Hey There,

I have become so addicted to toon town, I had to buy a 2nd account and transfer my wife's & daughter's toon over to it. I have desktop and a laptop. The laptop may be a couple years old. It is a Presario r3000. It has an Intel 2.8 Ghz cpu. It has a gig + 256mb RAM. It runs really good. I can surf w/no problems. However, when I play Toon Town it locks up (hard). I have to turn power off to it (cannot do CTRL-ALT-DEL). It orginally had 384 mb of RAM. So I thought that the CPU was having to do more work due to the low memory. I bought the gig chip and installed it (with no problems). Tried Toon Town Again, but it still locked up after about 15 min or so. So, I thought too much in start up and registry needed cleaning. I spent about $50 on some software to help me defrag the registry and remove "broken links (chains)" and a bunch of other stuff. Still no help. During this time, I downloaded some freeware that monitored the CPU and Memory Resources. When TT starts, the CPU runs at a 100%. All the time. So that sucker (the proc)has got to be getting hot, which causes the lock up. BTW, both of my fans are working on it.

I had a SF who was just kidding with me but in her kidding offered a suggestion that I took her up on. We bought some of the popsicles that's pretty much Kool Aide in a sealed plastic tube. I wrapped a bunch of those up in a grocery bag and stuck it underneath the laptop. And to my shagrin, I was able to take my wife's toon and my toon (along with help from my SF - Thanks Rose!!) through the "a" DA's office without incident. As she was wrapping up yet another Lil Oldman task, the machine did lock up. But by then, I was on my 2nd round of popcicles. And I question my placement of those.

I'm thinking about buying a Notebook Cooler. Has anyone ran into this before? Does anyone have any suggestions? Any help is greatly appreciated. I can provide further details if needed.

I hate using a labtop for TT. The best things to make it less heated is to be near an outlet so the battery charger is in and working. Also, putting down the light and contrast helps a little. Make the fans have more air. So say you want to play sitting on a couch. Don't put it on the couch, the fans will have less room and air to ventilate. Keep it in your lap or on a table beside you. If that doesn't work, get more memory. The memory will make it go even faster than now. If the computer is still stinky on TT maybe it should go in the garbage. If you get more memory, 512 MB would be good for Toontown. I found out that anything less than that isn't as good. I have 512 on my desktop computer which I'm using right now. It works very good. Hope my advice works.

Hey Goofo,

My laptop has 1.2 Gig of memory. Runs really fast. When Toon Town runs, it runs like a champ. It just locks up after it gets heated up. I've put things under it to allow more air under. That didn't work. The only thing that has managed to work for any length of time is the Popcicle Cooler Technique. Thank you, though, for your input.

Stock up on bags of frozen peas? I've used a laptop since I started TT many moons ago and wouldn't have it any other way. Hope you hear about the pads as I'd be interested in what anyone says. I've always used a lap desk of some sort and oddly enough I just bought one of those table mate thingys you see on TV and it works really really well! (looks ugly sitting here but the height and stuff is perfect for vegging on the couch and being on the laptop)

Ewwwww No frozen peas or popsicles. I use one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Targus-PA248U-Tornado-Notebook-Chill/dp/B0000AKA8Y


Tgibbsjr: I'm not sure if the lockup is due to overheating, since computers normally shut themselves down if they are running too hot. Your problem sounds very similar to the way my laptop ran before I added additional memory. The processor would run at 100 percent the second I started Toontown too and would lockup so bad that I had not choice but to hard reboot it.

Check to make sure that the operating system recognizes the additonal memory that you added. If not, make sure that the memory is properly seated in its slot. If the operating system recognizes the memory, the paging file may have to be manually set (properties of my computer, advanced tab, click setting under performance, then the advanced tab, click change under virtual memory). Select custom size. For the amount of memory you have, the initial size should be 1920 and the maximum size should be 3200. Click set then ok and reboot. I had to manually set the paging file after I added memory.

BB,

I thought the same about the memory. I bought a gig of mem. It's seeded properly. The laptop is recognizing it. I have 1.25GB of RAM. I did take a look at the page file stuff. You were right the pagefile stuff WAS set to manual. I made the changes you suggested, and restarted the laptop. I got a good 15 min out of it before it locked up. So, I went back into the advance options and set the pagefile to auto. I got the same results.

I took a look at the item you suggested. It said that it sucks the air away. This lappy is a little different. It is actually sucking the air up into itself instead of exhausting it out. Does your lappy do the same as mine or does it exhaust out? Thank you for the help and please let me know if you have any other ideas.

I've been using the chill pad since the day I got my laptop and it keeps my laptop running much cooler. When you place the laptop on it, the 2 fans blow cool air up at the bottom of the laptop.

