[How To] A guide to fixing vista issues.

[shouri]

Well I did something similar on a quite old forum and people responded quite favorably to it so I decided I would impart my knowledge here. Update: I've been stickied muhahaha, step 1 in taking over the world: Complete! *ahem* Moving on!

Before you post here, please read the "Read THIS first" spoiler a bit below.

Important info is in spoilers, 'cept for the first spoiler. Else would be my rantings/intro to each section. So if you're just here for a quick fix and don't care for reading... then stop reading this sentence and jump down to the spoilers.

How I learned about these fixes

My god... it all started in the technical help sections of the OdinMS forums. I decided to check out their forums because I thought that they were doing some interesting work and I came across someone who needed help with Vista compatibility issues. So I went in and hoped there was something I could do.

I had him carefully explain the problem his computer was having. Afterwards, I asked him about the specs on his computer. Basically, we tried everything I could think of since his problem was very troubling for many users and no one had come up with a working solution at the time.

I decided to write a "[How To]" (see topic) so that other people with the same issue could find their answer (and trust me, there were a lot of people). As a part of that [how to], I asked people to post other issues they were having and I basically repeated the same process for each new issue with no previous solution. In fact, one of the issues was about the mortal blow -> DC glitch in aqua. I actually managed to find a working solution for it. But I'm SO pissed that the OdinMS forums got screwed over and that I didn't save a copy of it >>.

Ahem, anyways, yeah that's about it. It was simply
them: i have this problem
me: okay can you explain it in detail?
them: ~explanation~
me:Hmm, specs please.
them:~specs~
me:Hmm, okay lets try this: *********
them:~attempt 1~ hmm, nope still have the issue.
me:Hmm, okay... what if we: ******
them:~attempt 2~ Sweet it worked. Thanks :3

The I helped with the MB glitch... well lets just say we got it fixed by attempt 5. Mainly because no one knew what the was causing the problem. Once again, totally forgot how to fix that issue T.T

Note: It is most likely not tied to the current Mortal Blow glitch I'm hearing about.

Key Notes

-Vista has issues, we know... I want none of this "upgrade to XP" crap that you guys go shoving in peoples faces... please. Yes XP has less issues, but some of us actually like Vista. And then there's those who are just plain stuck with vista... luckily I (as well as others) am/are here to help.

-From the feedback on the previous forum: Though two people may SEEM to have the same problem, the solutions required may in fact be different. So don't give up just because the solution that worked for someone else didn't work for you... maybe you just have a different issue.

-I call the windows icon at the bottom left of vista the "Start Menu" out of habit from windows xp... so yeah

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Issues/solutions:
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There are tons... meaning that there can be a ton of different symptoms but generally (and thankfully) from my experience, the solutions generally fall into a few categories.

Oh and once again... If the solution does not work for you, then please do not begin complaining about it. Like I said before, sometimes similar looking problems have different solutions... here goes!

Everyone Read THIS First Please

Vista has compatibility issues... once again, we know. Especially issues with graphics.

Before I can begin to attempt to assess your issues, I'll need info on your computer. Among which include if you have vista sp 1 on your computer, as well as some other basic info. Here's how you can help me to help you.


Thankfully, a ton of the issues were fixed with the release of Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Here's how to check if you have it and how to update to it if for some reason you don't have it.

Note: Almost all Vista Comps sold within the last year have SP1 installed on them as far as I know. So hopefully this wont be an issue.


1) open start menu

2) right click on "computer"

3) click on properties

4) you should see that the first section is called "Windows
edition"

5) If the words "Vista Service pack 1" is found anywhere in that section, go to step 7. Else go to step 6.

6) Google search "vista service pack 1" and the second link should be the microsoft link to get SP 1. Or just click here: Vista SP 1 microsoft page link. Follow directions and yada yada. Make sure you restart after installing SP1. Note upgrade to SP 1 can take up to 3 hours.

7) If you already have SP 1 then dont worry about it

Other stuff you should tell us:

Please tell us the information under the "system" section from the part which you reached from "3)" above. You can leave out the "rating" part. Oh and of course, please describe your problem as thoroughly as you can.

Furthermore in the start menu, you should have the "Run" button you can click on. Click on it and type in "dxdiag" <- no quotes. Change the tab at the top to "Display" and tell us what's on the first entry: "Name: ~~~~"

Okay with that out of the way... let's start with what made me decide to type this thing up all over again from scratch >>

Opeth, I'm looking at you.

Black Flickering Screen/Outright Crash

Here's the description from the mapler with the issue:

Whenever I'm on screen with a bunch of other Maplers (like 20+) the screen flashes to black every second or so, and continues doing this until I leave the area. It also does this at Zakum whenever he used some form of attack. It's rather annoying and I couldn't play to my full potential. Also, if I'm just sitting in Henesys the background will kind of spazz out and remove some of the imagery (like houses and whatever.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention Vista will just outright crash MS whenever it feels like, forcing me to open up task manager and close MS.

