaW and Prince of Persia play just fine.
Any suggestions?
I uninstalled and reinstalled both CoH and nvidia drivers already. Used driver cleaner pro after nvidia uninstall.
EDIT: Nevermind :-] Just read a bit further in to this thread, found some workarounds.
Did a clean install of windows 7 today. Thanks for the tip about the ati drivers. Works perfectly. The only issue I have is that I have a device in the device manager that says the drivers don't work. the problem is I don't know what device. :O
Edit: That went away as soon as I ran windows update
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Every time I try and load up CoH after upgrading from vista64 to windows 7 64 theres something wrong with the video. Loading screens come up fine, but I get black lines thru everything else, CoH is the only program. CoD WaW and Prince of Persia play just fine.
Any suggestions?
I uninstalled and reinstalled both CoH and nvidia drivers already. Used driver cleaner pro after nvidia uninstall.
EDIT: Nevermind :-] Just read a bit further in to this thread, found some workarounds.
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i had gotten the same thing, one thing that i think helps is set your driver to do the tweaks for your video card instead of letting the game do it. course there are somethings the driver can't do and you have to set in the game, but like AA and AF can be set driver side. it helped for me.
!!! CoH Helper worked on Windows 7? And reported it as Vista SP1? Funky.
(No Win7 beta here. I don't put OS betas on my precious! They hurtsss uss! NASTY Betasssss!)
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!!! CoH Helper worked on Windows 7? And reported it as Vista SP1? Funky.
(No Win7 beta here. I don't put OS betas on my precious! They hurtsss uss! NASTY Betasssss!)
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Shouldn't be a surprise, the kernel is basically the same as Vista and it still reports itself as windows version 6.xxx.
Leader of the British Superhero Corps on Pinnacle
Shego: Another one saved from the fiery pits of EEeeeeconomy Computing Hell.
Installed Win7 64bit 2 days ago and had CoX running fine, with latest NVIDIA drivers. After todays patch however, I get a black screen instead of login screen.
Edit- Uninstalling Nvidia Drivers and using the Windows 7 driver for my GeForce 7300le allowed me to get into the game, but All I could see was the chat window, Nav, powers tray, etc; Actual toon and landscape was just a smear of colors. I tried nearly all the drivers available for vista 64bit that Nvidia had, and experimented with all the settings I could find to include turning off everything for lowest denominator quality; nothing worked. Seems conclusive that the 1/29 patch to the game broke it for my win7 install.
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Anyone using Windows7 and ati, the 9.1 driver came out today... skip it. Same problems as the 8.12
8.11 is the most recent that I can get to work, that said I've had exactly 2 crashes in however many weeks I've been running it rather than the daily (hourly) crashes in CoX I was experiencing with vista. Both were blue screens but previously I was getting black screens and had to powre off my computer. So yay for windows7.
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Anyone using Windows7 and ati, the 9.1 driver came out today... skip it. Same problems as the 8.12
8.11 is the most recent that I can get to work, that said I've had exactly 2 crashes in however many weeks I've been running it rather than the daily (hourly) crashes in CoX I was experiencing with vista. Both were blue screens but previously I was getting black screens and had to powre off my computer. So yay for windows7.
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Yeah, I had the same issues with 9.1 today I've had with 8.11 and 8.12, the crossfire option doesn't appear under CCC. I'm still stuck using 8.10's for now.
I've been wondering about Windows 7 and ATI myself. Just got a new system, thinking of trying Windows 7 on my old one.
Oh, a word of warning, after I installed the 9.1 driver on my windows7 install the only way I could get the 8.11 back on was to do a system restore. Even after I stripped the 9.1 driver off the 8.11 refused to reinstall.
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Installed Win7 64bit 2 days ago and had CoX running fine, with latest NVIDIA drivers. After todays patch however, I get a black screen instead of login screen.
