Mandu

It looks like you are running the game through Steam. Don't do that, it causes instability in some systems. Create a desktop shortcut to cohupdater and run the game through that with Steam turned off.

If you aren't running through Steam then what type of crash? Just the game crashing or the entire system crashing? Blue screen or complete reboot/shutdown?

A model of a Paragon City scale? Is that a scale that says "Granite Tank" at the top end and "Turn Off Hover" at the bottom?

Open Stardock and tell it not to reskin any of the files in the CoH directory. Odds are that's your culprit.

I wouldn't give you negative rep for it but I myself absolutely hate text speak. For phone text messages it is understandable. Not just because of the difficult to use keyboards but because of the limitation in text message size. However it just plain strikes me as wrong when you are using a full size keyboard or posting in a message forum where the character limitation is so very much higher.

I know some will say it doesn't matter because the point is still being communicated but just try using the same tactic in normal speech in order to save yourself the trouble of saying too many words. It is the text equivalent of saying "I go store buy milk." instead of "I'm going to the store to buy some milk.".

Go into the directory and delete any files named cityofheroes. If your system is hiding extensions you won't hurt anything because the only files in there with that name would be cityofheroes.exe and cityofheroes.old.

If that doesn't work then move cohupdater.exe to your desktop and run it from there.

I think there are actually a couple spots like that in that map. If you position yourself just right and rotate the camera angle then all the walls vanish and you can see mobs that are behind walls. I thought it was fixed but maybe UM has brought it back.

Well, my Phenom II X6 1055T is running it great with my Nvidia 8800GT. I was going to get the 955 but Fry's had an awesome sale on a Biostar Mobo/1055 combo. With 4 gigs DDR3 and their 2 year instant replacement policy (a great buy by the way. Only $35 and they will swap any failed part in store no questions asked) it came in at under $430 with tax.

Next step is upgrading the 8800gt. It is over two years old after all. But I can only throw so much money away at a time.

Incidentally for those who wonder. The Phenom 1055T is actually slightly better than the i7 and considerably less expensive. I believe I read somewhere that SLI won't work with it but I could be wrong. And since I have no intention of using SLI I don't care.

Those temperatures are just fine so yeah, as long as it's working I guess that's good. Odds are it was just a loose connection that was jogged back into place when you opened the case. But I would check all the connections before booting up again. Better safe than sorry. A loose connection can arc which wouldn't likely damage the device but could damage the connectors.

Sounds like a processor problem. If the processor is completely fried and you turn on the computer then the hard drive won't work but it's possible that power will be fed to the video card putting it's fan at max speed. That's exactly what happened to an old Dell XPS I had. Since you built it yourself it's possible you didn't get the cpu seated correctly although that's very difficult to do. It's also possible that you didn't apply the thermal paste correctly so you might want to use a temperature monitoring program to watch it's temp.

But since it booted up again the most likely answer is that the power connection to the cpu (most cpus have a separate power connection right next to the chip that is marked cpu) is bad or loose.

Having Explorer disabled wouldn't stop him from connecting. The satellite provider though would give the exact symptoms you mentioned.

The problem is that he doesn't have a gaming video card installed. In fact many built in graphics chips are more powerful than the 9100.

In Nvidia cards and most others the first number of the card is basically what generation the card is. 7950 is the 7 series, 8800 is the 8 series etc.. The second number is how powerful the card is graphically. As the cards advance through series then they do become more powerful so a 9800 is more powerful than an 8800. But a 100 is the absolute bottom of the line card intended only for browsing the internet and running non graphically intensive programs.

I'm actually surprised if he can even run the game in safe mode. Sorry for the bad news but odds are that his system just isn't up to running the game.

Kitsune is right that you can play multiple trials. You just have to start a new game account for each trial you try.

It's not at all unusual for the updater to run really slowly because there is only one update server. Depending on how many people are downloading new patches or the entire game it may run terribly slowly at times. One way to possibly speed it up is to right click on your desktop shortcut and select properties. Under target you will see the link to the updater file. The target line will end with cohupdater.exe"

You need to tag a modifier to the end of it so it ends cohupdater.exe" -port 13094

Make sure that the modifier is outside the parenthesis and that there is a space between the parenthesis and the -port

First an answer. If he has internet explorer disabled on his computer then all he will ever get in the updater window is a placeholder x. Those images and links that open in the updater are all through IE, it doesn't use whatever browser is the default one.

Questions

1. Is his internet access through satellite?

2: Was he originally able to run the trial version on his computer?

3: Is the game being run through Steam?