Solution 1

You badly need to update your display adapters.

Follow these steps if you don't know how to update your display adapters using the internet :3

1)Start

2)Control Panel

3)Device Manager

4)Click on Display Adapters

5)Right click on your display adapter that appears there... for example "Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset" or something to that effect. Note, not all of you have intel chipsets obviously, so just go with what you find there. In the case you find more than 1 thing there and are confused on what to choose, post the options here and we'll let you know.

6)Click on Update Driver Software

7)Select the top option

8)Hopefully the rest wont be too hard, ask if you need help.

This next issue is by far THE biggest issue that occured in the previous forum, and a HUGE pain to fix... though only because of this next reason. If I recall correctly this same issue had about FOUR issues/solutions. Yes, a whole freaking FOUR(ish) separate things about vista could cause this problem. It sucked... majorly. Unfortunately I can only remember two of the solutions off the top of my head... I wrote the original article on fixing this issue on OdinMS's technical help forums. So yeah.

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error

Mentions something about the program aborting abnormally.

Pic of problem

This problem traumatized more than half of OdinMSs forums... such lols were had. But yeah, I spent quite a long time researching this cause I felt like helping them.

The wtp? Solution

Can you believe how many people didn't have SP1?
Instructions for this are found in the spoiler "Everyone read this first please."

The "Are you kidding me?" Solution

This got an "Are you kidding me?" out of me when I found out that this solution worked for someone >>.
The problem was with User Account Controls (UAC)>>

Apparently the person installed MS while having UAC set to off but currently had them on.... or vice-versa I really can't recall. But! The point is that you should check if changing your current UAC settings fixes the issue. You can always easily change your UAC settings back so don't be afraid to try this one out:

1)Click on your Start menu

2)Click on Control Panel

3)First switch to classic view by clicking on "classic view" on the left side. (otherwise you'll have to do more clicking later) Locate and click on User Accounts... it should be an alphabetized list so finding it should be easy.

4)At the bottom you should see "Turn User Account Control on or off"

5)Remember that the point is to change your current UAC settings.

--So if the box is unchecked your UACs are off. Check the box and hit ok.
--Or, if the boxed is currently checked, uncheck it and hit ok.

6)You will be prompted to restart your comp. If not, restart your comp now.

7)Try MS now. If you're still getting the issue you may revert your UAC settings but following these same steps.

The "Admin" Solution

You do not have the authority to play MS! Or at least these people didn't.

The solution was simple:

Right click on the maplestory icon and click on "Run as Administrator". Worked perfectly fine thereafter for certain maplers.

This next one affected a ton of GMS maplers who went to zakum.

DCing when Zakum dies, or after killing a certain phase.

So the arms/body 1-3 are just about to go down and you're ready to move on/see the rewards, but much to your dismay you the black screen of death T.T~

The "solution" that you guys might remember was as follows:

-Before you finish each stage, open up your menu and change the graphics settings down 1 level. Repeat this right before each next phase is done with.

Horrid but thankfully this has a much easier solution.

Easier Solution

Go get Vista Service Pack 1 for the love of god. Instructions for this are found in the "Everyone Read This First Please" spoiler. Everyone that came to me with this issue didn't have SP1. So a few hours later, they were back to playing MS DC free (at least DCs caused by zakum changing forms).

Apparently another common problem:

error code: 10093

And after I D/C it says "error code: 10093 (Either the application has not called WSAStartup, or WSAStartup has failed.)

Solution Thanks to PKProStudio

Common problem if you use Vista. Run command prompt as admin and type in 'netsh winsock reset'. Restart the computer and it should work fine.

To run the command prompt as administrator do the follow:

1)Click on your start menu

2)Click on all programs

3)Click on the accessories folder once to expand it

4)Right click on the command prompt and select the option to run it as administrator

5)Type in "netsh winsock reset" as PkProStudio suggested.

6)Restart your computer

HackShield Initialization Error :0x00000203(515)

1. Click Start > RUN > type " regedit "
2. Under " HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "
3. Go to SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \
3. Right click EagleNT
4. Select Permission.
5. Click Advanced.
7. You'll be in the permissions tab. There's a table here. Look at the tab labeled "Type"
8.Remove all entries with a " Deny " type.
9. Click OK.
-----
Someone was able to play by doing these first nine and wasn't require to do the rest of these. So stop here, hit OK and give things a try.
-----
10. Back to Permissions
11. Check " Groups or User Names "
12. Untick Deny and Tick Allow
13. Apply, Okay and Restart


Credit to MODfiend of gamezneeds.

