Dell latitude d600
Bios: phoniox rom bios plus ver.1.10 A05
Processor: intel pentium m 1600mhz
Memory: 1024mb ram
page file: 306mb used. 2155mb avail.
Directx ver: dir.x 9.0c
Graphics card: mobility radeon 9000 {32bit}

problem is when i start the game 5 to 10 secs into gameplay the screen closes down and the laptop has to be restarted. no error message apears.
will upgrading the graphics card solve the problem?


Thanks for any help

Upgrading won't sort the problem, and you can't upgrade the graphics card anyway on that laptop.

Is the laptop getting too hot?

i havn't a clue? how can i tell ??

as Niko would say...its probably overheating?

lol

Ontopic: I used to play on my dads one, exactly the same, but with 512RAM...and it all worked fine, but about 20fps...which was quite fine with me

i have a near same spec sony viao laptop except its 1800 mhz and it runs lfs at 32 fps so id say running it on a pc is the only real way to enjoy lfs unless your laptop happens to have the best gear that money can buy

is the problem solvable? can i change certain settings or is it no LFS for me??

Quote from WillieDrift :

is the problem solvable? can i change certain settings or is it no LFS for me??

If it's overheating (which would make sense) then it's a hardware issue not LFS - The only things that tend to make a PC reboot are Temperature, Memory errors, unstable CPU overclock and dodgy PSU - i can discount the first 2, so i'll focus on Overheating for now.

Grab SpeedFan, and say what the temperature in the corner is, play LFS and watch what it gets to.

Hope this helps,
Jakg

(LFS Forums Hardware Geek!)

HD0 is between 44 and 46 deg.
Temp1 is 49.5
not sure if they go up when playing the game.

Hit "Shift" + "F4" and LFS will run in a window, when SpeedFan is running look at the number to the left of the clock in your task bar, thats your CPU temp, and look what happens when you start to play LFS.

anything in 40s is good enough...mine goes to 54 while running lfs on my laptop (acer aspire 5100), yet it runs 60fps...

for an AMD CPU the most i'd go to is 55°, but it can take 60°, for an Intel a C2D shouldn't break 60°, a Quad or P4 shouldn't break 65°

sorry for the delay. 44 degs is what it says before running LFS but it does not change from 44 while playing or just before shutdown.
when i say shutdown it seems as if the screen shuts down and the rest is still running if that makes any sense.

Hmmm, not overheating then...

Jak, you can too change graphics cards on laptops, you just have to know what cards they are compatible with. If you know what options the D600 came with, then you can buy the faster graphics card it could come with.

And there is a good website I found incase I ever want to switch my ATi mobility X1400 to a Nvidia go 7800. This link is for changing the graphics card in my laptop, but they might have a D600 in there. http://www.legitreviews.com/article/349/2/
Hard yes. Possible yes.

But seeing it is a latitude, I don't see that happening, the latitude is one of the business platforms, and typically business men don't need fast graphics cards.

They are integrated on the mobo, and the only "laptop upgrade" for GFX is the MXX system which is just so rediculously expensive.

Where do you plan on buying one of these Go 7800's from anyway? :P

Try new Catalyst drivers, they might help?
http://ati.amd.com/

That's a good question, I'm sure at some point I'll be able to get a hold of one at some point in time, and if I can't find it, I guess I'll find myself contacting that review website, but I bet they somehow ordered both when they ordered the laptop.

Oh well, it's all a dream.
It may take a few years, we'll see what happens, but with over twice the power, I think it would be quite helpful, even.. 5 years or more into the future.

(sorry for hijacking thread)

nVidia have no intention of selling to people other than OEM's, last i saw the few that get "leaked" out onto eBay sell for about £400, nearly 4x the cost of the desktop card

still havnt found out what my problem is here.
i have downloaded new drivers but am not sure how to install them.
as said earlier it seem s to be the screen shuting down, what is the best resolotion to set it to?

To install them just run the files (they should be .exe's).

The screen itself turning off could be a memory issue.

Does the screen say "Out Of Range"? Try renaming the "cfg.txt" and "card_cfg.txt" to something like "cfg_BACKUP.txt" and "card_cfg_BACLKUP.txt", if LFS still crashes rename them back again.

If that doesn't work, then i can suggest doing about an hour of MemTest86, extract, use an iso burner to burn the file to a CD, set your laptop to boot from CD and plop this in and do about an hours test to see if you've got problems (ie if it reports errors).

Do you get the same problem in other games?

the only other games installed where counter strike{works perfecto} and deltaforce BHD{same problem}

ill try the drivers. it should not be the memory as my hard drive fubared a few weeks ago and my brother tested the memory incase it was that{it wasnt}

the driver is named ati-installer-8.28.8.run
but will not run when clicked on. what do i use to open it.
and sorry for all the noob questions

Drivers should be .exe files, windows says type is program, it should run when you double click it, but if not then it might be that you don't have admin rights or then package is corrupt, if later you need to download it again if first then you need to log out and log in with account that is administrator or similar.

Use 60Hz and same resolution as you windows desktop is, that should at least work. If computer performance is too small, game just runs slow, it does not shut down screen.

Here are a few tips

1) If you can't get newer ATI drivers (Poor support from them on older mobile solutions) try the omega drivers as they support older ATI mobile solutions.
2) Use 16bit gfx (Enable dither)
3) Limit your AA & AF usage
4) Use half texture size

My laptop cooks and does a shutdown running LFS but there are solutions.

A laptop cooler helps but I just build 4 CD case stacks, each 2 high and put the laptop up on those so the cases do not effect ait flow in any way. It will then run LFS for hours on end.

I use D600 / 1400MHz / 512MB / Radeon 9000m without any problems (gonna get D630 with nVidia soon, anyway). I use only the drivers provided by Dell (check their website for updates) and G25 wheel (with the latest official driver from Logitech's website).

Some tips:

Run it at 1024x768 with a very low LOD settings and turned off highres textures, set maximal fps to 40. Turn off as many "background" apps as possible (consider turning off resident antivirus scanning during the game and tune down network traffic inspection/analysis if you use some sort of "clever" personal firewall while online).

Sometimes it gets overheating (depends on weather/temperature and time spent in LFS, and more cars -> sooner overheat) - I've bought some freezing boxes (extremely cheap, usually used for travelling - you put them in the same bag as food and it keeps it cool for a long time) that I put into the freezer over the day and I put them under the laptop (the central part is the most important) when I race in LFS in the evening. It cools down the laptop for hours, sometimes it even cools down so much that the fan stops for a while while racing :-)

I've never seen the overheat sooner than after several _minutes_ of intensive racing (like 15-20 minutes) without external cooling and it has never caused a crash but it only runs extremely slow (like 1fps or less). No idea why it does crash for you. I would recommend running memtest86 over the night and giving a spin to Dell Diagnostics boot CD. Also make sure your Windows installation is not broken or ruined by malware.