Clevo M570RU Troubles (GPU, LAN)

So, my friend loaned me his copy of XP until mine comes. And last night at about 11 PM I decided to open up the Clevo M570RU and install all the crap I had, along with it all of the drivers and Oblivion. Everything went smoothly (but Oblivion took a hell long time to install), until I started Oblivion.

My friend has the AT equivalent of dual 7600s or something. They're not too great, but they're still in Crossfire and they're pretty good. He can run Oblivion on Ultra-High settings (he doesn't do any tweaks; he's a computer newbie). When I started the game, I expected at least High settings. Much to my dismay, I got Medium. And even at Medium settings, when I played the game in the sewers it lagged a bit. Shouldn't I have been able to play at pretty high settings, especially considering I was at 800x600 resolution, not at my full 1920x1200 (damn, does that full res look sexy on that big screen or what)? I have the drivers off of the disc, because I wasn't able to get my interwebz working.

That brings me to my second point. Again, I have installed all of the drivers on the provided disk, but I have not yet been able to connect to the interwebz. I've even hooked it up to my cable modedm. I've sat right next to the wLAN signal source. Nothing seems to be working. Running XP Pro SP2. Is there anything I need to change to make 'er work?

Thanks in advance.

 

You're sure you installed the XP drivers, right? I don't think XP would let you install Vista drivers, but just in case... the two driver discs look exactly the same, and I know I got a little mixed up at first.

And you did install the drivers in the correct order (the order that they're listed on the little driver menu that autoruns), and restart after each one when prompted? (a couple of them don't require restarts, but the vast majority do)

There's definitely something wrong if you can't play oblivion at 800x600 at medium settings, indoors. At those conditions, you should probably be somewhere in the vicinity of 100 FPS.

A few things you can try:
-Make sure that you have the latest patch for Oblivion installed. The most recent update gave a hefty boost to framerates (although that was mostly for outdoors).

-It also might be a problem with dual cores. Once you have Oblivion running, Alt-Tab out of it, go to the Oblivion process in the task manager, right click and set the affinity to just one of the cores, and see if that solves the problem.

-install FRAPS and check the framerate. If the framerate is high, but it's still stuttering, Oblivion is known to be sensitive to fragmentation since it uses ginormous multi-GB files. Try defragging the hard drive and see if that helps.
Also, you can try the "Max frames to render ahead" trick. Install Coolbits to let you access some hidden options in the Nvidia control panel, then set the Frames to render ahead setting to 1 (or something else lower than the default 3). That may stop the stuttering.

As for the internet - try plugging in the LAN cable, and then resetting the router and modem (unplug them for a few seconds, then plug them back in) and then restarting windows. It usually should work right out of the box, but modems can sometimes be finicky about assigning IP addresses to new computers.

That's all I can think to suggest. Hopefully you'll get your problems solved.

 

Thanks for the tips.

I first installed Linux, and I partitioned my HDD, thinking ahead of time about other OS. I did a 20GB partition to Linux, a 500mb partition to Swap, and a 99GB partition to Windows (I'll probably cut it in half for Vista). Needless to say, I had to format these partitions before using them. So it's probably not a fragmentation error.

I have the latest patch.

As soon as I get home, I'll try the dual->single core trick. Thanks again!

And yes, I installed the XP drivers in the order they were on the CD menu.

 

If you connected directly to your cable modem you are missing the drivers needed to connect.
If you are connecting directly to a router, make sure your routers DHCP server is on.
Is your Linux install able to connect to the Net?

 

No, the Ubuntu (neither Gnome nor KDE) can recognize my wireless card. I don't know if XP recognizes the wireless card or it just decides to ignore that I have a connection.

 

Double post... whatever.


On a better note, I saw no blurriness (sp?) at the 800x600 resolution, when me screen is at 1920x1200. It in fact looked quite sharp. I'm sure 1920x1200 looks nicer, but 800x600 is perfectly acceptable.

 

If you are able to browse the internet with Ubuntu the problem is with XP.
You are able to get to browse the Internet with Ubuntu, right?

If so then power cycle the router and modem as mentioned before by Joga.

Rebooting network devices sometimes makes everything work in harmony.

 

No, I can't browse the web. I can load the web browser, but that doesn't help at all. I've also tried rebooting the router, modem, etc.

