City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Laptop trouble

je_saist

By je_saist,
Posted on: 2010-11-24 03:38 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

I like to play CoH on my laptop when I travel. It's a few years old (uses XP), but I would put the graphics settings low, and never had any problems until GR came out. Now all I see are auras, and literally the rest of the screen is a blank gray. I have disabled Ultra settings, updated the drivers, and still nothing. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Posted

Posting the output from CoHelper will show your hardware and CoH configuration, and thereby give people a better chance to make suggestions.

 

Posted

It sounds like your card could be overheating/overcapacity with the UM addition. That does all kinds of crazy things to the display.

(Yesterday I forgot to lower my graphics before booting the 2nd account, the cohlogin was tinted red, then I tried again (not realizing the issue) and it was green. Then today the 2nd Coh window was sitting at the login screen playing its music with the window black haha.
I also overloaded it once and things that were maximized had their top border showing midscreen and off to the left. Overheating cards can pull off just about any strange display adaption you can think of lol.
Yes I know, I need a new PC, or to stop running 2 accounts, I'm workin' on it )


10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

 

Posted

Sorry about the wait, spent all day on the road esteray. Here is the read out from CoH helper. Any advice would be appreciated. Also, Psychic, that was my first thought, but I disabled the UM graphics and it's still having trouble. Any ideas?

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at November 25, 2010 18:17 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.100427-1636)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: Pavilion dv8000 (EZ581UA#ABA)
BIOS: Ver 1.00PARTTBL
Central Processor: AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-34, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 2046MB
.Net Memory Report: 1459MB out of 2046MB available
Page File: 2176MB (483MB currently in use)
C Drive: (HTS541080G9AT00) 16234MB out of 62251MB (26%) free
D Drive: (HTS541080G9AT00) 965MB out of 13003MB (7%) free
E Drive: (MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-840S) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.2600.5512 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: Generic Television
Monitor's Max Resolution: 640,480
Video Device Name: ATI MOBILITY RADEON Xpress 200 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Series (0x5955)
Video Memory: 128.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6587
Driver Date: 12/1/2005 9:49:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Conexant AMC Audio
Driver File: camc6aud.sys
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.0595
Driver Date: 8/2/2005 4:58:00 AM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: 309B
Motherboard Version: 49.55
BIOS Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
BIOS Name: Ver 1.00PARTTBL
BIOS Version: PTLTD - 6040000
BIOS Release: 20060621000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1440x900
3D Resolution: 1440x900 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: No


Physics Quality: None
Maximum Particles: 100
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: None
Texture LOD Bias: Crisp
Water Effects: None
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
Depth of Field Enabled: No
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: No
Shader Detail: Unknown (4)


World Texture Level: Unknown (3)
Character Texture Level: Low
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 0.500
Entity Detail Level: 0.300
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Disabled
Shadow Map Shader: Unknown (0)
Environmental Reflections: Disabled
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Occlusion Strength: Off
Blur: Bilateral
Ambient Resolution: Performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: Yes
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Compatiblity
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.000
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 295811 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1850.201009101722.18T2r
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

 

Posted

Yeah, UM raised the "bar" for CoH in general. Even if you turn it off, it is still requiring more GFX power than it did before. It's launch made me drop my graphics settings down to performance to be playable.


10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

 

Posted

I put my graphics on minimum though, and still just a blank gray slate.

 

Posted

Even though your graphic drivers are the newest available it is old, and I think it might be your problem.
It is in general a problem that laptop makers don't upgrade for newer drivers.

You can try to use "modded" drivers from Driverheaven, to get a newer driver. I did that some years back, until I changed to a desktop.

Or you can try to add the command 'usetexenvcombine' to the game startup, as in:
"C:\Games\City Of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -usetexenvcombine
This should reduce the graphic requirements.