Edit- Uninstalling Nvidia Drivers and using the Windows 7 driver for my GeForce 7300le allowed me to get into the game, but All I could see was the chat window, Nav, powers tray, etc; Actual toon and landscape was just a smear of colors. I tried nearly all the drivers available for vista 64bit that Nvidia had, and experimented with all the settings I could find to include turning off everything for lowest denominator quality; nothing worked. Seems conclusive that the 1/29 patch to the game broke it for my win7 install.
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I am running Windows 7 64 bit with a BGF/Nvidia 7800gt I had all sorts of gamma issues with the default drivers but I was able to locate the 185.x drivers mentioned in this thread and have not had an issue with it since.
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@Torell Guardian, Liberty & Freedom
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Never use windows update for graphics drivers 
but that being said the beta drivers maybe worth a shot ya never know.
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If it's for an NVidia card, in this instance you do, as per the NVidia Windows 7 page. The drivers that Windows Update installs for NVidia cards are prerelease Forceware drivers from NVidia.
I got the drivers for my 9800 GTX+ from Windows Update, and I haven't had a single graphics issue with the game yet.
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I have tried installing the drivers from Windows 7 windows update and it says it fails but they appear to run fine. Unfortunately this impacts the performance of another game, which only runs right with the Vista64 drivers.
5:55pm stuck in extra sata 80GB drive to primary gaming rig. Disconnected 2 drives in use by primary XP install. Left IRAM connected.
6pm booted to Win7 dvd, nuked old partions, had Win7 create a new partition, which created a primary partition and a 200MB system partition, (yes, you can avoid the 200MB system partition, I didn't bother,) installed Win7 32bit.
6:20pm entered account name, password, chose home network, skipped homegroup setup
6:23pm Desktop Appears. (23 minute from boot to dvd to desktop. That's not bad at all.) 2 automatic updates prompted system restart.
No sound. Activated online. Grabbed Win7 beta driver.
Sound works. Grabbed latest Win7 Nvidia driver through Windows Update.
Video still works.
Copied CoH directory from workstation to gaming rig. Access workstation by use of start(?) button and typing in admin share for workstation. As I used the same username and password for both rigs, no security was asked for. Didn't track time to copy 2.88GB. Win 7 stated 5 mins to copy. Installed to c:\games\coh as I always do. No issues on install but I did kill off the UAC.
Had to manually set speakers for 5.1. Nvidia managed FSAA looks like it doesn't function in game, had to enable it in game to see it. Yes, Water was on Low, Desaturation FX, Bloom and DoF were all disabled. Same appeared to be true for Anisotropic Filtering. Set nvidia control panel to application managed on fsaa and af for this and any other games.
Other than that, no issues at all in the short time I played.
Be well, people of CoH.
Just figured I would drop in and say I've been running the Windows 7 beta pretty constantly for a month or longer now. No real problems except that I had an nVidia crash a couple of times (aggravatingly enough, while I was in an overnight heal farm).
This is with a EVGA 8600GTS and the 185.xx beta drivers (in my Vista boot right now so I can't check the exact error numbers and such, but I'll try to remember to edit this post after I reboot again).
EDIT: 185.20 beta drivers. Couldn't find the error number unfortunately, but judging by the error message itself it looks like it might be the error 13/14 bug again.
<QR>
I tested it last week myself. CoX ran great, except for one room. I was running the RWZ arcs, and the one room that takes you underneath the Rikti mothership had issues with objects disappearing. Other than that, very stable with great framerates.
Core2Duo E8400
4GB Memory
GeForce 8800GTS w/ drivers from Windows Update
Windows 7 x64 dual-booted on my Vista x64 machine
Victory: @Brimstone Bruce
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I have not tried to test W7 but from all i read it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. Does anyone know when it is going to be released?
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Ms. Paragon City 2009
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems." - Firas Khatib
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I have not tried to test W7 but from all i read it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. Does anyone know when it is going to be released?
[/ QUOTE ]All signs are pointing to august of this year for RTM. Which is good in a way but I already feel we will be in for the same ride we had with vista with people loading it on under par machines and [censored] drivers and swearing up and down that its the OS.