There should be somewhere on your laptop where you can feel the hot air being exhausted out. Possibly there is some dust in the fans which would decrease the air flow and not cool your laptop sufficiently. I found the manual for your laptop and a guide to take the laptop apart. If you feel comfortable doing so, take the laptop apart till you get to the fans and other components and use a can of compressed air to blow the dust out of the fans and other components. (try to hold the fans so they don't spin when you are blowing the air on them).

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00212209.pdf

http://www.takeitapart.net/archives/compaq-presario-r3000/

I'll hunt around on the tech (geek) forums to see if I can find out any more info for you.

Window's locking up, especially after a short while of being turned on, is a lot of times, bad memory. Try taking out the 256 MB stick (if that's possible, built in ram?) I had this problem for months and took apart a computer 3 times, til someone told me that's probably what it was. If taking the 256 MB out doesnt work, try disabling or taking out a component at a time, i.e. CD ROM drive, diskette drive if you can, it's more than likely a hardware issue.

And in the immortal words of Toontown Tech Support, have you tried updating your drivers? LOL.

Actually, can you do anything other than Toontown for more than 15 minutes?

It could be the memory like Dr Skids suggested. Try using this to test the memeory:



http://www.memtest.org/

Doc Skids / BB,

Thanks for the useful links. the exhaust is coming out the sides of the lappy.

I'm not too terribly comfortable taking lappy apart. But, I don't have a hang up in doing so either. I'll check that out.

BB, regarding the memtest, which one of the memtest items do i download. I'm thinking of the usb executable.

In regards to the lock up question. The laptop doesn't lock up surfing the net. I can leave it on the table and it never locks up. The surfing doesn't tie up much of the CPU processes. So it's never getting hot enough to do the hard lock up. Admittedly, I haven't ran nothing else as intensive on the system as TT. I have recently installed UT2004 to see if it will lock up. I haven't had a chance run it to see if it will lock up on lappy. But I think I will, just to see if it does. The sole (sp?) purpose of this lappy is for TT.

I did the popsicle thing again (not the ones on a stick, in clear plastic tube) (I had them wrapped in plastic just in case there was any condesation on outside of little tubes). I had them position so they were NOT clogging the fans. I ran my toon on my desktop and my wife's on the lappy. I was successfull at running the lappy through an "A" building. And I had the lappy to for about 15 min or so afterward. The trip through "A" was about 45 min. And I was in River too. The laptop did lock up, but it did so in some weird hibernation start. Another thing I forgot to turn off.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but Thank You very much for all of this. I really appreciate you all taking time out to do this research for me.

*** UPDATE ***

I ran another program that is graphic intensive (Unreal Tournament 2004) and after 12 min of game play it locks up (just like Toon Town). I haven't had a chance to take it apart yet. I performed my popcicle cooling and the laptop last well over 2 hours. As a matter of fact, there was no lock up whatsoever. I bought a notebook cooler from walmart. It didn't help. Of course, it's designed to suck the air away. I need it blowing cool air into it. Just thought that I would put this out there just in case any one else has the same problem. BB/DOC/Goofo - Everyone else, thank you for your suggestions. I appreciate the time you took out to look into this for me. I think the next step is a decent cooler for the laptop.

Geez, sorry to hear that you are still having problems.

Since you are having the same problem with another graphic intensive game, sounds like you might not have enough video memory. Can you check to see what video card or controller you have?

BB,

As long as I have Popsicles as a renewable cooling resource, it's no big.

However the laptop proudly displays this on the lappy. It is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP. Hope this helps.

LOL Woohoo for the popsicles

When I checked the tech forums, I saw that there were similar complaints when playing graphic intensive games with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP but unfortunately no solutions. It is onboard video with most likely 64 MB of RAM and there really isn't a way to upgrade it.

I wish I could have been more help.

I wouldn't put the popsicles on the computer.
I would eat them!

Lady Z,

I feel your pain. Minus the "used to play TT great " part. Still do this day, the popsicle thing works. I can hear one of the fans wobble. It needs replaced. I gave in and bought me a new lappy. BD will get the other one.

If it used to run TT great, that makes me wonder if it may be something as simple as a fan going out and overheating while playing TT. Something tells me you may have checked for that already.

Another question that just occurred to me. You said that you laptop should have been updated a year ago. But have you been playing TT on it for the last year? When did your problem start occurring?

Z, maybe I can help you do some research (not that you can't). Can you give me what graphics your laptop is using? I can't guarantee anything, but I'll definitely do my best to help.

I apologize if my post seems scattered shot, but my caffeine has not started kicking in just yet.

It may be that you need more memory, an upgrade to your graphics driver, or something else . . . but I'd start with the cheap and easy remedy.

Mike was having similar issues with his laptop. We invested about $25 on a notebook cooler. We got it at BJs Wholesale (like Sams, Costco, etc.). We can play tt for hours on the laptop with no problems now.

BTW . . . 2 1/2 years ago, when we first started playing tt, we had 2 computers in the house (we'd given the kids our really old one). Today, we have 4 desktops and a laptop, all of them TT compatible .