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Newb with VistaFollow

#1 Mar 26 2008 at 7:59 AM Rating: Decent
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I just bought a new laptop with an Nvidia 7150 video card and Vista premium... I went to the technical help Faq on the Lotro website but it's all foreign to me. My boyfriend knows nothing about vista and cannot help me... I spent about 4 hours DLing and updating the game last night.. and when I go to log in, the graphics are all messy.. some are missing.. and the character creation screen keeps flashing white...

Are there bug fixes for this? or am I just screwed with Vista? I wouldn't even know how to put XP on my laptop either...

Please help a poor female out!! ^^ Thanks in advance :)

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 12:22pm by Koyo
#2 Mar 26 2008 at 8:46 AM Rating: Good
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Koyo wrote:
I just bought a new laptop with an Nvidia 7150 video card and Vista premium... I went to the technical help Faq on the Lotro website but it's all foreign to me. My boyfriend knows nothing about vista and cannot help me... I spent about 4 hours DLing and updating the game last night.. and when I go to log in, the graphics are all messy.. some are missing.. and the character creation screen keeps flashing white...

Are there bug fixes for this? or am I just screwed with Vista? I wouldn't even know how to put XP on my laptop either...

Please help a poor female out!! ^^ Thanks in advance :)

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 12:22pm by Koyo
I play on a laptop with Vista as well, with no major problems.

What kind of memory does your laptop have? The game is very memory-intesive. I'd suggest downloading updated drivers for your gfx card, and downloading Vista service pack 1.

Other than that, I dunno.
#3 Mar 26 2008 at 8:56 AM Rating: Decent
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2 gigs of ram... is that not enough?

And is service pack 1 free?
#4 Mar 26 2008 at 12:29 PM Rating: Good
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Koyo wrote:
2 gigs of ram... is that not enough?

And is service pack 1 free?
Thats more RAM than I have. And all Windows updates are free.

I'm no expert, but I'd recommend taking a few steps to improve your game performance.

•Ensure that your gfx card is running properly. This may entail calling customer service for that gfx card, and maybe doing some research to see if LOTRO has any known issues/fixes with it.

•Run msconfig (Start menu > Run > type 'msconfig'), click on the startup tab, and deselect any programs you know you don't need.

•CTRL ALT Delete, and see how your computer is running. What percentage is your memory running at? Are there any applications or processes taking up an inordinate amount of resources?

If you do a Google search for "How can I make Vista run smoother" or something similar, you should turn up several step-by-step tips to de-bloat the bloated monstrosity that is Vista.
#5 Mar 26 2008 at 5:10 PM Rating: Excellent
There are a handful of patches that lotro needs to run better with the combination of Vista and an Nvidia card. 2 of them are MS patches and the other is the updated Nvidia driver you will want after getting those. If you have SP1 installed already, updating the Nvidia driver may be all you need.


These might help:

Nvidia and sp1

hotfixes

If you are having trouble getting the MS auto updater to work properly, which is a relatively common problem from what I've read, let me know. I figured out a couple tricks to that.

Edited, Mar 26th 2008 8:12pm by Kitca
#6 Mar 27 2008 at 12:18 AM Rating: Good
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Kitca pointed out 2 major fixes.
Definitely run Windows Update and download all the stuff available.
I had to update all my drivers after an absence of 3 months because the graphics were suddenly jerky.
I went to Driveragent.com, did the free checkup and then googled the drivers that the page told me were out of date (copied their name and added driver normally did the trick). My Ethernet card, graphics card, audio and other stuff all had outdated drivers.
You can also try to downscale your graphics in the LOTRO options a little and see if that helps
#7 Mar 28 2008 at 5:23 AM Rating: Decent
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I updated everything I possibly could.. and it still looks like a piece of crap... My Video card is working just fine... I got so frustrated that I just deleted Lotro entirely.

This is strange because I can run WoW beautifully.. no lag, perfectly curved lines, shading, and textures up close and far away, the scenery and sky look phenomenal..... and I never even had to perform any kind of update to play WoW....

Is there a way I can get XP on my laptop?
I really want to play LOTRO~!!


Edited, Mar 28th 2008 9:29am by Koyo
#8 Mar 28 2008 at 6:48 AM Rating: Good
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My only suggestion would be going to http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest and running stress tests. It may just tell you where the underlying problem is, and possibly what you can do to fix it.

I hope this doesnt kill your game experience, its really worth it in my opinion.
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#9 Mar 28 2008 at 2:02 PM Rating: Decent
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The 7150 is a fairly low-end integrated video card, sorry to say. You're not going to be able to run current-generation games at high resolutions. You'll have to crank down the detail quite a bit to get the game to run at a decent frame rate.

Here's a review: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4145

WoW is not nearly as demanding graphics-wise as LOTRO. It is, after all, a 4-year old game, and Blizzard did a pretty good job in keeping the system requirements low.

I don't think the problem is Vista here, sorry to say. Try turning down the detail and/or turning down the resolution.

#10 Mar 31 2008 at 5:39 AM Rating: Decent
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nVidia + Vista is bad:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

My Dell XPS1710 laptop with nVidia 7950 graphics is the worst of my machines for play LOTRO. Fortuantely it's playable, but doesn't work quite as well as my ATI based machines. And LOTRO is supported by nVidia, go figure!

If you look around more at the folks who hate Vista, and have problems with Vista you'll see most of them running nVidia based machines. Fortuantely ATI graphics are a very good alternative, though not quite as good yet in laptops as nVidia for power, but stability, yes. My wife plays LOTRO in her Dell 15" ATI based laptop with medium graphics settings quite well. She has nowhere near the problems I have with my laptop.

ATI is supposed to be attempting to "retake the laptop graphics market" this year, but I've not seen any announcements of hardware yet. Should be interesting, and good for the consumer IMHO. Nothing like a little competition in the market to bring prices down.


Edited, Mar 31st 2008 9:41am by scottwilkins
#11 Apr 02 2008 at 7:20 AM Rating: Good
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I resigned myself to playing on Low, instead of the Medium setting the game recommends for me, until I get a better graphic card.
When you right click Computer and then click Properties, what is the Windows Experience Index that it gives you?
For my graphics card I get a score of 3.2, which is too low to run LOTRO in the prettier modes (medium and up) without being choppy and lagging awfully in places like Bree, I also need more than my 1Gb or RAM imho.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2008 5:23pm by Nachtstern

Edited, Apr 2nd 2008 5:26pm by Nachtstern
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