"How-to's": "Voice Chat" - "Improving Video Hitching, Glitching.."

[smackphat]

***** WARNING - Possible Lockup On Exit ***** For some reason occasionally the LOTRO full screen mode does not always like to exit the game gracefully. It may cause a blank screen but will not completely exit to the desktop. So periodically you may have to restart your system after this lockup. Without this tweak their may be more glitching because this is one of the big fix steps, (exit lockup vs glitching) tough choice.[/INDENT]

If you get the blank screen wait for your hard drive to stop, then push Enter. That will send an error report and gracefully land you back to your desktop. Sounds wonky, but it's true. Works every time I exit the game and the client crashes to blank screen. It's important not to push anything else aside from enter though. Otherwise you could lose the focus of the dialog box.

[typtoes]

Wonderful thread. Very organized! You're a very skilled technical/instructional writer!

One possible issue though. . .

Regarding the SLI settings: Recent nvidia drivers already have a profile entry for LotRO. It is set to 0x02000009.

Your instructions say to add lines rather than replace the existing ones. Will this not create two entries for LotRO? In which case, we won't even know which one is being used (assuming having two causes no other problems).

I'd also wonder whether these "improved" SLi settings are in fact necessary since nvidia themselves have provided a profile whose settings differ from those recommended here.

This isn't a dig, of course. We're all just winging it here and your efforts at bringing all this disparate informationg together is greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the kudos! This is the only tech writing I have done except for writing many cheat-sheets for co-workers at work. Well that is interesting...they are including this setting in the driver now. I will have to look into this because that is what I had before then another user suggested that it might be better to clone the D&D profile. I will work in a note that its now coming with the latest drivers.

[typtoes]

If you get the blank screen wait for your hard drive to stop, then push Enter. That will send an error report and gracefully land you back to your desktop. Sounds wonky, but it's true. Works every time I exit the game and the client crashes to blank screen. It's important not to push anything else aside from enter though. Otherwise you could lose the focus of the dialog box.

I will work in your note into the guide. Thanks for figuring out how to drop out of the lockup.

[Evenstar420]

This is a great thread! I went to driveragent.com and did a scan of my computer and it tells me that I have 33% on the negative side. When looking at the list it's all the intel drivers. I have downloaded and manually installed the new drivers or tried to but it still uses the old ones and when I re-scan it still has the same driver problems. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, do I need to uninstall the old chipset drivers first? I'm running with an intel 955x chipset. Thanks for any info.

[typtoes]

This is a great thread! I went to driveragent.com and did a scan of my computer and it tells me that I have 33% on the negative side. When looking at the list it's all the intel drivers. I have downloaded and manually installed the new drivers or tried to but it still uses the old ones and when I re-scan it still has the same driver problems. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, do I need to uninstall the old chipset drivers first? I'm running with an intel 955x chipset. Thanks for any info.

Yeah my system does that too with one of its drivers so I just had to muster up self-confidence and say I have that already installed. They may have a bug in the online scanner.

[Evenstar420]

Well it took me forever it seems but I finally was able to get the chipset to update. I had to copy over the old .inf files on my hard disk and then manually update them all... what a pain in the butt eh. So now I only have 9% bad on the scan. It turns out the only things left that I can't seem to update are the Intel pro/1000 pl network driver, marvel lan, and the USB composite device. I've downloaded the newest drivers for those and uninstalled and reinstalled but it still says they are bad/old. I was able to update all the other USB device drivers tho.

[typtoes]

Oh cool, I will have to see if I can get my last couple to clear up too. The scanner must want to see it installed just right. Thanks!

[Karch]

Very impressive write-up. This thread is now stickied.

[typtoes]

Thank you!
<bows with deep gratitude to Karch>

[Redbeaver]

i jst read this one, and altho i dont have that many issue wit lotro, i thought ill try that fakefullscreen settings anyway... cheers!

alittle offtopic.. but on heat, anybody can recommend a good 3rd party Heatsink for 8800GTS 640? i saw a few but i dont like orb-type cooler that just randomly blow on to the card and goes everywhere else... i like the windtunnel-type like the original heatsink or something like Arctic Cooling Silencer series (whyd the stop doing that my old 7900GT in SLI has hacked AS5 rev3 on them and it works like magic! now they have this new model that blows air to the slot... WTFFF???)...

ideas?

[typtoes]

Thanks for checking out the How to Guide, I hope it helps all that use it.

I wish I had more for you but as for heat I am not really "in the know" about it. In order to have your question noticed quicker you might start a thread about heat in the video topic area, this way a guru like Dietche will notice it much quicker.

[Hak'n'Slash]

Thank You for the post

[JohnQPublic]

This is a great thread! I went to driveragent.com and did a scan of my computer and it tells me that I have 33% on the negative side. When looking at the list it's all the intel drivers. I have downloaded and manually installed the new drivers or tried to but it still uses the old ones and when I re-scan it still has the same driver problems. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, do I need to uninstall the old chipset drivers first? I'm running with an intel 955x chipset. Thanks for any info.

