so I got a new laptop with Windows Vista 64-bit - and NWN installs fine, updates fine, but when I go to play it, it shows me no display resolutions at all to choose from.

I have a wide screen laptop with Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 video card on board and like I said it's widescreen with a max rez of 1680x1050 and several settings in between.

Is there a patch I need? or something?

I've tried forcing the resolution to several different settings in the nwn.ini file without any luck = keeps defaulting back to 800x600.

Any help anyone could give me would be freaking great!

have you updated the drivers for your video card?

yes I've tried the latest forceware from Nvidia, latest from microsofts vista update website and even tried old Omega drivers that used to work on XP.

Nothing...I can't play at anything higher than 800x600

Hmm. I had tons of issues using NWN and Vista, on Gforce cards. None of them worked at all.

I switched to Ati, which is no help to you, obviously. Does it do it with anyother games? If so, then it's definately something about your computer (Either HDD or MB) if its just NWN, try reinstalling it.

I do have several other games that seem to work: Quake 4, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, (pending a test of City of Heroes)

I'll try a reinstallation of NWN...as when I play it (it works just it's permanently stuck at 800x600), it's SO beautiful. The graphics just run so smoothly even with all the settings up all the way and I'm seeing this game in a totally new light.

If anyone else has any vista experience and was able to get it to work, please let me know.

I found that when I upgraded my XP machine to a 7600. It's a very good card.

Sadly, when i got the 8600GTS it wasn't, it didnt even play NWN nor hardly anything else.

The switch to ATi has helped me play, but i still think the graphics arent too good.

Try installing the 32bits version of your graphic card driver.

Of course you should create a restore point before doing it.

Windows Vista x64 is well known to have huge driver issues with any graphic card you put on.

I'm not sure if the OS will allow you to install a 32bits version. I had a similar issue, so I had to downgrade my drivers to 32bits version. But it works fine now.

If nothing else works, I advice you installing Windows Vista 32bits version.

didn't consider putting 32-bit drivers on...I'll do that.

Also you don't have to create a restore point and waste hard drive space if a driver goes bad....you can instead do the following if you have winrar installed.

Winrar will allow you extract the files in an .exe (windows executeable file) so you can put them all in a folder on your desktop. Then you can go to your hardware manager and open up the properties of your display adapter and choose 'Update Driver'. You point it to the folder you extracted those files to.

What that 'update driver' function does, is create a copy of the old drivers so that you can use the 'rollback driver' function if the new drivers don't work for some reason. Also keep in mind that the windows boot option of "Start using Last known good config" does essentially the same thing, the difference being is that using the "last Known good config" will wipe out the old versions of the drivers if you didn't use the 'Update Driver' feature in the first place.

I'll let everyone know how the 32-bit driver situation goes.

UPDATE:

I tried to put 32-bit drivers but either windows tells me that I have the current drivers OR the nvidia installer states that I don't have the correct OS.

I suppose I could try a manual replacement of the .dll files and see what happens....

for anyone who's following this thread...here's the latest.

So I gave up on trying to get NWN or NWN2 to work in vista. I created a partition and installed XP after using the NLITE freeware application to install the SATA drivers for my computer into an Xp disk........

Then the machine wouldn't show that vista was installed, so I found ANOTHER freeware program called VistaBootPro. But then that Crippled the XP install. Till I moved all the standard XP/2000/98 boot files over to their original location on the XP partition.

Now, I've got no sound as apparently HP has made VISTA ONLY drivers for the sound card aboard my laptop.

So summary....if I use vista, I get sound, but shoddy visuals (low rez only) if I use XP the game looks wonderful, but i get no sound.

I''ve decided I want a Dell with Xp on it...screw this shit.

alright.....let me clarify that last post: I got my sound to work after like 2 hours of trying. finally....now, lets see if this xp boot thing actually works

i find vista works like a dream, it was simply the graphics causing hell.

I just bought a new AMD dual core with 7600go and vista, and I also cannot play NWN.

I am not in as bad shape as you however, I can get into EFU, I have sound, I have max resolution, I just have a slideshow framerate. It takes me forever to move anywhere.

Any suggestions from anyone?

