Windows 7, CoX, and Desktop Windows Manager
By
all_hell,
Posted on: 2009-11-15 12:36 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Okay, so curiousity killed the cat (I really should have gone to bed a while ago >.<). I turned off the disable desktop composition option and verified that I could reproduce the bug on demand (right in the character selection screen, yay me!). So, I then tried a couple things. First, I tried adding my CoH folder to the exceptions. Rebooted, brought up CoH....no dice. The bug is still extremely reproducible. So, I tried disabling just the Resident Shield. Did another reboot, got back into CoH....and the bug was gone. So, as far as I can see you're probably correct, Obsidius...there seems to be something in the active scanner, either for AVG, or virus scanners in general, that doesn't play nicely with CoH and Vista/Win 7. Anyways, I'm off to bed...if any of the others having this issue want to give that a try, I think Obsidius is onto something.
Messed around a little more. Ironically, I think going into AVG's Tools > Advanced Settings and disabling Gaming Mode did the trick. Only tested for a half hour (I can usually repro the glitch every 30 mins) and had no issues with Gaming Mode disabled. Looks promising, but a longer test will be in order tomorrow.
I also have AVG.
I'm disabling the option right now. I'll let you know how it goes for me.
EDIT: Of course, there's a program update for AVG today, so it might be fixed. I'll play with it off for now.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
Messed around a little more. Ironically, I think going into AVG's Tools > Advanced Settings and disabling Gaming Mode did the trick. Only tested for a half hour (I can usually repro the glitch every 30 mins) and had no issues with Gaming Mode disabled. Looks promising, but a longer test will be in order tomorrow.
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I had to work late last night, but I will get some game time tonight so I will test this and report my findings back tonight as well. Thanks for looking into this!
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Unfortunately, it's still happening for me even with AVG Gaming Mode turned off. It's pointing to the OS again, imo.
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I'll try disabling game mode when I get home from school. Catharctic, you said you're on Vista, right? While Vista and 7 are very similar, there are enough differences that what works for 7 users (if it does indeed work for all of us) may not work for you. We may have to continue hunting for you.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
Messed around a little more. Ironically, I think going into AVG's Tools > Advanced Settings and disabling Gaming Mode did the trick. Only tested for a half hour (I can usually repro the glitch every 30 mins) and had no issues with Gaming Mode disabled. Looks promising, but a longer test will be in order tomorrow.
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Yeah, the only time it's been more than just a nuisance was one time last night. The game lost focus right when I clicked on a door. It couldn't make it to the loading screen, so I had to "x" it. That was just bad timing more than anything.|
Originally Posted by Darkfaith
I'll try disabling game mode when I get home from school. Catharctic, you said you're on Vista, right? While Vista and 7 are very similar, there are enough differences that what works for 7 users (if it does indeed work for all of us) may not work for you. We may have to continue hunting for you.
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I'd like to figure it out, though. I'm trying to get back into the habit of not clicking powers for characters that don't have clicks. This bug isn't helping me break that habit.
Cath, before you go spinning your wheels with AVG's various settings, you could try to use MSConfig to disable AVG entirely at startup and disable its background services. If it works, you can narrow down the problem from there.
Again, only had a cursory amount of time to try the game with AVG's Gaming Mode disabled, so I'm not entirely sure it's the absolute solution. Still, I'm pretty confident that the problem lies with AVG, at least on my rig. Will try to do more testing tonight after I crank out some homework. Otherwise, it might be a few days as I have busy weekend ahead of me (morning Math class on Sat., picking up AC2, going to Disneyland with friends, etc.).
I have just changed to Avast because of problems I was having with AVG. May not be much help as I'm still a Luddite running XP
Happy to be on Defiant.
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Believe me, I've thought of doing the same. Not like I'm exactly paying for either of these free AV solutions Going to run more test later to make sure it is an AVG problem and not something else first.
if Desktop Comp is a service, you should (!) be able to disable it as an administrator. Of course, with Win7 extending the concept of the "padded cell environment" even further than Vista, there are things that not even the administrator can do, which means tweaking the box to play nice with your legacy apps becomes.... difficult.
That said
NET STOP "<service name>"
and
NET START "<service name>" are very useful when you have services that you want to toggle off and on.
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Desktop Composition is what runs the 3D environment for Aero. We've already established that it's possible to disable it upon booting CoH by enabling the option to disable it in compatibility mode, however that's not working for everyone so we're now working on hunting down the cause of the bug to see if it can be fixed.|
Originally Posted by Soul Train
if Desktop Comp is a service, you should (!) be able to disable it as an administrator. Of course, with Win7 extending the concept of the "padded cell environment" even further than Vista, there are things that not even the administrator can do, which means tweaking the box to play nice with your legacy apps becomes.... difficult.
That said NET STOP "<service name>" and NET START "<service name>" are very useful when you have services that you want to toggle off and on. |
Now, I just got home and tried turning off gaming mode in the Advanced Settings for AVG...no dice, for me at least. Still freezes without either disabling Resident Shield, or disabling desktop comp on start of CoH.
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Originally Posted by Chuckers
I have an nVidia card as well, but this is a laptop, so no SoundBlaster apps here.
