The Omega Problem

Ok well from my other thread I figured I might as well bring this issue up.
First of all I am not using a supported video card at the moment.
I am using the ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 32MB awesome-truck.

Here is the issue: (This issue started a while of updates ago)

* Installing omega drivers = Guild Wars does *not* detect my driver and refuses to even try
* Installing a hacked ATI desktop catalyst (forcing a desktop catalyst to install on my laptop [which forces every little ounce of performance from my little GPU nicely]) = same problem
* Using windows update to get a driver = Victory is Mine! but then again its not as great as omega drivers or a hacked ATI desktop catalyst.

So here are the questions:
* Is there a way to bypass the 'check' Guild Wars has for drivers/video card? As long as your fully aware that it might muck up your machine (in this case I'm fully aware it will work since a few hours before that update it was working)
* Does anyone know _how_ they do this type of check?
* Is there any other way to force GW to accept my driver?

Just questions of interest.
Thanks.

Sounds like you are running a laptop atm. Go to the manufacturers website and get the latest video drivers from them. The reason is they tweek the components within their products to use only their drivers and ill not work with other drivers even the manufacturers. This happens mostly with laptops but certian mainstream computer manufacturers (Dell Apple and a couple others) do this so you must go through them to get upgrades for their computers. Most of the time the omega drivers will not even run on a laptop (I tried them on mine and had terrible problems), although there are a few that will run them. I also have a laptop which I use while at work to play Guild Wars. It is a HP DV8315nr, which has an ATI radeon Ezpress 200M with 128 megs of dedicated memort. It plays the game quite well although I have had to turn the graphics settings down to get good framerates and playability form it. If that video card is one of the few that can be upgraded, contact the manufacturer and see if they have a video card that you can purchase that Guild Wars does support. That is the only alternative other than putting up with a bit of slow down due to the video card.

Mega Mouse

the omega drivers work wonderfully on my mobility 7500 (yes a laptop). The problem is that GW is not detecting any other drivers that I use (as opposed to windows update video driver)

Like I said go to the manufacturers website and get the newest drivers for your laptops video card and see if that helps. Or you might have to do what I did. Before I gopt my current laptop I had an ACER unit with the savage (also unsupported) video chipset. It ran Guild Wars (barely) and I had terrible lag with it. I even tried to update the drivers for it but it seems that Guild Wars only supports the major video cards from the last few years and not some of the lesser known ones. NC-Soft did it this way not to keep people from playing the game, but to get the most players into it. A lot of laptops even now have unsupported graphics cards. This is not the laptop manufacturers problem as they put the video chipset in that they think will suit what the consumer will use the laptop for (certian video chipsets are good at productivity apps while others are good for gaming). Just gotta look at what you are getting and get the best that you can afford. I am not sure exactly what chipsets are covered by Guild Wars, I will look into it and see what I can come up with. Ill post it here if I find something out.

Mega Mouse

To that I would say, that sounds like an oh so great answer until you examine the fact that manufacturers rarely if ever update device drivers after the release of a product. This is Why projects like the omega driver set, the DHZero set, the Laptopmod set,and the Mobility modder project exists and are quite popular.Its not just for the fact that they provide performance booost, but they very often add support. The unified driver architectures that both ati and nvidia use have full support for even OEM cards out of the box in most cases. The problem is that since neither officially support the OEM cards, the unified driver releases lack the information in the ini required to identify the card and place the correct registry information into the system. The modding utility and other modded drivers simply insert the correct registry and system information required to add support for the device. In a perfect world your OEM would do their job and update drivers but that just doesn't happen for the majority.

A radeon 7500 mobility is a fully compliant card that should be supported by guildwars. I had a machine for over 2 years with it and modded drivers, guildwars was peachy. My suggestion would be to try getting a version of the modded drivers a revision or two lower then the most up to date versions. You should be fully capable of using the Ati official drivers with the Mobility Modder. My suggestion would be that either the drivers are not cleanly installing themselves or the current release has a bug in them.

I would suggest that you grab the Offical Ati release, Go and Grab the Mobility Modder from Driver Heaven, and Grab the Driver Cleaner.

Make suer you have a working version of the driver to return to should you need to. Uninstall your ati graphic drivers and reboot. Then go ahead and run the Driver Cleaner and select the correct information in it to clean up your system and remove the older drivers. Then Follow the directions for the mobility modder. Run the ati installer, let it extract the installer to the ati support folder let fail. Then run the Mobility modder and start the installation again from the ati support folder on your root drive. You can allow it to so on its own, or you can do it yourself by find the installation that has been modded usually found in C:\ATI. Reboot. Hopefully everything is peachy and your drivers are cleanly and correctly installed then try giving guildwars the old boot to the head.