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Dealing with Lag:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So yeah, this section deals with the fixable causes of lag and how to deal with them.

Graphics cards and RAM

Sometimes your graphics card sucks up too much of your RAM for its own good (here's looking at you... uh... well... most of the laptops that are cheap have this issue). These graphics cards are known as integrated graphics cards. On the other hand, dedicated graphics cards will not bug your RAM at all :3 This is a good thing to keep in mind when you're selecting a higher end laptop.

Anywho, so if you're going to be playing a game that's gonna stress your graphics card we should make sure that it doesn't attempt to hog too much of your RAM.

note: If the graphics card is crappy enough even the simplest of games alluding to high end 2d or low end 3d graphics will stress it.



let's get you some extra RAM for your programs to use, the nonpaying way :3

Hopefully you have an extra 4 gigs of hard disk space on your laptop you wont miss. One great solution to your lack of RAM is to allocate some harddisk space to act as RAM. Yes, you CAN do this. It can also be done by inserting a clean or freshly format flash drive and selecting the option "speed up my system using windows readyboost". <- I'll go over this one in a bit.

Here's how we do it the hard disk way:

1)Start Menu

2)Control Panel

3)Make sure you view the control panel in "Classic View" found on the left.

4)Performance Information & Tools

5)Where is says "Tasks" on the left. Locate and click on "Advanced Tools"

6)Click on "Adjust the appearance and performance of windows"

7)Click on the "Advanced" tab.

8)In the "Virtual Memory" section, click on "Change"

9)At the bottom of the pop up you'll see "Total paging file size for all drives" Take note of the number next to the word "Recommended". We'll use my number as an example: 1519mb.

10)Make sure that the top box is unchecked. "Automatically manage paging file..."

11)Below that, make sure that the option for "custom size" is the one filled in.

12)For "Initial size (MB)" Take your earlier recommended number and double it and type it in there. In my case, I typed in "3000" <- note I didn't put "mb" in there, just the number. For the "maximum size" option, triple your recommended number... "4500" is what I put in.

13)Please note that this amount is going to be removed from your current remaining harddisk space, so you'll be losing out on about 5 gigs of storage. But, you get free ram, sort of.

14)Make sure you hit ok. :3

Or, you could just go out and buy some better RAM for your comp. And the graphics card isn't too hot either, but hopefully that wont be too bad of an issue.

The Flash Drive Method

If the window that gives you the "speed up my system using windows readyboost" does not automatically pop up, then we'll have to do this manually. Note that you'll need to keep this flash drive plugged in so long as you wanna use it as RAM. Also, please do NOT remove the flash drive without safely ejecting it. You'll need to close most programs before doing this. And lastly, just like with the harddisk method, the space on the flashdrive becomes dedicated to RAM; meaning if you dedicate the whole flashdrive's size to RAM, you cant store anything in the flashdrive anymore. Until you reduce the size of "dedication".

Steps for manual opening of the readyboost menu:

1)Start menu

2)Computer

3)Locate the flash drive and right click on it

4)Properties

5)Go to the "readyboost" tab

6)Set it to "Use this device". And in this case, I'd go with the recommended amount, unless you want to save up some space for other stuff on the flash drive; which I don't recommend.

Notedly, a 4 gig flash drive costing $30 vs a 4 gig flashdrive costing $100... the difference? the $100 one is FASTER. So sure the cheap one will work perfectly well, but it wont be as fast as if you had just taken those $30 and invested it in physically buying more RAM for your laptop :3 Make of it what you will.

[KajitiSouls]

This isn't a bad guide to have =)

One problem that I am currently experiencing on my Vista Laptop is pretty serious. Out of nowhere (*cough* randomly) MapleStory's graphics will l4g behind slightly, meaning anything I do for input happens on the game about .2 seconds later. The FPS also goes down a little bit. Identifying when this glitch happens can be anywhere between subtle to "in your face". Anyways, roughly 10-30 seconds later my computer will completely seize up and freeze indefinitely until I either do a hard reset or cut the power somehow. Not fun.
EDIT: this glitch is GMS v.65. It has never appeared before.

As of currently playing MS in windows mode vastly reduces the probability that the glitch will strike. I know of another player, a friend-because-of-class, who has this same issue. And Kasuhitomi has admitted to having this problem also.

My drivers are up to date, I've done defrags and whatnot, disabled Toshiba Flash Cards (lolwut duz dat du), and pretty much anything else I could think of.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF JEBUS THIS ISN'T FROM OVERHEATING!!!!!