I did have a logitech driver that was looking for video phone calls and I know I disabled that. I have HeroStats, but since the upgrade to Windows 7, I don't run it because it doesn't work in the "on top of the game" mode anymore. Here's a list of some of the things I disabled on 11/14 when it seems to have stopped: Services: Google updater service Google software updater lxde_device - (a Lexmark Printer Service) PNRP Machine Name Publication Steam Client Service Remote Desktop Services Windows Connect Now - Config Registrar Start Up Programs: Logitech Vid lxdeamon (Lexmark Print Program) lxdemon.exe (Lexmart Print Program) Realtek Voice Manager |
Well, last night, it started again.. pretty badly.. about every 5 minutes I was having to right click the screen to get the focus back.. I hadn't changed anything in my services or start up.. I'll have to see if something else is now causing it or if something restarted on it's own.
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Okay, I disabled AVG's Resident Shield, and the problem stopped. After it worked for me, I decided to pass on the "fix" to a friend who is having the same issue . . . .
He doesn't have AVG (or any other AV program currently). 
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At this point, while AVG seems to be the most common, I think we may be looking at multiple programs that have the same sort of effect. What kinds of programs or services does he run in the background while he's playing? Anything that does background scanning at all? You could have him try disabling one at a time until he finds the one that's doing it...a pain, I know, but that's really the only way to figure out which one is doing it. Has he tried disabling desktop comp in compatibility mode yet?
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Originally Posted by Catharctic
Okay, I disabled AVG's Resident Shield, and the problem stopped. After it worked for me, I decided to pass on the "fix" to a friend who is having the same issue . . . .
He doesn't have AVG (or any other AV program currently). |
<QR>
Found out Friday that AVG seems to have a wonky interaction with the game. Even with Gaming Mode disabled, the problem started to occur. But when I turned Gaming Mode back on, the problem ceased, again.
I might try Avast! or another AV solution to be sure, but if you're having this same issue, I strongly encourage you to contact Support. The more eyes that are on the problem, the better. Mine is just an isolated case without more cases being reported.
I uninstalled AVG.
I installed Avast!
So far, no trouble.
I know this doesn't fix the issue for anyone else, but AVG seemed to be a definite meanie to COH, and it's been getting larger and larger for quite some time now. I had already considered switching to Avast! before this problem, so I'm happy with this solution for me. I'll attempt to troubleshoot with my friend who's experiencing the issue without an anti-virus program running currently.
Thanks for the info Cath. Perhaps it's time for me to jump ship from AVG also.
BAM. Near the end of the thread, there also looks to be a patch that fixes the problem until the next AVG software update.
So yeah, AVG's been hijacking my desktop the entire time. When CoX tries to take back the desktop, Windows says "AVG is in charge right now." Not impressed by AVG, but still, I'll try the patch first before I rip out the AV.
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I'm glad they got it figured out. I'll try the fix tonight when I get home from school.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
BAM. Near the end of the thread, there also looks to be a patch that fixes the problem until the next AVG software update.
So yeah, AVG's been hijacking my desktop the entire time. When CoX tries to take back the desktop, Windows says "AVG is in charge right now." Not impressed by AVG, but still, I'll try the patch first before I rip out the AV. |
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
<QR>
Found out Friday that AVG seems to have a wonky interaction with the game. Even with Gaming Mode disabled, the problem started to occur. But when I turned Gaming Mode back on, the problem ceased, again. I might try Avast! or another AV solution to be sure, but if you're having this same issue, I strongly encourage you to contact Support. The more eyes that are on the problem, the better. Mine is just an isolated case without more cases being reported. |
I don't have AVG. I did notice that playing in Window mode seemed to lessen the amount of game glitches. Infact, last night, I played for about 3 hours with any issues, including having Ventrillo open and running.
I do have Trend Micro as my virus checker...
You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame
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You could try temporarily disabling your AV...like I said up thread a bit, it looks like there may be multiple programs that are having the same general effect at the moment. I'm leaning towards programs with active file scanners, like AV programs, not interacting properly with recent Windows updates *shrugs* it's all guess work at this point, but one thing seems pretty clear. It's not CoH doing it, and it's not Windows itself doing it.
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Originally Posted by Chuckers
I don't have AVG. I did notice that playing in Window mode seemed to lessen the amount of game glitches. Infact, last night, I played for about 3 hours with any issues, including having Ventrillo open and running.
I do have Trend Micro as my virus checker... |
Word. Use MSConfig to disable AV-related processes and startups and reboot. Run the game and see if it has any problems. If not, you've found the culprit. If so, back to square one, unfortunately. I didn't find much info on Trend Micro having problems recently, unfortunately.
Heh, I wonder if Trend Micro is OEMing AVG? Seems unlikely, but weirder things have happened.
I was starting to think something like that too, Obs.
The fact that multiple programs are causing a similar issue points to the OS, but when most of the cases are AV programs, I'm inclined to think there's some widespread copy-pasta action.
This happened to me as well during the short time I had CoH working and sent it in as an issue. Hopefully this won't be something I encounter again if I can get the darn thing going, but at first it was just another issue that was effecting me only.
However, I use a completely different anti-virus. CA Internet Suite 2010.
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