BOO-HOO!!! Laptop NOT fixed! Sheesh!!!

[tooz]

After one excruciatingly long month of agony, Dell (China)finally sent someone up to my apartment here in Jiangsu Province. This guy knew his stuff, and now I have the games back running smoothly.

This is the one major reason why I shall always buy Dell computers--their service--even in China--is the greatest.

Thanks Redwolf, Schrullenhaft, and DEY for all of the assistance.

Time to party!

[Edit] April 20. Well, guess I spoke too soon. See the last two posts dated April 20, below.

[ April 19, 2005, 10:59 PM: Message edited by: tooz ]

[DEY]

You just need to get windows to redetect your video again.

Try going into your "CONTROL PANEL", double click "SYSTEM", go to the "HARDWARE" tab, click the "DEVICE MANAGER" button, right click on "DISPLAY ADAPTERS", then click "SCAN FOR HARDWARE CHANGES".

This should redetect and set itself back up again for your nvidia video.

I strongly suggest that you don't do anything major like a reinstall until a tech looks the situation over.

[Schrullenhaft]

What does show up in the Device Manager for your display ? Is it a 'yellow question mark' associated with the display ? The above advice concerning "detecting" should generally work to find the hardware (if it is unlisted).

However, Windows doesn't have the video drivers for quite a few videocards, including many newer laptop-based video chipsets. This may just potentially be a matter of reinstalling the Nvidia drivers. These need to be ones that recognize your video chip - the generic drivers offered on Nvidia's website will not recognize the portable video chips (at least not without some INF hacks). Most likely what you'll need to do is download the driver offered by Dell for now until you're willing to experiment with some drivers that have INF hacks to recognize the portable graphics chips.

Since you're able to play CM, I'm guessing that the system is seeing the Nvidia hardware somehow, just not optimally. If the hardware wasn't detected and supported somehow, you shouldn't be able to play CMBB/CMAK at all (CMBO however would work in software-rendering mode).

[tooz]

"Try going into your "CONTROL PANEL", double click "SYSTEM", go to the "HARDWARE" tab, click the "DEVICE MANAGER" button, right click on "DISPLAY ADAPTERS", then click "SCAN FOR HARDWARE CHANGES".

This should redetect and set itself back up again for your nvidia video."--DEY

Tried that, same results. The only item listed in display adaptrs is "Dell 8200".

Schrullenhaft, I did download the driver from DELL, and not NVidea.

My education continues...

[DEY]

Is this notebook the Dell Inspiron 8200, if so this has the GeForce4 440 Go video chip.

So what may be happening is that windowsXP is installing a microsoft driver for this notebook's videochip that is branded as the name your getting.

What name was the video using with the Dell drivers before the repair took place.

The next thing I'd try is to force it by using the UPDATE DRIVER option and update to the newer DEll-nVidia video drivers you was using.

[tooz]

DEY, I was using an ATI (forgot the specs) video card before the changeover.

Dell China just had two techies come to my apartment here in Yancheng. An apprentice and a master--I hope the force is strong with them . They now have the video card appearing in the device manager. They also replaced the motherboard with a new one, AND replaced the NVidea video card. Result--the NEW video card doesn't work! :eek: :confused: It started to cause the very same problems as my ATI when my ATI went on the fritz. However, the techie will return tomorrow morning with TWO new video cards, figuring ONE of these cards has to work.

This is why I bought a Dell. Despite the original techie screwing things up royally, Dell is trying their best to sort things out. In China, this type of customer service is unheard of. Edward Dell would be pleased.

More later...so...close...

[ April 07, 2005, 03:38 AM: Message edited by: tooz ]

[tooz]

See the first thread here--I editted the first post, not the last. Back in business and CM bliss!

[ April 19, 2005, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: tooz ]

[Rob Murray]

I can really sympathise with your problem. Last August I upgraded my graphics card. I paid the tech guy where I bought the new one $45.00 (+tax) to install it ( I'm disabled & the computer's heavy). I got the computer home & it started giving me warning messages on start up ("Windows has to shutdown to prevent hardware damage." :eek: !). I looked at the card's manual & it stated that this malfunction may be a result of the AGP aperture size not being set properly. So I went into the BIOS (not being very comfortable with this as I didn't really know anything about it) & looked at the AGP aperture size setting. The tech guy had left it at the size for the old card (SOB :mad: !!!). I took a chance & reset the aperture size to match the memory on my new card (as per the manual). The warning message stopped & my card works properly now.