Oh yeah, just in case you want the specs, my Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527. Pretty standard, not really meant for games and stuff xD

Something else for shouri

When I was typing up my LOLPALLY guide for the guide-writing event, I saw how huge it was and thought to myself "What if sp.net went down the tanker?" I didn't believe I would re-write the whole entire thing after all the extraordinary effort and zeal I put into the guide. FFS, it takes 3 posts to display the whole guide, not including the massive abuse of BBC tags I've written (which caused the server to produce fatal errors when it was downgraded xD). Just for extra safety, I even saved all of the images and "pirated" other images that I've found over the internet, so even those were backed up onto my hard drives.

And look what happened to the sp.net database. I was so friggin' happy I saved all those images. It was literally hundreds of images.

So basically if something takes a long time to produce, write, compile, make, w/e, save a backup of it if you can! Never know when the unexpected will strike.

[ThatSkyGuy]

I do have a problem with MS. I can never get on. Yeah this is Vista SP 1.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...g?t=1236115024

2 gigs of ram
AMD Sempron proccessor SI-40 2.00 GHz
32 bit
3.5 rating thingy.
HP G50 Notebook PC

EDIT: It says loading instead of play with the download manual patch bar on the bottom

EDIT 2: I also think this a nice guide. I request a sticky.

[Mark]

This man is a genius. Listen to him.

[Manda]

I know a couple more ways to prevent Zakum DCing.

1) Zak in windowed mode, and before the fight, ensure that the windowed mode box is ticked. During first body, change your graphics setting to the lowest possible setting, and tick the windows mode box again (as the tick won't be there).

2) Alt tab quickly during first body.

Unfortunately you need to rely on a healer while doing both of these, but I let whoever's in my party know that I'm fixing something for 3 seconds at the most and they don't get annoyed.

[Teppi]

my system

i sometimes get dc while horntail is summoned or when 3rd body of zak appeared or zak die............the Windows Visual C++ appears and lag me out.......yeah

[shouri]

Updated with a solution for HackShield Initialization Error :0x00000203(515)
This error is not vista specific.

[Jamie_Kurosawa]

Here's a solution I've done for Vista, but mostly on x64 systems. The 32-bit systems seem to have more problems oddly, but these can help too.

1. Turn off UAC. Oddly enough you don't need it for any reason. It's absolutely the most useless feature Windows could have ever added. It's designed around controlling what is and isn't ran when something needs to run an application, especially malware. Honestly if you have an active virus and malware scanner, use a non-ActiveX web browser, and use some common sense you'll be fine.

2. Turn off Indexing of the Hard Drive. It's a waste of resources to search for files that only free up 5 to 10 seconds off a massive file search. For a gamer you're better off without it.

3. Turn on DEP for all programs on the system. In short make sure DEP sees everything going on. This also will spit out more diagnostic error codes.

4. Don't overdo installing software. Try to simply. Use multipurpose codecs for multimedia when possible. I recommend FFDshow for best results. This is how Vista and even 7 can get very messy. Plus if you have an x64 system, try to stick to installing either 32-bit or 64-bit software. Use one, not both. For productivity work I recommend getting 64-bit software, for gaming and general usage, get 32-bit software.

5. Avoid BETA drivers. These aren't finished drivers for official release. Unless you are extremely mindful of what your system is capable of, or you are a certified PC analyst and tester, stick to WHQL stuff. This is especially true for 32-bit users. Windows Update should have more than everything you need for Vista and 7 systems unless you are absolutely certain you need something from the chipset manufacturer. For laptop users, make sure you can use the original chipset manufacturer software before you install it, otherwise use what they have on their website.

6. Learn what can be turned off at startup. Anything that isn't made by Microsoft, your Anti-Virus, Anti-malware, and Firewall provider, and in rare cases, a few network tools, can be turned off. Stuff from Google, Apple, MSN, Adobe, and such don't need to be ran until the program they run with is actually running.

7. For Vista and 7 users... 2GB or RAM or more is a recommendation and a requirement for optimal operation. Remember a 32-bit system can't read more than 3.75GB.

8. Reputable software always helps. Memory leaks can often trigger a multitude of issues and bad software can really push these like crazy.

9. Try to use anti-virus and anti-malware software that has a low memory footprint. Norton's a good AV solution but it chews up memory. Avast free does just as good a job and doesn't burden your system as bad. Remember the flashier it is, the more CPU and memory it uses. Sometime Coroprate AV solutions are great as well. Compare Symantec Endpoint and Norton Internet Security and they're the same program, but with a major difference. SEP uses less resources for the same work load.

10. Defrag and Clean regularly. CCleaner is a great program to get rid of registry errors and Defraggler is a great for cleaning up the scattered files on the HDD. Run CCleaner weekly, and run Defraggler monthly. You'll thank yourself a few months down the line.

11. Every year have your PC serviced and cleaned out of dust and debris. A clean PC is a healthy PC and a healthy PC is a working PC.