Texas Justice

Run a tracert to the servers, or use PingPlotter to trace it and see where it is getting hung up. There is likely a router, hub, switch or other piece of network equipment between you and the East Coast servers that is causing the problem.

Once you have the information, file a support ticket at the PlayNC site so that they can try to work on it from their end and also contact your ISP and let them know what you are finding with the tests. Keep after them to put pressure on whoever it is with the faulty equipment to get it fixed. Your ISP carries a lot more weight than you do, so you really want them to bring pressure to bear.

houtex listed the IP addresses here.

EDIT: Justice is West Coast. Shame on you Wavicle.

It should show up through Windows Update without having to go to Microsoft's website. It showed up on 5/30/2009 for me and was listed as an Important Update.

If you aren't seeing Service Pack 2, is it possible that you accidentally set it to be hidden?

If it isn't showing up for you through Windows Updates for some reason, you should be able to download it from this link.

You can run MA missions if you are invited to the team but you are not allowed to create missions using the Mission Architect or to start missions from the MA terminals.

From Avatea's Trial Account Restrictions post:

Players using Trial Accounts are subject to the following restrictions:

They can be invited to teams that are using the Mission Architect Missions but they will not be able to access Mission Architect terminals to create, rate or start any published Mission Architect Missions;

They cannot level past level 13;

They may earn Influence/Infamy but only up to 50 000;

They may be invited into a team but cannot join Super-Groups;

They may communicate with other players but cannot email other players and may only speak in the Local (/local), Help (/hc) or Team (/team) channels.

Trial Accounts will have those restrictions active until they are upgraded with either:

an online serial code purchased from the online NCsoft store,

an NCsoft Game Card (purchased from a participating retailer) or

a serial code from a City of Heroes / Villains boxed retail product.

EDIT: Added link to post and contents.

Upgrade to Service Pack 2 for Vista.

I'd also recommend upgrading your graphic drivers. If Dell does not have a newer driver available for your system, I'd recommend using the Mobility Modder and follow the instructions there to get the newest Catalyst Drivers to work with your laptop.

Yes, the Catalyst Control Center is supported in Vista for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

I'm not sure where you are looking, but when I go to AMD and look up the ATI Radeon HD 3600 series for either version of Vista it has the full installation of Driver and Catalyst Control Center as well as an option of the Driver only and the CCC as a separate download.

It does note that "there is currently no software application which provides TV/Capture functionality for All-in-Wonder™ boards under Windows Vista."

You should be able to find the Catalyst Control Center by going to the Start button, All Programs, Catalyst Control Center. You should also be able to get there by right-clicking a blank spot on the desktop and selecting Catalyst Control Center. You can also get there by right-clicking a blank spot on the desktop and selecting Personalize, click Display Settings then click the Advanced button. Once this opens click the tab labeled Catalyst Control Center. Most times, there is also an icon in the system tray near the clock that is the ATI logo of a small red rectangle with the ATI lettering in white.

IF you do not have the Catalyst Control Center installed, I would recommend that you download and install it from www.amd.com as part of a driver cleaning and upgrade.

Ok. Download and run TweakCoH and it will let you set those settings BEFORE you get into the game. Be sure to set the ATI Catalyst Control Center settings to BillZBubba's recommended settings first.

Ok. First off, check with Toshiba to see if there are any updated graphics drivers. Yours are almost a year old.

Second, in the in-game Video settings do the following:

Disable Vertical Sync
Lower the Maximum Particles to 25050
Disable Anisotropic Filtering
Set your Water Effects to either Low or Disabled
Turn off Bloom
Turn off Depth of Field
Turn off Desaturation Effects.

Basically, you want to set the ATI Catalyst Control Panel and the in-game video settings to match the first post in BillZBubba's stickied thread titled ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations. Bill does a good job of explaining why on most of the settings. The rest of it, I take his word on. Once everything is stable you can try minor tweaks to improve things, but I doubt you'll improve much without causing graphics issues.

Try those settings and see how it works then report back so we'll know if that got it or we need to dig further.

I'll leave the HijackThis log for someone else that's more experienced with it. I'm not seeing Window Blinds, but it could be hiding under one of those Toshiba named applications and I'm just not seeing it.

