Dwarfkinghack

I've got a Toshiba Satellite (total POS, there's some kind of class-action lawsuit about it) and am simply fed up with my inability to play a great many games on it. The worst offenders are Homeworld 2 and Company of Heroes, my two favorite games of all time!
As far as I can tell, the Mobility 9000 supports all the features needed to run these games, so I suspect the problem lies in the fact that Toshiba never bothered updating the video drivers and ATI's drivers no longer support the m9000 so I'm stuck with Omega versions of the Cat 6.1 drivers. I've read about a program called mobilitymodder that might allow me to fix this, and I'm curious if anybody can tell me more. Also, has anybody else been able to get either of these games to run properly on a mobility 9000? For me Homeworld 2 (which ran perfectly smoothly on my old desktop that had 1/3 the processor power, 1/2 the RAM, and an old GeForce 4) drops to slideshow framerate as soon as bullets start flying, even if its just one bullet! CoH runs with a black screen where the 3d battlefield should be, but sound and all 2d elements like the minimap, health bars, etc work fine. are these driver problems or am I just screwed? I've already resolved to buy a new desktop once I can afford it, but if some software tweaking can breathe new life into my craptop I'd be eternally grateful to whoever pointed the way.

Randomness

Hello Dwarfkinghack:

You Radeon 9000 chipset should have what you need to play those games fine. It sounds like a corrupt / outdated driver issue.

I would suggest you do the following:

Download the following files, and put them somewhere safe until your ready to use them:
1)The "newest" Toshiba OEM display drivers
2) Catalyst 6.11 "pre-r300" from ATI
You can find this by Clicking on "Drivers", selecting your operating system, selecting the Radeon 9000 from the thrid list.
3) download the mobility modder from http://www.hardwareheaven.com/
4) download the ATi GART driver from HP, (SP28073.exe)
5) Catalyst Uninstall Utility from ATI
You can find this by searching for "737-1447"

Now, basically, you will need to remove all the currently installed ATi drivers from your system, restart, install a fresh ATi GART driver, install your Toshiba OEM drivers, restart, mod the "new" catalyst 6.11 "pre-r300" drivers, and manually update to use them instead of the Toshiba drivers....followed by another restart.

1) Run the Catalyst Uninstall utility, and restart your system.
2) Install the SP28073.exe ; i think this program uses a silent install mode, and sometimes doesn't always work.
Navigate to c:\swsetup\SP28073, right click on the file "GARTnt.inf", and click install.
Restart your computer.
3) Install your Toshiba Drivers, and restart when prompted.
4) Run the Catalyst 6.11 "pre-r300" package. It will most likely give you an error eventually. Simply close the install program. The package will have unpacked itself to c:\ati\support\6-11-something

5) Use the mod tool to modify the c:\ati\support\6-11-something directory.
Now navigate to that directory, and run the setup.exe program again. Hopefully it will install with now problems, and then restart your computer when prompted. You might get a "unsigned driver" warning. Just click "Continue Anyway"

If it doesn't install properly, you'll need to manually do it in device manager. Right click on my computer, and click manage. click on the device manager in the left plan, and then expand Display Adapters, right click on your Radeon, click Update.
Right click on the device entry,
Click "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and Click Next
Click "Don't Search. I will choose the driver to install" and click Next
Click the "Have Disk" Button, and navigate to the c:\ATI\Support\6-11-somthing\driver
or it might be c:\ati\support\6-11-something\BIN\driver

Find the 2K_XP directory, and click on the CX_xxxxxx.inf (where the xxxxxxx is some random internal version code)

Click OK....select your device from the new list, click "Continue Anyway" when you get an unsingned driver warning....restart your computer.

You do this modifications at your own risk.

Good luck, and take care.

- Randomness

Randomness

If you can, provide additional information on your Toshia exact model, and i may be able to provide more suggestions.

take care.

Dwarfkinghack

Thank you for the response. I'm running a Toshiba A75 S209 with an added 512MG Ram chip. If I my ask, why the Catalyst 6.11? I've been using Omega drivers based on the Cat 6.6 IIRC for some time. They allow me to run most games, though performance is not quite as expected.

Edit: I'm having trouble finding those GART drivers you mentioned. Would you happen to have a link?

Edit 2: ALL ATI drivers? There's an ATI dsriver on my system which may ormay not be related to my graphics card, but uninstalling it in the past resulted in the death of my computer.

Randomness

Hello:

The gart driver can be downloaded from here:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp28001-28500/sp28073.exe

Catalyst Driver Version 6.6 and above are not compatible with older Radeon GPUs. Specifically, they are not compatible with anything older than a Radeon 9500.

ATi released a Catalyst 6.11 "pre-r300" driver that is basically a slightly modified Catalyst 6.5 driver package. This would be the newest driver compatible with your GPU.

Your current Catalyst 6.6 driverset may be what is causing some of your preformance problems. In some cases, 3D hardware rendering is almost impossible / unstable / BSODs when using the Catalyst 6.6 or above drivers on an older Radeon GPUs.

Try installing the Radeon Omega Drivers 3.8.252 instead (Catalyst 6.5). Make sure you uninstall the previous Omega drivers first (simply through Add/Remove programs).
See: http://www.omegadrivers.net/archive.php

When you've installed everything, make sure AGP Texture Acceleration, Direct3D and DirectDraw are all listed as "enabled" in your display tab under the DirectX diagnostic tool (dxdiag.exe).

Could you clearify what you mean by "There's an ATI dsriver on my system which may ormay not be related to my graphics card, but uninstalling it in the past resulted in the death of my computer."

Your scenerio might be easier than i earlier thought in my last post. Just try removing current Omega Drivers, and replace with the version 3.8.252.

Good luck, take care.

- Randomness

Dwarfkinghack

Ah. The numbering had me confused there. I assumed 6.6 was the latest driver a Radeon olde rthan 9500 could run.

I'll try that when I get a chance.

Edit: I just checked, and that's the version I have installed. I don't know if I properly uninstalled the previous drivers, though.

This is an interesting question. Unce upon a time, I tried to update to the latest Omega drivers. This was after 6.6 but I didn't know about later drivers being incompatible yet. I removed all ATI drivers from my computer, including one vaguely named 'ATI chipset driver' or something i found in Add/remove Programs. IIRC the Omega isntructions told me to restart at this point, so I did and got a repeated BSOD on startup which only went away with a hard drive wipe and windows reinstall. Now, my computer is essentially a defective model. there's been a class action lawsuit about some of the more severe problems it has and I've had to wipe and restore numerous times, so its possible that this was unrelated. what makes things even more interesting is that I now cannot find that mysterious ATI driver on my Add/Remove Programs list.

thank you again for your prompt and persistent help.