Crashing Help!!

[Virrodin]

Hi,

I recently got my hands on a free ten day trial from a friend who talked me into to trying WoW out. I installed it on my computer and began the downloading of the bagillion patches for the game. While they were downloading to my laptop I took my character out for a spin.Everything was fine no problem and there went an hour of my time. When I got home I finished installing the rest of the patches I was prompted with and loaded up the game. Everythings fine until I get into the game itself. I'm allowed to run around for around 5 seconds before my entire computer crashes. No blue screen no nothing. The screen just goes black and it restarts. When it starts up again it takes a hell of a long time to fully restart and windows gives me the whole windows has unexpectedly had to shut down would you like to look for solutions etc etc. As always no solutions are found. Everything is installed to my laptop which more than meets the requirements. I am currently running Vista. The version I got off of him is a year or more old but everything installed just fine. I'm a little new and just wanted to know if someone could help me out. I've only got 9 days and I'd really like to get a feel for the game before buying. I dont have the expansion installed and have no idea whats goin on. Ive attempted to log in 3 times but have given up.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Kalos]

Need the full system specs.

[Tunga]

Just a note in case you don't get this fixed to make use of the trial in time, you can get another one from the official site. It won't work with the same account but if you've only played for an hour then you can easily remake the character :) .

[Virrodin]

Need the full system specs.

Aspire 5610
Genuine Intel CPU T22250 @ 1.73GHz
1014MB of RAM
32 bit OS
Windows Vista

...

And thats about all I know. Thanks.

[Kalos]

WoW, Vista, and one gig of ram only is a no-no. It just doesn't work. Either increase your ram to two gig, buy a copy of XP, or don't play WoW. This laptop does not "More than meet requirements" If you had looked on the Recommended Hardware sticky thread, gaming on Vista needs two gig of ram or more. If you don't have that much, you shouldn't be trying to game with it.

Also, I really should need your graphics renderer. But I can't imagine it'd be too suitable either.

[Virrodin]

Guess no WoW for me then. Only have my laptops. Never had gaming problems before. I suppose I could look in to XP but it seems like a lot of hastle. I figured my laptop was good enough as WoW worked just fine on my old desktop which isnt as powerful as my laptop or so reports my brother. Guess its all in the Vista then. Not big on going out and buying XP on the off chance it might allow me to run WoW.

Neways thanks again for your help!

[Tunga]

WoW, Vista, and one gig of ram only is a no-no. It just doesn't work. Either increase your ram to two gig, buy a copy of XP, or don't play WoW. This laptop does not "More than meet requirements" If you had looked on the Recommended Hardware sticky thread, gaming on Vista needs two gig of ram or more. If you don't have that much, you shouldn't be trying to game with it.Have you actually tried this? I run WoW on this:

Athlon 64 3000+
Asus A8N-E
X800XL 256MB
Corsair 1GB DDR PC3200.

It runs WoW okay. At max settings I get framerates of <10 in Shattrath and on flight paths <20 in other cities, but anywhere else I get around 30fps no problems. On medium I can improve on this but I'd rather leave it looking shiny since 30fps is perfectly smotoh for instances and raids anyway.

Point being, vista can do WoW on 1GB okay. Not great, and not as good as XP by any means, but okay and definitely playable.

However...
Guess no WoW for me then. Only have my laptops. Never had gaming problems before. I suppose I could look in to XP but it seems like a lot of hastle. I figured my laptop was good enough as WoW worked just fine on my old desktop which isnt as powerful as my laptop or so reports my brother. Guess its all in the Vista then. Not big on going out and buying XP on the off chance it might allow me to run WoW.The issue is almost certainly not that you're running Vista, but rather that you're lacking a usable graphics card. It looks very much like you have an onboard graphics solution (the clue being the 1014MB of RAM rather than 1024MB, looks like an 8MB graphics card and 2MB for something else) which just isn't going to run WoW. You say you've not had problems before, what other games have ou had working on it? In terms of the other PC, it may be less "powerful" in terms of CPU or RAM but that counts for nothing if the laptop hasn't got a capable graphics card and the PC does.

