World of Warcraft on HP DV9000

[Propaganda_Machine]

just curious if anyone had suggestions as to which custom driver i should be using. with the original driver i got from hp recently, i was having issues with the screen locking up. (i could hear all audio interactions, like opening my pack, speaking, withdrawing my weapon etc etc) i turned my video settings all the way down, and still experienced these. i downloaded the most recent available driver form this website, and it seemed to fix most the issues, but i still have lock ups that eventually resolve themselves without the game crashing, and once or twice the game crashing. reading thru this site, i saw that not all drivers are made for all uses (some for gaming, some for video, etc etc) so anyone got a suggestion on which driver is best? or possibly some extra tweaking i can do in the nvidia settings to get maximum performance.

[EnzoMatrix]

I was running WoW on a DV9500 CTO for a year and this is what worked best for me:

1) Try running it BELOW native res. I had better results when I ran it at 1280x1024 not the 1440x900 that is native for these laptops.

2) The best driver I found for WoW was the 186.81 right off the Nvidia web site - Nvidia 186.81 Laptop Driver using a modded driver with WoW just never seemed to work out.

3) In the large cities, turn down ALL your video options. If you keep them up in the cities you are just asking for freezes and hitching.

4) Keep ALL your drives defraged prior to playing. I know people will tell you that doesn't matter, but WoW loads graphic textures all the time while the game is running and fragemented files can cause freezes and hitching.

5) Keep you laptop COOL. A cooler pad under the laptop is a MUST for running WoW well.

6) Shut down ALL background programs. This includes Vent, and any other VoIP program, they take up system resources and that taxes the laptop.

7) Make sure you are running ONLY the Mods that you really NEED at any given time. Some of the mods are always 'talking' with online agents that share data with other users, this slows you down.

8) Make sure that 'Peer-to-Peer' in your WoW update client is ALWAYS turned OFF. This will take longer for you to patch WoW, but it will keep all bandwidth and system resources for YOU playing WoW.

Lastly, think of playing on a desktop. Laptops really are hard to play WoW on, but if the laptop is all you have follow my seven steps and you WILL see better performance and less Freezing and Hitching. Hope this helps you, good luck in WoW. (oh, if you are on a server that is maxed out in population, think of moving to a less crowded server. The more people on the server, the harder it is for a laptop to play WoW well.)