Long story, I know, but it's maddening to have pay someone who's suppose to be a professional & I end up having to fix their mistake. I'm glad that your games work properly now.

[ April 07, 2005, 08:09 AM: Message edited by: Rob Murray ]

[Redwolf]

tooz, glad it's fixed but you should really post what the problem and the solution turned out to be.

You will not be the last to have that problem.

[Redwolf]

Tooz, I don't want to be overly insulting, but you are an idiot.

Doesn't it occur to you that a lot of people invested time in helping you and now you just post "it works" without posting the solution.

Doesn't it occur to you that the next person will have to go through that whole dilemma as well, just because you are a selfish weenie with no common sense?

[tooz]

"Tooz, I don't want to be overly insulting, but you are an idiot."--Redwolf

Well, I am a CYBER-IDIOT for certain.

"Doesn't it occur to you that a lot of people invested time in helping you and now you just post "it works" without posting the solution."--Redwolf

Redwolf, have you checked my profile? I live in

CHINA!!! You know, the country where NOTHING works!!! My internet here at school has conked out for the last two weeks--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I FINALLY can go back on line.

Therefore I had a dilemma--respond to this post or respond to my family and friends' inquiries. I chose the latter.

"Doesn't it occur to you that the next person will have to go through that whole dilemma as well, just because you are a selfish weenie with no common sense?"--Redwolf

Well, I AM selfish with my weenie (I thought it would be weinie--as in short for "weiner"), I only share my weinie with Mrs Tooz.

As you can see, I do not take offense easily. Now I am back online, NOW I can reply. Eh,school and private matters got priority with my computer and lessened internet time (My internet still refuses to work every other day--a problem with my school's LAN network).

OK, the Dell techie came, replaced the old nvidea Go 4 440 video card with another one. Before he left he told me I should redownload the newest driver. However, as you now know, my internet went on the fritz. OK, now it's back. CM is working well again but CoD is not. I unistall and reinstall CoD. Hey that works too! That was back on around April 7th.

I notice that my nVidea now appears in my Device Manager--but for some reason the computer says it is a Dell C840 (?)--my laptop is an Inspiron 8200. Odd, but things are working.

Now it is April 16th, I have my internet working BETTER--but not normal--and now I uninstall the old driver, use the "Driver Cleaner Pro" (and still see ATI files to be cleaned), then re-download the new driver. Result--now my game stutters again. Oh well, here I go again. I now notice that the Device Manager no longer shows the card in my Display Adapter setting.

So, how do i get this display adapter to read my new video card.

Redwolf, you and Schrullenhaft have taught me much. I only hope I can offer you some advice on patience before you start to insult some hapless computer forum member. There may be reasons of which you are unaware that prevent forum members from complying with your requests immediately.

I DID like the "selfish weenie" comment though.

[Schrullenhaft]

Do you know which driver version you had installed previously that was working fine ? You'll need to get a hold of that particular driver before doing anything else. Typically I would have guessed that the latest driver should have been OK.

If you can find and download that particular driver, you can do the uninstall and "drive cleaner" on it and then install the old driver. I assume that that would work, but it may not. Your situation of the display device disappearing from the Device Manager is very strange. If it wasn't for the sheer amount of hassle and inconvenience, I'd recommend formatting your hard drive from scratch and starting fresh (with a copy of all the necessary drivers on CD).

Make sure when you perform any of the uninstalls or installs that any anti-virus software is off ("active protection" is disabled) and preferably any other software is also shut down.