On my mom's laptop, it shows at the bottom a little bar-graph type thing, similar to bars on a cell phone. All green for great signal, all but one green for OK signal, yellow for fair signal, red for bad signal, no color for no signal. On my notebook it doesn't show any bars at all. As in the bar graph thing isn't shown. It just tells me "Network Cable Disconnected". I have the feeling that it doesn't recognize I have an N wireless card in it. Again, neither Linux nor Windows can connect to the internet or recognize my wireless card.

 

do you see any wireless networks?

if not.....

did you try the Wireless Toggle (Fn+F11)?
- go refresh network list

 

Yeah you have to watch those toggles.

It turns out Fn+F10 is the camera toggle, even though it's not labeled on the keyboard. I was trying to play around with my camera the other night and for the life of me couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. I reinstalled the drivers, looked for answers in forums, nothing. Then I reread through the manually and I must have accidentally hit the toggle at some point when adjusting the brightness

The more you know...

 

Lets check some setting in Windows XP having to do with wireless connections, and see if we can determine where the problem is located.

Step 1:
Right click on My Computer and select manage (or go into control panel and select system). Select Device Manager (or the Hardware tab and Device Manager button if you went in through Control Panel). Select (double click/expand) Network Adapters. Do you see any red X's or !'s ? If you do then the drivers are not installed properly. If your drivers look ok then move on to the next step.

Step 2:
Open Control Panel and select Network Connections right click on the adapter for your wireless card listed under "LAN or High-speed Internet" and select View Available Wireless Networks.
What comes up? Do you see the wireless router you are using in your home? (You should be able to determine its name by loooking at the connection on your mom's laptop).
If you see your wireless router select it and choose connect (if it doesn't already say connected).

If your computer doesn't show your router (or anyone else's routers) in step 2 then proceed to step 3. If your router is shown, and you are connected , but you still can't browse the net then move to step 4.

Step 3:
From Control Panel select Administrative Tools and double click on services. Scroll through your services and look for Wireless Zero Configuration. Start the Wireless Zero Configuration service (if it is not already started) and then View Available Wireless Networks again.

Step 4:
If you are connected to your network, but you still can't browse the net. Go into the View Available Wireless Networks screen again, select your wireless network, and select change advanced settings. Select the Wireless Network tab and check to see if the "use windows to configure my wireless network settings" is checked. Select your connection in preferred networks. Select your network and select properties. If your wireless network is encrypted make sure to enter your encryption key in the listed area.

If you still have problems connecting after check those areas let us know, and we may be able to provide more assistance.

 

Hmm. After installing the drivers and having the wireless signal not show up, I restarted the computer. It still didn't show up, so I uninstalled and resinstalled (it goes very slowly). I did that about four times, and two hours later I got internet. I have no idea why it didn't initially show up.


Many thanks for your help, though. I really appreciate it.

 

You might wanna test your card transfer speeds... Is it possible it's defective?

And don't worry for the access points. Mine come and goes - always. Only the stronger signals stays (me and my 2 neigbors for example). And i remember that looks like the first time a card or a router is set up, it takes a lot of time for them to negociate and connect, and this only happens one. When I set up my first G network I thought I had a bad card. There were always no connection; until I got mad and left the computer to take a walk lol.... When I came back everything was fine.

What I would suggest is not to wait until your card discover it. Just make a profile and specify your SID name and security parameters. It will always connect automatically when in range.

Speaking of wich:

• Are the Laptop and router close to each other? Make sure you're not in a "dead signal" spot by moving around a bit.
• What security parameters are you using? I had lots of troubles when not using WEP. Now all works fine with WPA2 and a longer key renewal delay...
• Maybe it could also be some sort of incompatibilities between the card and router; are you connecting at G speed or N speeds? My Intel N card always fallback to G with my Linksys N router (it sux).

 

If found WiFi worked much better with the following driver settings (in Windows):

802.11n Mode: Disabled
Ad Hoc Power Management: Noisy Environment
Ad Hoc QoS Mode: WMM Disabled
HD Mode: Enable
Power Management: Highest

The rest at defaults...

 

Welcome tot he NBR forums

You should not necro-post... since this thread was pretty much dead.

I recommend you to make a new thread in the Network sub-forum about your issue... and delete your post here (EDIT > DELETE)