If the answer to 1 is yes then the multiple attempts to connect is not at all unusual. The updater has a very low timeout threshold. The solution to this is to open the updater, then when it starts trying to connect open up another copy of it and another and another and another and etc... One of them will eventually connect at which point you can close all the others and continue on to play the game. Afterwords create a shortcut to cityofheroes.exe NOTE: cityofheroes.exe, not cohupdater.exe and then tag -project coh to the end of it so it reads cityofheroes.exe" -project coh

This will skip the updater and connect directly to the game. He will only need to use the updater from then on whenever there is a new patch.



If the answer to 2 is yes then you didn't need to install anything. The trial game is the full game, it just has features disabled at the account level. All that needed to be done was to input the upgrade code. There is a chance that the edition you installed is corrupted somehow. Put cohupdater.exe on his desktop, delete the game directory, and reinstall the whole game.

If the answer to 3 is yes then stop running it through steam. Just run the game normally through cohupdater.

Like it was mentioned in the other thread you started it's most likely your intel chip. Integrated intel graphics have never worked that great with CoH because, well, they are integrated and not a true graphics solution. Recently when the graphics settings were updated for the game a bunch of code was fixed. That code was a buggy, patched and kludged together mess that caused a lot of problems. However as a side effect it somehow allowed the intel graphics chips to work much more effectively than they should. When the code was entirely rewritten it kind of killed off that intel work around.

The new code is still kind of wonky as the bugs are being worked out but it will be working much more smoothly by the time GR is released I'm sure. If they can find a way to make the intel chips work better again I'm sure they will but since nobody has any idea why the screwed up code worked so well with the intel chips it's kind of hard for them to transfer the process over.

And as to why it's with that one character only, most likely it's something in the fire graphics that hit your system hard. When running that character go into your video settings and try reducing particles to 100. I can't guarantee that will work but it's a possibility.

Not taking the time to search if they are taken or not but

Agent Argent (curse you Decorum for posting this moments before I did)
Argental Ace
Mutargent

Ultra mode is currently a bit buggy but I'm sure it's being worked on to fix those leaks and conflicts. Currently the best way to improve framerate while in ultra mode is to turn off shadows, disable ambient occlusion, lower water quality and turn off fsaa. Then individually raise each of those settings to see which one, or which combination is giving your particular system fits. As you raise the settings on a couple of those you will see no frame rate drop. Another will drop you into the 30s. And one of them at least will drop you to the single digits.

Now for a comment that likely won't be taken well but I've got to put it out there because it's something that always bugs me for some reason. People who complain that a six year old game shouldn't run like that just aren't paying attention or not thinking. It's like they lost a drag race to a VW bug that had it's engine rebuilt and had blowers and nitrous added and then they complain "There is no way my new car should be slower than a 40 year old beetle."

When you rebuild the car's engine then it's no longer the same car. Same thing with the game. When you completely rebuild the engine then it's no longer that six year old game. Crysis on the other hand is still the same game it was when it came out.

I'll answer this one in the only way I can. I don't know so I guess you could try and see what happens.

It should work if the album is an open one.

Be sure to mention to support that you already have successfully added the villains special edition and architect editions. That will let them know that you are familiar with the upgrading process and have used it in the past. That way they might (I stress the word might) work at getting to the root of the problem instead of walking you through the simple stuff you've already done.

Unfortunately you aren't going to be able to upgrade your graphics. Laptops graphics chips aren't made to be replaceable. The only way to upgrade your graphics is to buy a new system.

I know it takes money that you probably don't have but really the best solution is to have a desktop system dedicated to gaming only. Second best is to have a desktop system that you use for gaming and other stuff which is probably what most of us have. Third best is to get a gaming laptop but those are very expensive. You could build a couple good desktops for the price of a gaming laptop.

Most laptops are simply not intended for extreme gaming. Most today have pretty good graphics because they are intended to be able to play high definition video and most pc games. However when you get into the games that require a high end processor and gpu a standard laptop just can't handle it.

If HP actually checked the hardware instead of just running a diagnostic program then you've done all you can. You might try some canned air to make sure the vents are clean but other than that nothing. CoH is quite simply very stressful on both the processor and GPU. Nothing else from stress tests to other graphics intense games causes my temperatures to spike like CoH does. Mine stays well within tolerance but still heats up amazingly fast.

The problem is that laptops, even most gaming laptops, simply aren't made to bleed off heat quickly. There isn't a lot of room in there for a heat sink and cooking fans. So it all depends on how the particular cpu and gpu handle the strain. In your laptop's case they obviously don't handle it well. And if your computer is repeatedly running so hot that it shuts down then it's likely going to die soon if put under any more strain.

When you see an E.D. commercial and think "Geez, are people still complaining about that?"

It's possible that the zone is just down on your server. Try it on another.

When you only have 1000 inf to spend "high tech" becomes extremely relative.

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