[tooz]

"If you can find and download that particular driver, you can do the uninstall and "drive cleaner" on it and then install the old driver. I assume that that would work, but it may not. Your situation of the display device disappearing from the Device Manager is very strange. If it wasn't for the sheer amount of hassle and inconvenience, I'd recommend formatting your hard drive from scratch and starting fresh (with a copy of all the necessary drivers on CD)."--Schrullenhaft

Well, I tried that--I still had the original updated driver (still in the drivers folder) and downloaded that. No effect. Puzzling. What I am going to do next is to copy and post those ATI driver dlls that appear in my "Driver Cleaner" box. No matter how many times I clean the drivers, these dll.s stay in the "add/remove" box for the cleaner. Maybe these are the bugs? I keep searching for these buggers but my searches come up empty.

I now have three choices:

1) Calling Dell (China) again tomorrow. The last techie did something with BIOS that allowed the laptop to recognize the new video card and list in in Device Manager/Display Adapter. So, I hope Dell can call him, find out what he did, and have me walked through this again so I can retrace his steps.

2) Unistall Windows. Ugh...the LAST straw!

3) Stop playing CM until I return back to the states this summer--maybe someone there knows his stuff? In the meantime I'll just play H&D2 (plays fine), CoD and CoDUO (also plays fine) and FINALLY learn how to play Rome: Total War (the GAME plays fine, but the opening movie flutters--man this is weird!).

Thanks, Schrullenhaft, for NOT calling me names.

Oh yeah, regarding my crap ISP here--it always takes me at LEAST three tries to access ANY website here in the PRC. I keep getting the annoying "Page Cannot Be Displayed" (mostly in Chinese) message.

One thing that life in China has taught me is patience.

[Schrullenhaft]

I can't imagine why something would need to be done in the BIOS to have the videocard show up in the Device Manager. Since other games play OK, then it seems that the drivers are there. Perhaps you have some sort of registry corruption that is only affecting the device listing but not the actual device and drivers themselves.

Oh yeah, regarding my crap ISP here--it always takes me at LEAST three tries to access ANY website here in the PRC. I keep getting the annoying "Page Cannot Be Displayed" (mostly in Chinese) message.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is due to the "filters" the Chinese gov't uses on all Internet traffic coming and going into the PRC. They're probably getting swamped and your ISP may be low on the totem pole for priority access to the filters.

[tooz]

Okay, thanks to the help of Redwolf, Schrullenhaft and DEY I am now starting to figure some things out and offer better details of my problems.

I have discovered four (4) outdated files in my Direct X folder. These are:

ddrawdll version 5.03.001.0904

d3d9d.dll version 5.03.0001.0904

d3d9d.dll version 9.06.0168.000

d3dim700.dll version 5.03.0001.0902

These four files have a yellow caution marker adjacent with a message requesting me to update these files. However, I DID download and install Direct X9.c, so now what? Do I delete these four files and redownload Direct X9c or...

Also regarding DirectX Properties, I have the option of using either the "Debug" version or "retail" version of Direct 3D. Which version would you recommend?

Inside folder entitled 1386 (what does this folder do anyway?) I discovered--and subsequently deleted the following ATI files:

ATI2DVAA, ATI2DVAG (appears twice), ATI2EVXX, ATI2evxx, ATI2MDXX, ATI2mdxx, ATI3DUAL, ATI2MTAA, ATI2MTAG (appears twice), ati2mag, ATI3D1AG (appears twice), ATI3D2AG (appears twice).

Once deleted the game stutters SLIGHTLY less, but this stutter is noticable with the larger battles/ops. These files are still sitting in my recycle bin.

I still have problems finding any other ATI files while doing a search or while going into the regedit.

I hope this makes better sense and now I hope that I am learning enough in order for me to also make better sense.

So, is my problem with DirectX? Why didn't the current download/upgrade upgrade those four files mentioned above?

[Schrullenhaft]

The "i386" folder is probably the install folder for Windows XP that Dell has put on your hard drive. The files you deleted were installable, but not installed drivers for ATI videocards. AS far as I'm aware deleting them should have done nothing for your problem. Drivers that would affect your situation would be located (for Windows XP) in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS. You can look in these directories for the files you deleted earlier (or almost anything starting with ATI..., there are some files you don't want to delete that start with those letters).

