EQPN + WinXP

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 6:04 pm

I'm fairly new to EQPN. I switched from EQW to EQPN + WinEQ under Win2K a few weeks back, and I love it.

But. Yesterday I picked up a new notebook (old one - long story - suffice it to say the only way I could log in was using VNC from another machine), and of course it's XP. Using EQPN plus WinEQ now everything runs in spurts... my bard will zoom for 2 seconds, then crawl at a walk for 10, then zoom again. Melee is like bullet time, all of the actions are in slow motion.

Dumping EQPN and running WinEQ is acceptable, but I'm sure that as I start adding a couple more models I'll get into the usual 2-EQ-sessions lag problem.

Is there anything I can do to run EQPN reliably under WinXP?

Post by **Lax** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 6:08 pm

99% of my testing and probably 75% of users all use Windows XP. Additionally, many people are using Windows XP laptops with EQPN + WinEQ. I would be hesitant to blame it on Windows XP in particular, or even EQPN or WinEQ.

I would actually make sure your notebook has the latest drivers for its video, as typically they do not have the best drivers out of the factory. Perhaps some other users will have some recommendations for you, but I can tell you with confidence that many people have systems similar to yours without problems.

What model is your laptop? It might help to know its specs (video card for example) to give the best recommendations for your situation. Also, make sure to grab WinEQ 1.16 and turn on the memory indicator. If either the video or system memory are low, this may be all or part of the problem.

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 10:31 am

Interesting. I did try to update the video driver, but not because of EQPlayNice, just because I know drivers are the biggest headache for EQ itself...

The notebook is an IBM ThinkPad T42 with 1 gig ram. Video is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600.

I tried to get the Sony recommended drivers for the card, but when I install I get "no supported hardware". If I try the latest IBM driver I get ".inf file not found", so I guess I'll bug IBM support.

Thanks for the info. I did figure that XP would be outpacing ME/98/2K by now, but I've had lots of other problems at work with XP behaving badly, I figured this was just one of the improvements... (how in hell do I ever get to 2.1 gigabytes swap space used, for instance...

)

Post by **Lax** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 1:02 pm

Thank you for your understanding. That is my best guess, and unfortunately the ATI Catalyst drivers don't support the mobility chipset. Some others here also had this same issue, but were able to use the drivers supplied by the laptop vendor. Bugging IBM support I think is definitely your best bet. Let me know how it goes

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 9:42 am

Not needed... the problem was in the space between my ears. I downloaded the ME driver. <sigh>

Will check this evening to see if EQPN works better. I'll be signing up for the full version once I can make it work, I'm very happy with EQPN/WinEQ performance based on my experience with Win2K.

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 4:40 pm

Hmm. No benefit there. Even with just a single instance of WinEQ* it's very sluggish, clearing up for a second or so and then going back into sluggish mode. If I stand (I forgot I'd left my bard camped on the docks in PoN, scary place to log in) and just spin around in a circle, I move very slowly, then occasionally zip around a few degrees.

If it's the graphics driver I'm going to have to hope that IBM catches up to something close to the Catalyst drivers soon.

(* - WinEQ without EQPlayNice zips around just fine.)

rcw3 · Post by **rcw3** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:58 am

Wow.... I'm having the exact same problem... and I also have a IBM Thinkpad T42p with the ATI Fire GL (similar graphics). I can two-box with WinEQ (w/o EQPN) fine. Soon as I run EQPN, things turn to mud.

I've tried using the Omega drivers.... didn't seem to help.

Post by **Lax** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 8:40 am

Interesting, maybe there's a different problem with that model...

rcw3 · Post by **rcw3** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 2:49 pm

Don't know... I'm using the latest ATI drivers (via Omega - although I've tried others)... All the other drivers are up to date. It's just odd that it happens with EQPN but not otherwise. I've played with all my Speedstep / power saving features to no avail. I'm clueless...

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:34 pm

Aye, updating drivers didn't help me any. It's most likely going to be some weirdness in the graphic drivers, but if there's anything I could do to try to isolate it, I'd be glad to try.

Possibly relevant data points: the notebook will run 2 instances of either WinEQ or EQWindows without any apparent stress. The background window will lag slightly, as with native EQ and Windows, but the foreground window will run full-tilt, even with spell effects and clip plane maxed.

In fact, this is the first machine I've ever used that will support spell effects, 3D sky, sound and all models without any noticeable lag whatsoever. (I don't have all models or sound on when duoing, but I do in a single instance of WinEQ.) So obviously the hardware's capable enough, it's just something screwing with EQPlayNice.

Post by **Lax** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:39 pm

This EQ patch should relieve some of the need for you to have EQPlayNice on those laptops for a single session, but it's not going to do near as well as EQPlayNice Pro for multiboxing... Are all of these on the Thinkpad T42 or is there other models with this issue as well?

Impure Torment · Post by **Impure Torment** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 9:02 pm

I might be wrong, but I think the t42 and t42p both come with 32MB ATI Mobility RADEON 7500. not the best choice in video for trying to 2 box.

One thing to note; I've noticed on notebooks that if you have ANY powersaving options selected and run multiple instances of EQ I get the "surging" effect your talking about. I think it may be related to EQPN only in that EQPN may be actually making the computer think it's not as busy as it actually is and it tries to put things into power save mode. It then realizes that things really are happening and comes back out of powersave causing the slow/fast/slow 'surges'. Just a guess, I'm not really all that software smart, more of a hardware guy myself, so I have no idea why EQPN would be able to fool the system that way.

Try going through all of the options and making sure all the power save features are off before starting any instances of WinEQ/EQPN or EQ itself.

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:15 am

It's the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64 meg memory.

I'm fairly sure I don't have any power saving options enabled at all, but that's an interesting theory. I'll look.

Yes, the latest patch does help, but not as much as EQPN did on the old notebook.

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:40 am

Something changed. Either I did have a power saving setting which I removed (don't think so, but it's possible), or the frame throttling change to EQ has reduced contention, or there has been a change in EQPlayNice 1.14. Whatever, it seems to be working flawlessly now.

Thanks, Lax and all.

Weatherwax · Post by **Weatherwax** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 2:07 pm

Was there an EQPN update yesterday? After two weeks of perfect gameplay this slow movement problem started up again, although not quite as dramatically, and not every time.