need to update all possible drivers on toshiba satellite m40

[Rahul]

bought my satellite m40 from india model no is PSM40L-04800C

need to update the video drivers as battlefield 2 requires it....it has a geforce 6600 128 mb

i have 512 mb ram....1.73 ghz centrino and winxp service pack 2

also need to upgrade bios...can u plzz direct me how i should go about these ....i'm new here....plzz recommend 1s which have been tested and dont have any harmful effects ont he laptop and if i can backup the original versions.....

also can i find new drivers for dvd ram drive.....its having trouble reading some data dvds which are working on other laptops...its MATSHITA DVD RAM UJ-831S

also is there any way to remove the region protection ont he dvd...wanna play some us dvds but dont wanna change the region...my region is set to 3 rite now which is not even india...

also do u suggest updating anything else...plzzz let me know about these...thanx!!

[Bill]

As for the DVD drive, what drive exactly do you have?

You should check the device manager under CD/DVD-ROM or whatever it is called these days.

You should be able to get an RCP-1 firmware that has the region coding removed. (can google your drive's name or whatever)

Now be carefull with that, changing the RCP on your drive usually/always requires flashing the drive's firmware with some sort of hacked firmware, and you can permanently mess your DVD drive up that way, but then its just a replaceable DVD drive, not like your hard drive or anything... (can get a new drive for around $50 or less, and a new DVD burner for around $70 or so, but I don't know what currency you use)

A newer drive might be better and have better firmware available and have better DVD writing and reading capabilities, so you might like an upgrade if you have some extra dough to spare. (I just replaced my combo with a DVD burner, everything works better and I can now burn DVDs, but my drive does not currently have any non-beta RCP1 yet.)

You can also search for DVD Decrypter on google, I think that can rip DVD disks for regions, or try regionfree or google that, there are programs you can download/buy that can overcome the region coding without you screwing up your PC, google can help you find those. (I have never used one.)

Go click the driver and INF recomend link in my signiture and try the 81.98 driver and give that a go with Pieter's mod INF.

Read the "what is an INF" topic and the "how to install have disk method" topic in the FAQ section of this forum before you install.

It is very simple, just unzip the driver to some folder on your desktop or something and replace the INF in the driver with Pieter's mod INF and install it through the device manager have disk method.

[mattman]

Really you just need the new drivers, the DVD drive I won't make any reccomendations, nor will I on flashing the vbios.. These things you really shouldn't have to do.

As to the drivers, follow Bill's advice, they work very well for my running BF2 on the same GPU.

[Bill]

I was not talking about flashing the video BIOS, I was rambling on about flashing his drive to RCP-1 firmware, go google that matt if you don't know what that is. (his drive and mine are both RCP-2, which is bad)

His drive currently has region settings, if he gets a US dvd or something it will not play in his drive unless he changes the stupid ******* region setting, and the region setting can only be changed so many times, usually only 4 or 5 times, and after that is stays at whatever the last change is.

If I ever meet the guy that invented this region coding on DVDs (or whoever made it a mandatory requirement thing) I would love to have a few words with him..... *pounds fists together* :angry: :)

[mattman]

Yep i know, but the OP was also talking about flashing the VBIOS.

[Rahul]

so has any1 tested these on the toshiba satellite m40 with geforce 6600 128 mb....the video drivers....can they cause any problems to the computer...if so how do i backup my previous 1s before using these?

and cud u gimme a link to peiters inf file...donno which 1 is his...and which wud be better the quality or performance inf....are there different 1s for each laptop brand....plzz gimme the link so that i dont make a mistake with it

[mattman]

The drivers will not hurt your hardware. I'm running 81.98 with the lv2go inf on exactly the same graphics and have no issues at all.

[Bill]

When your in the device manager properties for your card, near the update driver button you should see a rollback driver button, incase the new drivers don't work that well, just hit rollback driver there. It will revert to your old driver and you will still have all the old settings and things in tack, or atleast that is how it should work.

[Rahul]

thanx guys....the drivers have worked!! gr8 work....btw for geforce 6600 128mb which 1 do u suggest...quality inf or performance...

my nfs most wanted just hangs for a sec or two in the middle....also fear doesnt run well at all even with settings on minimum....any suggestions??? i have 512 ram ddr ....is that the prob...its 1.73 centrino.....if so should i upgrade to 1 gb ram....if so any idea which is th emost reliable place in oxford,uk where i can get a good 1 and at the cheapest price..i think toshiba has a hinex ddr1 already installed..1 slot is free so i can install another 1

[mattman]

I would use the standard modded inf.

Quality looks fantastic, but you take a serious performance hit. Performance is a tad faster, but poor quality. The standard modded inf is a nice balance of both and also what I use and recommend.

FEAR is a very intensive game. 1GB RAM would help, but you are never going to be able to run at high details with your hardware, the best I would hope for is a mix of med/low settings. Also make sure you turn off any AA/AF, for your screen it shouldn't matter too much, and again you take a hefty performance hit when using them.

The NFS issue is probably also RAM related, it may be paging, which is bad for FPS. If it always freezes in the same spot, make sure you have all the latest patches installed, if it persists, try an NFS support forum.

[Bill]

I don't know why he can't run high settings on Fear Matt.

Rahul go get atleast 1 GB of RAM in that, then you should be able to turn all the details up to the high setting except textures, leave those on medium.

Also make sure from the nvidia control panel and the game that AA and AF is off, and select bilinear or trilinear filtering in the game.

Now there is one option, soft shadows, I would recomend turning that off, then if it runs fine with the above settings I have mentioned, try turning soft shadows on, but beware, that WILL make it slow on your card.

My graphics card can run the game playable actually at medium settings, this on a DX8 64MB card, and only 512MB system RAM currently.

Now I would also recomend a low resolution for the game, or run it at your LCDs native resolution and turn on pixel doubling.

With pixel doubling, if you run the game at 1600x1200, it will actually render the game at 800x600, giving you more speed, and at 800x600 you would get 400x300, and so on.

If you want I can take a pic of what settings you should have for the game graphics, system and sound wise.

Also make sure the sound voices are set on max, you want to here all the different enemy sounds, instead of only half of them.

[mattman]

Wow thought it was alot more GPU intensive than that.

Might have to grab the demo myself :) For comparative reasons, of course.

[Bill]

The game IS GPU intensive, but he should still be able to set most settings on high except for textures and a few others, which will eat up his limited system and gf card RAM.

The game's textures are very good, even at medium, almost looked bump mapped.

You really do need atleast 1 GB of RAM and 256+ MB GF card to run textures on high with this game.