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So if I don't have a spare hard drive, do you think I could install the beta on a virtual pc to play with it? 
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I wouldnt unless you got hardware that specifically helps with virtualization. Its actually kind of sluggish. What you might want to try is something called virtual box. Its free like virtual pc but has way more features. Keep in mind that once windows 7 goes live you can actually do virtualization alot easier. You can actually create and edit the virtual hard disk files that you use for the virtual machines in windows explorer. That going to be big for me because I can create wim files easier for deployment.
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Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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I have not tried to test W7 but from all i read it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. Does anyone know when it is going to be released?
[/ QUOTE ]All signs are pointing to august of this year for RTM. Which is good in a way but I already feel we will be in for the same ride we had with vista with people loading it on under par machines and [censored] drivers and swearing up and down that its the OS.
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ER, the laptop I installed win7 on at first had a celeron proc and 512MB of RAM. It performs all normal work functions without issue. Exactly opposite of what I experienced with vista.
Be well, people of CoH.
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I have not tried to test W7 but from all i read it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. Does anyone know when it is going to be released?
[/ QUOTE ]All signs are pointing to august of this year for RTM. Which is good in a way but I already feel we will be in for the same ride we had with vista with people loading it on under par machines and [censored] drivers and swearing up and down that its the OS.
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ER, the laptop I installed win7 on at first had a celeron proc and 512MB of RAM. It performs all normal work functions without issue. Exactly opposite of what I experienced with vista.
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This is actually what I consider to be one of the cool features of Windows 7. The fact that it's able to run rather smoothly on older hardware, unlike Vista. Taking the time to read as much info on Windows 7 as one can find, you'll notice a lot of the reviews and such show really good feedback in regards to running on older hardware. Coupled with how well it runs with newer hardware, it appears to be very versatile.
Unless Microsoft drops the ball between now and and it's release, it looks like Windows 7 is shaping up to be a fantastic OS
We'll see....
the funny thing is that Windows 7 is more or less a dumbed down version of vista. like they gutted all the useless crap that they felt "should have been" added alla Windows Vista.
something was clearly wrong with it when noone wanted to buy a new machine because of vista, or upgrade their machine to it.
add to this the fact that the OS in general is a memory [censored] that wants 2gb of ram to run ITSELF, it means that only higher end machines can run it decently. others would have to upgrade their machines.
another kick to the balls is that Microsoft will soon be cutting off support to Windows XP...kind of an incentive to buy vista or 7. *this is insider info from my father who works with computers for a living; I'll try to find an article to back this claim up*
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Just thought I'd post a solution/workaround for the flickering/tearing screen in CoH that worked for me. I tried turning on Triple Buffering and forcing Vertical Sync on at the driver and it didn't work *until* I also turned 2x Antialiasing at the driver (and no, I don't have a clue why it worked). Now all seems well, even though it doesn't actually turn Antialiasing on in the game until I change the in-game settings.
This is on a Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop with an NVidia 7900GS card in it and Win7 64 bit 1.0 drivers. Actually found the fix when I downgraded to Vista 169.09 64 bit drivers.
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This is a good tip for anyone running Vista or Windows7.
Do Not use the in game AA settings, and instead use the ones in the driver control panel.
This makes a huge difference in performance and also fixes issues like the screen tearing, etc.
As for AF, use the in game setting, or you will get 'lines' where the textures meet and reduced performance.
This is true of both Vista and Win7.
(There are a few tricks to Vista's different way of handling games and drivers, and if you know them you will get better performance than XP. - This is one of them.)
My Personal old school system: 7950Go 1920x1200
CoX - Very High Everything, 4xAA (Driver), 16xAF (Game), Triple Buffering on (Driver)
XP: FPS Avg 30-45
Vista: FPS Avg 35-50
Win7: FPS Avg 45-60
But if you set the AA in game, your FPS in Vista and Win7 will be below XP because the in game mechanic that enables AA shifts to FSAA in Vista/Win7 which is slower.