The intel driver package is a little wierd. Here's a note from www.driveragent.com regarding intel

For Intel chipset drivers (version 8.2.0.1014 and later), you will need to run the installation program from the command line, adding the switch -overall

Earlier versions require you to run the installation program from the command line, adding the switches "-A -OVERALL" (in uppercase, without quotes). If you are having difficulty with this, please read this page for more detailed instructions.

The page they are refering to is www.driveragent.com/intel_drivers.php

Even after doing this my SATA driver was shown as out of date. I just opened my device manager, and manually updated the driver (right-click device, update driver, point to folder containing new drivers). Everything is good now.

[typtoes]

I am guessing that installing the driver a certain way it that way must record in the registry differently than when just running the install.

[sammy0000]

thanks for the post i was having a problem and now i dont thanks man

[Graythandor]

Extremely helpful -- thanks for posting & sticky'ing this. =) Triple buffering just messed me up more, but the fakefullscreen=false tweak along with adjusting the frame rate under "troubleshoot" to match my video refresh rate has made a world of difference. =)

If you get the blank screen wait for your hard drive to stop, then push Enter. That will send an error report and gracefully land you back to your desktop. Sounds wonky, but it's true. Works every time I exit the game and the client crashes to blank screen. It's important not to push anything else aside from enter though. Otherwise you could lose the focus of the dialog box.

This may be old news by now, but I figured out the freeze/crash on exit [at least on my system] that happens sometimes is because LOTRO is conflicting with the system's DEP (Data Execution Protection [in "advanced system settings"]). While I wouldn't necessarily advocate telling anybody to bypass their system's DEP, once I added lotroclient.exe to the list of exception items (not monitored by DEP) my crashes/freezes upon exit greatly decreased.


(*note: I'm on Vista32 -- don't know if this would necessarily apply to XP, etc.)

[typtoes]

Extremely helpful -- thanks for posting & sticky'ing this. =) Triple buffering just messed me up more, but the fakefullscreen=false tweak along with adjusting the frame rate under "troubleshoot" to match my video refresh rate has made a world of difference. =)

This may be old news by now, but I figured out the freeze/crash on exit [at least on my system] that happens sometimes is because LOTRO is conflicting with the system's DEP (Data Execution Protection [in "advanced system settings"]). While I wouldn't necessarily advocate telling anybody to bypass their system's DEP, once I added lotroclient.exe to the list of exception items (not monitored by DEP) my crashes/freezes upon exit greatly decreased.

(*note: I'm on Vista32 -- don't know if this would necessarily apply to XP, etc.)

Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks for the kudos!

I added your note about the DEP for the shutdown lockups. I changed a bit of it and made it 3rd persion so it read with the guide better.

[damafan88]

allowfakefullscreen=false screws up my calibrated LCD ICC profile on vista. i used spyder 2 pro to calibrate the colors and gamma. i have to use TRUE to have my ICC work

even using MCW persistant profile override doesnt work in FALSE mode.

[Bogowan_Kenbogi]

This worked friggin wonders for me! Thank you SO much!

[typtoes]

allowfakefullscreen=false screws up my calibrated LCD ICC profile on vista. i used spyder 2 pro to calibrate the colors and gamma. i have to use TRUE to have my ICC work

even using MCW persistant profile override doesnt work in FALSE mode.

Sorry to hear your troubles, I am not sure what the workaround is for this.

[typtoes]

This worked friggin wonders for me! Thank you SO much!

Sweet, love to hear about another happy customer.

[Thaladar_LOTRO]

I had followed this guide previously and gotten my framerate up running with a single 7950GT. So, awesome guide!

However, I just got a second 7950GT today and believe I've set everything up correctly for SLI. I'm hoping that someone can help explain why my framerate *drops* about 25% (from ~40-45 to ~30-32 in SLI). This is consistent regardless of running SFR/AFR1/AFR2.

I enabled the SLI visual indicators and see the green bar, its just not doing much except in the loading screens. Even the character selection screen has a lower framerate than running single GPU.

I have AFFS set to False. SLI performance Mode set in the LOTRO profile of Nvidia CP.

Can anyone help explain what might be going on or what I can try differently? Otherwise, I'm a little disappointed to have bought a second card for no reason. Thanks!

[EDIT]
More information. I believe my SLI configuration is working as I get about a 50% framerate boost to Hellgate: London (from ~40-42 to ~60 in SLI). So this makes me think there is a LOTRO setting that I have wrong or the game simply doesn't benefit from SLI.

[typtoes]

I did the same thing adding a second 7950 to my system and experiencing the exactly the same things you are. I have not figured it out yet and have had the second card for months.

My buddy at work says that he built his SLI setup then installed OS and software and his works fine with two 7950s. He says I should wipe my drive and see if a clean install would clean it up but there is not any time for me to do that now so I also only use SLI on other games than LOTRO.

I don’t think I am much help; you might post your question as a new thread in the video area so others will notice it better and help.

[demosthenes]

good post
one common thing i see (hear) is people on voice chat who are very quiet.
Many microphones need the 'boost' enabled in windows.
Don't forget to test your audio in game - to get a feel for how it sounds

screenshots

[Nbhd]

Thanks a lot for this guide! Changing the sound playback to Hardware-3D helps too.