Am not being allowed to even update.

If CoH Helper is crashing, especially multiple times, it indicates a deeper system problem. A HiJackThis log would be a nice start to see if anyone can spot anything out of the ordinary that might be causing your issues.



Your video card likely doesn't have any effect on the download troubles you are having, but I WILL get back to the video card later, not to complain about it but to give you some basic information. I suspect it is a configuration problem with ZoneAlarm but since CoH Helper crashes indicate other system problems I'll hold off until you can get us a HiJackThis log. Maybe something will jump out at someone that they recognize as signs of Malware or a virus that could be causing this.

I just want you to be aware that your video card WILL be a problem in getting the game to run and there are no newer drivers that will fix that.

Now, if it were me and I were troubleshooting my own PC, the first thing I would do is to uninstall ZoneAlarm completely, reboot, and try the download again. I think I might even try wiping out the contents of the installation directory where it's putting the game and having it do a full download. That would eliminate once and for all if it is something in the configuration of ZoneAlarm that is causing the download issues. If it solves the problem, then I'd look at reinstalling ZA and figuring out what all needs to be configured and how and if it doesn't solve the problem then you have eliminated one program as being the problem and can let those helping you know that the problem persists even after uninstalling ZA and rebooting. But that's just me being all logical and stuff. YMMV

Now, I said I'd get back to the video card and I keep my word, so here it is.


I'm not going to complain about your video card or sound card. I will note that your video card drivers are almost 4 years old but they are the newest drivers avaialble. nVidia has dropped support for cards this old and isn't producing drivers for them anymore. Back in March we got Issue 17 which was a MAJOR graphical update to the game. The intent of the developers was that the graphics update not have any affect on systems with older graphics cards but they weren't able to do that completely. Mostly because they had to fix several things that were intentionally broken in the rendering engines so that they would run on hardware with improperly written drivers.

Their intent was to not raise the minimum specifications for the game, and they technically didn't. Technically being the key word. The websites and boxes still say an nVidia MX 2 card is the minimum, but that's pure hogwash in my estimation. I've tried running it on a system that by far exceeds the Recommended settings with an MX440 card (oldest card I could find at our Tech Department offices) and the game won't run for me. At all. This is a clean install of Windows, only motherboard and hardware drivers loaded, Windows updates run and the game installed. No other software.

Part of the reason for this is that the newest graphics drivers for the MX400 series card is from November of 2006. And those drivers aren't going to cut it for running the game in a post-I17 world. Note, I'm not complaining about your card, just giving simple facts. It's possible that you might be able to use the nVidia Mobility Modder tool on the newest official drivers and get them to install, but I didn't test it back in February and March while I was testing Issue 17 during Beta. I had enough other items to test that I didn't have time for everything. You might be able to find a driver on the Omega Drivers site that will work with your card, but most likely it will be one in the Archive section and it would be a trial and error situation to see if one would work or not. To me, it's not worth the headaches.

Something I rarely recommend on the forums is a hardware upgrade, especially on such an old system, but in this case I'll make an exception. There are some AGP graphics cards available that will get you well past what you currently have, but I wouldn't worry about it until you get the other problems resolved. After all, why upgrade the graphics card if you can't install and update the game? One such card is this Sapphire Radeon 3450 on Newegg at just under $50 before shipping and handling. The 3450 is not going to let you run all the Ultra Mode settings cranked to max, but you'll get a better visual experience than any of the other sub-$50 AGP offerings there, and better than a few of the ones that cost more.

Look a bit closer. He or she is running AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5. That is not the AVG Anti-Virus package. I initially saw the 7.5 and was going to recommend updating it to the current 9.0 build then realized it was the Anti-Spyware package instead.

The AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 program is a bit outdated and I believe it has been rolled into the current version of AVG Anti-Virus.