Thinkpad T42P Freezes in NFS Most Wanted

Hi, I've just bought a brand new T42P from a former IBM employee.

I did a fresh reinstall of Windows XP SP2 and installed the latest drivers, included the FireGL T2 series directly from Lenovo support site.

Then, i installed NFS Most Wanted, when I run the program, suddenly out of the blue the game freezes (the laptop also) and I'm unable to do anything other than pressing the POWER button.

Then I installed another old NFS game (Porsche Unleashed) but it made the laptop crash, again

I'm wondering if this is a hardware related issue or I'm missing something here??

Somebody please help

 

Check ur temps as an overheating gpu/cpu will cause the computer to crash. Also try another game, or another piece of software that puts stress on the gpu and see if that causes the crash. U can also try different drivers, eithter 3rd party or earlier versions of the manufacturer.

 

I see you said FireGL in your post. Workstation-class cards are rarely good gaming cards. They don't have the game work-arounds in them that consumer level cards do, and they often don't render things correctly. My friend has a Quadro that refuses to render the water in HL2. You may see if you can use an older (or just different) version of the drivers for that card. Other than that, you're basically stuck with Porsche Unlimited just not working. Sorry

 

The video card render very good the details of Most Wanted.
So, which tool could I use to see if the GPU is the one that is failing?
I've never had problems with video issues on a thinkpad\

another thing: where can i find 3rd party drivers for the firegl?

I need to solve this

 

It's a very fast card, just not good driver support.
The GPU isn't actually "failing" as in hardware issues. The driver more than likely just doesn't support what the game is asking it to do.
There also really aren't 3rd party drivers for those class of cards.

The only other thing that it might be is heat buildup. Do you have any other 3D games? Do they work fine, or is it just the NFS U that locks it up? Is there any dust in the system clogging the airflow? Has it perhaps been bumped around and getting bad thermal contact between the cpu/graphics card and the heatsink?

 

Well, first of all the laptop is NEW.
I don't think there's a heat buildup issue because with my former Thinkpad T30 with 16MB in Video I did run that game and never got freeze.

I've only tried NFS Most Wanted & NFS Porsche Unleashed. Both games easily ran on my T30, but this laptop is giving trouble.

I know is not meant for gaming as a XPS but at least I wouldn't expect it to crash everytime I load up a game.

What options do I have?

 

More suggestions, please.

 

Have you tried Omega drivers?

 

Those drivers work with FireGL cards?

 

Yes, they do. If u wanna play games with Firegl cards with no glitches, Omega driver is your only option.

 

I tried those but the game still freezes.
I think this is a cooling issue, and also heard that the motherboard design is not good for the GPU as it becomes hot very quickly.

I guess I'll have to sell this laptop. I love the keyboard, what a shame.
I want to hear if any one with a T42P have had the same issues as I am,

 

Try downloading and running rthdribl, see if the laptop freezes when that's left running.

You can also try the regular ATI Catalyst drivers. Download the desktop Catalyst drivers from ATI and then use Mobility Modder so you can install them.

 

Thanks for the info.

The utility rthdribl URL to download it doesn't seem to work right now.

OK, I installed Catalyst desktop drivers from ATi and used the modder and I was able to install those, but in the end the result is the same.

Should I simply gave this up and get a gaming laptop for what is worth?

 

Do you have this same problem in other games?

 

I've not installed other games, I maybe install Godfather, the problem here is that I wanted so much to play the NFS series games, its such a shame

 

I would play another 3D game first - right now, it's not certain whether the problem is with the game or laptop.

 

I've tested only NFS MW and NFS PU and both crash, I'm more a racing person so I'd like to play those