I have the same setup ('cept I have an intel core 2 duo @ 2ghz)

(Disclaimer, if some of these suggestions seem 'elementary', my apologies, I'm not sure of your technical level)

1.) First off, do you know the bus speeds of your chipset? (both the front side bus and the memory speed) AMD systems on laptop platforms currently are not as fast as Intel ones. This could be contributing to why you have lower frame rates that you might have been expecting.

2.) How much RAM do you have? Vista is a RAM hog like I've never seen. Even after I went through extensive streamlining, I still can't get it to use anything less than 550 megs of RAM. Normal boot (including Aero desktop) you're looking at 750 megs. If your computer is constantly going to virutal memory (located on the hard drive) you'll get what I call 'frame lag' as they pc tries to read from the HDD to get the data it needs to draw the screen. 3.) Also what kind of frame rates are you getting? Are they lower than your previous NWN rig? I read on Nvidia forums to use ONE of the following locations for Anti-Aliasing settings A.) Use Windows Desktop Compositing (used for Aero, etc) as it applies this to any graphic application also. B.) Use graphics card Anti-Aliasing C.) use Application/Game Anti-Aliasing settings. They recommend you only use ONE of these methods, disabling the others. The only combination that seems to work is combining A & B. I've experienced problems when I've enabled AA inside NWN. Reducing this might help seeing as you'd have 3 passes for AA on a game that isn't advanced enough to really need it.

3B.) What are the specs on your video card? I also have an Nvidia GeForce 7600 Go card (the 'real' 256 one, not the 'turbo cache' one where it only has 128 MB on the board and uses 128MB of Ram for the rest, you can tell this by going to system properties in Vista and it'll show how much is on-board RAM vs. System shared)

Depending on your system (determined by your CPU's chipset), you may or may not be getting the most out of your vid card. They may have slowed the cards core clock and RAMDAC speed to be better insync with your system board.

There are a number of utilities on the internet that can help you find out your GPU's specs. Compare those on your computer to what NVidia reports on their website. If there are any differences, that may be leading to performance issues.

The card has the ability to set 'global' settings and then make exceptions for individual applications. I made an exception for NWN to let the game determine the settings.

4.) is this the first time you've tried gaming on a laptop? I've been gaming on laptops for a while (7 years) and you'll always get lower performance than a desktop, simply because the small size doesn't allow for the latest, fastest and greatest things (mainly because of space and coolling limitations). Laptop gaming has had huge strides, but still will never be as good as desktop gaming.

5.) Have you tried to play NWN with another Windows OS that works 100% with NWN? If you have another laptop that has comparable hardware with Windows XP or 2000, try NWN on that and check the results. Keep in mind Vista isn't 100% working yet even though it's been on sale for nearly 6 months now.

WARNING: Don't do this unless you have a restore method in place (spare imaged HDD, recovery CD/DVD, ASR recover set, etc) of your current hard drive. You could also Dual Boot your computer, but be warned when I did this, I had all kind of problems, but I did get it working eventually. Some of the issues I had included: crippled Vista install, Crippled Legacy Windows OS install, sound driver problems (because of a Hi-Def sound card chip on my rig by Conextant), SATA driver integration on Legacy Windows OS install CD, conflict with Recovery Partition, BIOS Driver letter confusion vs. Drive letters in OS.

These are all major problems. The last one is really confusing because the BIOS handles drive letters differently than the OS's.

If you decide to Dual boot, please tell me and I'll write out all the steps I had to go through in order to get my vista/xp setup to work.

I'm have different problems when I try with vista. It works fine until I get to the main screen, where it gives a black screen. The buttons are still there if I press randomly, but I can't see anything. I tried rebooting and reinstalling, any ideas?

Check your graphic driver, update and try again to see.

HyperVision I'm have different problems when I try with vista. It works fine until I get to the main screen, where it gives a black screen. The buttons are still there if I press randomly, but I can't see anything. I tried rebooting and reinstalling, any ideas?

Usually have the same trouble, but it turns out that it just needed a minor fix. When you get to the main screen that goes black, press ALT and TAB at the same time. That should lower NWN to bottom of the screen. Click on the NWN icon at the bottom of the screen to bring it back up. The screen should be normal then.

I hate to say it but my final solution was dual booting with XP and playing NWN through the XP partition.

Nevermind. After fiddling with the drivers I got it to work perfectly. Thanks. ^-^

Hey! Advice me too! I just have the black main screen on normal Xp! I want it off from me! The black demon is tormenting me!