Getting a new laptop..

[Nilsen]

I think the soundcard may be an issue. I managed to force the lappy to accept the vista drivers that belongs to the machine for the ati card. Im sure that was good but didnt help none. I tried again to do the same with the vista soundcard drivers and for a minute it was successful but when i rebooted the default win7 drivers was back and the control panel that i had prior to the reboot also were gone again. I also have one unkown device visible in system. Its an intel something. When i googled it it had something to do with in-out system on the Intel chipset.

I got nothing to do for a couple of days so what im gonna do is reinstall the lappy to factory settings with *ugh* vista home premium and note all the systems it has when everything is installed perfectly. Ill then take another stab at win7 and look at the differences in "devices" to see if i can nail down differences in hardware and memory allocations.

[Denholm]

The unknown intel device sounds like the sound chipset. If it is listed as an unknown device it would suggest the drivers are corrupt or not compatible with the operating system. Go ahead and give that OS reinstall a shot. If it works with Vista this might just be a simple driver incompatibility issue which will be resolved in a year or two when Win 7 drivers are a must for the chipset.

[Nilsen]

The unknown intel device sounds like the sound chipset. If it is listed as an unknown device it would suggest the drivers are corrupt or not compatible with the operating system. Go ahead and give that OS reinstall a shot. If it works with Vista this might just be a simple driver incompatibility issue which will be resolved in a year or two when Win 7 drivers are a must for the chipset.

Yeah thats what im thinking. I wish i wasnt so trigger happy and that I had noted the name of the device. It was pretty specific but i cant remember im afraid. Maybe I was just lucky that even the now dated beta version of win7 had all the drivers needed for this older HP lappy. I hope they make a compatible driver for my new machine though because until this issue i must say that win7 is their best os yet. It acutally runs faster and gives me better framerates in AH than it did with XP.

Thx for the help so far. Bookmarking the thread for when i retry win7 after doing the Vista thing. 

Do you work for Microsoft or something? You seem to know your stuff

[Denholm]

No. I just watch Skuzzy from the shadows.





...Yes, Skuzzy is a redhead.

[Nilsen]

LOL 

[The Fugitive]

No. I just watch Skuzzy from the shadows.





...Yes, Skuzzy is a redhead.

are you like that cable guy that follows the verizon guy around?   

[Denholm]

No, that's Skuzzy. I don't have red hair.

[Nilsen]

Vista is in and all updated but i have the same issues except for the missing device that turned out to be a keyboard/touchpad thing.

I still get the same thing when i get in the game. When looking at the framerates it sais that i use 0mb system memory and that cant be right. On my old lappy it used around 700. Could this be the issue?

[Skuzzy]

Probably due to power management or sound.  Power management is very agressive in the new laptops where parts of the silicon in the video and CPU simply shut down when they are not needed, then power up when they are needed.  Helps to extended battery life and in most Windows applications you will not see the difference.

I am not sure if there is any way around it.  Vista/Windows 7 is not going to help matters either as they promote the on/off thing as well.

[Nilsen]

ugh so im pretty much screwed then 

[Skuzzy]

I am not sure Nilsen.  What you are expressing seems to be consistent with other new laptop complaints I am hearing.  Hard to know how much of this issue is Vista/Windows 7 related.  If you could get XP, the issue may go away.

Could also be agressive thermal control management.

Until I get my hands on one of these things, i am left to speculate as to what is causing the stutters in these laptops.

Have you tried running the game in "Windows 98/ME" compatibility mode?

[Nilsen]

I tried the XP compatibility mode and that didnt help none. Tried with and without windows firewall and have set all systems to maximum performance when not running on battery. I have also disabled the powersaver feature thing on my network cards.

The thing that i find so odd is what i said about the game not using any memory at all when i look using ctrl+I . Sais i have 2gig even if i have 4 (3usable) but none is assigned to the game. If i sit still long enough in the tower just watching the netstats it levels fairly good, but when i move to another base it goes bananas. When i hit that ping button thing on logon to the game my old lappy shows it flat with no lost packs but the new one shows no lost packs but rough seas *harr*

This is what ctrl+I sais:

Frame Rate 67
VM INTERNAL DM SNAP
VidMem 1604.1M Used 4.1M Cnt=0
SystemMem 2048.0M Used 0.0M Tex = 0.0M

-edit- by rough seas i mean slightly up and down on the second line from the bottom between 0ms and 1000ms.

-edit2- Without doing any changes i suddenly have started using system memory now. Didnt do that for the past 3 days. *scratches head*

[Skuzzy]

Is "Super Fetch" and "Ready Boost" services running on the computer?  "Super Fetch" is the service that will fill all available RAM with things Microsoft thinks you might want to run at some point in time.  Typically, inside of 5 minutes after a computer is turned on, the system will have less than 10KB (yes KB) free RAM, regardless of how much RAM the computer has.

Disable that stupid service, along with ReadyBoost.  If those services are not disabled, you will never be able to get the computer to run the game smoothly.

[Nilsen]

aha!

I had disabled readyboost, but not superfetch.... running over to dumb dell box to try that..

[Nilsen]

That did not help and now it doesnt use any system memory again..