In Vista:
Open My Computer
Click System Properties (on the top bar)
Click Device Manager (on the left menu)
Expand Display Devices (the cross next to it)

What is in there? For example, mine says "RADEON X800 Series". This will give us at least a rough idea of the graphics solution in your machine

[Virrodin]

Regarding the graphics card, I dont have Radeon or Nvidia. I expanded as instructed. There was a Display Adapters and System Devices and I didnt see anything worth mentioning in either one of them so most likely my card is just crap. No doubt its fairly clear I'm not computer friendly.
I know you said it works for you, can you offer any suggestions to get it working for me. It's not very feasable to spend 150 bucks on XP just to play a few computer games and I've also heard downgrading to XP is damn near impossible. Especially when I havent even paid for the month yet. If it is my graphics card is it possible to upgrade it or expand my RAM if its in a laptop. I'm open to pretty much any suggestions so anything would be helpful. Is it possible to change WoW's settings to allow for a lower graphics setting or something of the sort. Like I said anything would be helpful, just please break it down into dumby terms lol.
Your help has been greatly appreciated and I thank you for the thought that went into it as opposed to the usual brush off.

Thanks

[syed]

You do not have a external graphics card then. You are using your built-in motherboard or chipset.

1 - Reinstall WoW. Make sure you delete the old directory and restart your laptop.
2 - Once logged in, set all the settings to minimum or low on everything ...

What resolution are you using in your laptop?

There might be some tweaks available, there is one for everything, but I haven't used any on WoW, because it works perfectly fine for me. You might need to look at google for this.

[Virrodin]

My screen resolution 1280X800. What do you mean by tweaks? In the mean time I'll google it up. I'll give the reinstall a try, does setting everything to low wreck gameplay or deminish it overly much?
Another question I had is would upgrading my ram to 2 gigs solve my problem? Or is it most likely just my crap graphics card? I was looking into getting more ram and if this would solve my gameing problems then perhaps this is the direction I should go.

Thanks again.

[Tunga]

We still don't know the exact model so I can't be sure but it sounds like it's your graphics card. What about this:
Click Start
Click Run
Type "dxdiag" (sans quotes)
Press Enter
Check the Video tab, copy the first five things here (Name, Manufacturer, etc).
Assuming it is just your graphics card (as I say, most likely) you'd need to upgrade it. I've never owned a laptop but they're notoriously bad for being upgradable, especially when it comes to graphics cards.

[Kalos]

Have you actually tried this? I run WoW on this:

Athlon 64 3000+
Asus A8N-E
X800XL 256MB
Corsair 1GB DDR PC3200.

It runs WoW okay. At max settings I get framerates of <10 in Shattrath and on flight paths <20 in other cities, but anywhere else I get around 30fps no problems. On medium I can improve on this but I'd rather leave it looking shiny since 30fps is perfectly smotoh for instances and raids anyway.

Point being, vista can do WoW on 1GB okay. Not great, and not as good as XP by any means, but okay and definitely playable.

There's a big difference between DDR1 and DDR2 amounts necessary. DDR1 is a much more effecient architecture at the lower amounts and speeds it was concieved for. DDR2 on the other hand needs to be in larger amounts that DDR for it to match, let alone surpass DDR1. The main reason it was chosen was: Intel liked it, and DDR1 was tapped out, like the Pentium 3 arch it couldn't do high frequencies, and if the Pentium 4 teaches marketers anything, it's that a nice high number sounds great. DDR2's perspective performance is in no way parellel to plain DDR in equal amounts, only DDR2 is as cheap as chips for the manufacturer's to bang out while DDR at the prices that DDR2 is now being flogged off at would have probably run companies like Samsung into the red.

On topic, I agree that the graphics card is the problem more than the ram, and upping the ram won't alleviate that bottleneck. Nearly every laptop's graphics are physically built in or soldered onto the board once installed at the factory. My own graphics card in my laptop cannot be removed, even though from a slot perspective it is accessable by hatch and the socket was designed to allow interchangability. It's a propriatory market, and there are next to no sellers of standalone graphics cards, partly because there's no universal shape that'll fit in any large faction of the market to go upon, unlike PCs.