The versions I have of the files you're having problems with for DirectX 9.0c are:

ddraw.dll 5.03.2600.2180

d3d9d.dll 5.03.2600.2180

d3dim700.dll 5.03.2600.2180

I'm using a US English version of Windows XP and a "retail" ("runtime") version of DirectX 9.0c. Strangely you have d3d9d.dll listed twice; do you have two versions of this file installed ? I'm not especially aware if there are differences in the installation if you happen to be running a Mandarin version of Windows XP.

Typically you should only need the "retail" version of DirectX 9.0c installed. The "debug" version is for programmers/testers who need debuggable output for troubleshooting errors/code; it should be of no use to you.

You can attempt to uninstall DirectX with a utility DirectX Eradicator, which supposedly will work with Windows XP. I haven't personally used it myself, so I don't know what the exact results would be. I'd suggest making a "system restore point" before attempting the uninstall. Also before doing this you should download the DirectX 9.0c Redistributable Installer. This is the "runtime/retail" version that has all the files necessary for installing inside the file. It's approximately 34Mb in size.

Even with DirectX 9.0c installed, I wouldn't expect your display card to suddenly show up in the Device Manager listing for it.

[tooz]

Update...After yet another visit by yet another perplexed techie, :confused: I finally suggested that they take the laptop back to their shop in Nanjing and let them do whatever it takes to get the laptop going again. To Dell's credit, they are giving me good service, just negligible results.

The saga continues and man do I MISS CM...

[tooz]

Now I have a new LCD and a DVD/CD rom drive. I still cannot see the video card in the Device Manager--all I see is Dell 8200.

They don't seem to fix anything here--they just replace. So, my game still stutters horribly and those three files in my DXDIAG are still there, and nothing I can do--downloading updates et al., can resolve this problem.

Looks like I am either going to try to do a full re-install or just stop playing CM. The other games work fine.

Thanks for the help guys, but despite all of this time and effort, my tanks lurch instead of move. Oh well, I guess it's time to learn other games.

[Redwolf]

A new LCD. Well that should fix all display problems all right

[junk2drive]

Have you tried setting a different resolution for the CM games like 800 x 600? Just a wild thought.

Have you tried CMBO with out mods?

[DEY]

all I see is Dell 8200

My guess is that since this notebook is designed with the nvidia video that this is the branded name of the dell oem driver, and hence is the proper driver.

I admit I've been outa this bloody business for a couple of years but I never heard tell of a laptop let alone a notebook that you change something like the video in it.

Things like that were hard soldered on the motherboard because all the components where designed to work together and the configurations couldn't be changed because of that.

It's very likely that now a clean install of windows is your best bet, you likely have windows so screwed up from moving too and from different hardware and uninstalling and reinstalling different drivers and mucking around with directx, etc.

[tooz]

"Things like that were hard soldered on the motherboard because all the components where designed to work together and the configurations couldn't be changed because of that."--DEY

I asked about this--the answer: motherboard replaced.

"A new LCD. Well that should fix all display problems all right"--Redwolf.

Yep, if you can't fix something, replace something. That seems to be the mindset here.

"Have you tried setting a different resolution for the CM games like 800 x 600? Just a wild thought."--junk2drive

Yep, tried that. All I end up with is a low-rez game that stutters.

IF by some miracle something works I'll let you guys know. As for now, I am bagging CM for a few months. Not too bad a tragedy since I will have to move back to the 'States (while praying for my Chinese wife to get her visa) this summer. Once back, the first thing I do is buy a DESKTOP with enough power to play the newer games. I have all of my mods, scenarios and PBEMs copied onto disks, so I think I will just take a break from CM and pay more attention to real-life (darn it) with problems that will be more urgent.

As for the laptop, MAYBE I'll do a full re-install. OR I'll give it to Mrs Tooz, OR I will actually use a laptop for work.

So, I'm going to let this thread die a slow death. Should a fix apear, I'll repost. Again, thanks for the time, effort and help guys.

[Wicky]

A sad but fitting end to our Bastogne scenario

'Nuts!' to Dell China...

[Redwolf]

Seems a Windoze reinstall is in order now.

Heck, some people do that every week.