First, post a log from running CoH Helper as it will give information about your system and the CoH installation and settings.

Then, post a log from running HijackThis. This will show what else is going on on your computer while you are playing CoH.

We need the information from those two in order to not just be throwing out random guesses.

Ok, so hopefully one of the gurus that is running Vista64 and a 9600 or similar will be able to test this and possibly find a workaround of settings.

Post a CoH Helper and HijackThis log as requested in my post above. We'll be able to give you better information once WE have some information to work with.

Zanthar, what version of Windows are you using? Windows Vista or Windows 7? Are you using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of that OS?

Glycerine, is that 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 and what specific video card?

Yes, Service Pack 2 included that hotfix.

Basically, run Windows Updates and have it install any available.

I'd recommend starting with Zloth's ++ Common Solutions & Posting Guidelines ++ thread that is stickied in this forum.

Secondly, post a log from running CoH Helper as it will give information about your system and the CoH installation and settings.

Thirdly, post a log from running HijackThis. This will show what else is going on on your computer while you are playing CoH.

We'll better be able to help you with the information from those programs.

Can't be that much worse than the 186 can it?

Nope, I've seen several instances lately with systems not wanting to fully uninstall the old drivers, even after using DriverSweeper it seems.

I've got the new 190.38 drivers running on my old computer using XP SP3 and an nVidia 6800 Ultra. Yeah, it's getting really long in the tooth, but to get the best out of a good video card upgrade I'd need to pop in a new motherboard, processor, and memory and that's not something I'm financially able to do right now.

I'd like to hear from one of the more experienced testers with Vista or Win7 and a newer card to hear how the new driver interacts with those OS's so we'll have an idea of how to advise people.

CuppaJo ran rings around

Well, true. I forget that the paid version does real-time protection since I always just go with the free version.

Then again, I practice safe surfing, so I haven't needed the real-time protection.

Sometimes, the Wireless Utility for the card and Windows Zero Configuration utility don't want to play nicely together.

My recommendation would be to go to the Services window and disable the Wireless Zero Configuration utility and let the Wireless Utility program for the card handle the wireless connections.

You can get to Services by following these steps:

Start
Run
Services.msc
Ok

This brings up the Services window. Scroll down to Wireless Zero Configuration, double-click on it, click Stop, change the Startup type to Disabled and then click Apply, then OK. Close the Services window. You may want to reboot at this point but it shouldn't be necessary. Now use the Wireless Utility that comes with the card to configure the wireless connection.

Agree with Bill, but I will point out that MalwareBytes, while being excellent at spyware removal, has no real-time protection.

Then again, most of the real-time protection I've seen on spyware products has been fairly useless with some of the newer spyware that is out there.

Just to make people aware, nVidia has released the WHQL-version of the 190.38 drivers for XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Since I don't have a Vista or Win7 machine with an nVidia card I can't test this one. I'll update my drivers on my XP system to test this out when I get home this evening and will report on the results I get.

Now you've made me

[ QUOTE ]
I can't see any problems in your COH Helper report, although updating your drivers might be good.

But in your HiJackThis, it seems to me you have a problem:

[ QUOTE ]

O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Installer] C:\Documents and Settings\Larson\Desktop\setup_241_3777_.exe


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry, I can't tell you the best way to solve it, but if you google it you might find a solution.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe this is either ProAntiSpyware 2009 or one of the many variants of this malware/scareware program.

Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, install it, update it, and run a scan with it. Let it remove any infections it finds.

Good deal, appreciate the information. As I said, I learn something new every day.

I'd seen a post a while back where the driver installation was corrupted and getting that straightened out corrected those entries. Apparently the corrupted driver install wasn't letting the client open fully and write the values to the registry then either.

Ah, so apparently WindowBlinds will cause those funky entries as well.

Learn something new every day.

These "Unknown (2147483647)" look like a corrupt Video Driver installation.

I'd recommend downloading DriverSweeper, uninstall your video drivers, boot into Safe Mode, run DriverSweeper to clean out the video drivers thoroughly, boot into Windows normally and install the 185.85 nVidia drivers again.

You can test to see if this resolves the problems by launching the game and then running CoH Helper again. If the "Unknown (2147483647)" entries are gone, you should be okay on the drivers.

Also, download and run HijackThis and post the output here.