Hi everyone!
I just got my new Sager 9880 a couple weeks ago and was plagued with a problem that confused me from the start. While gaming and using the wireless Railink mini-pci card I would get a slow down and choppy laggy loading pauses while playing my game, America's army which now is basically UT2004. I wouldn't get the loading pauses while running through or playing the maps offline or if I used a Hardline cable cat5 cable connection, a USB adapter or a pcmcia card.. it only happened when I used the mini-pci internal wireless. I have the new nvidia 6800 ultra card and I thought at first it was some kind of pci power bottleneck or something... I was also plagued by a graphics slow down when the unit appeared to get hot while trying to research this. My research yesterday has led me to two conclusions that fixed my problems entirely and I want to pass it along to all of you. I was very close to calling Sager support yesterday and asking for an RMA# if they didn't have a quick answer... I'm glad I didn't because, this baby runs fantastic now... This is what you need to know...
1) The Battery is a power hog!! If you run the 9880 on battery power for any period of time the unit will want to recharge it when you plug it back in and it takes like 90 minutes to recharge. When you plug it in, the unit will lose a lot of its incoming power. If you try to use your video card and play any kind of game, you will have choppy slowed down gameplay, making the game laggy and impossible. Solution: Drop the battery.... they come out real easy using with a butter knife or a dime and can be put back in when the unit is idle using your fingernail to turn the screws only as tight as you need. Once 100% again the battery will not effect game play, but watch the charging levels...
2) This is a coup de gras (A French term for a signature death blow/one shot one kill solution to a problem) for the intermittent wireless/ choppy game play problem. Its not the Railink card, Its not a conflict with anything on your system, its not the drivers,its not your router, its not some sort of power glitch, its not your video card or its drivers or your RAID 0 setup. ITS FRIGGIN BILL GATES!! If you have any internet problems using the Railink mini-pci card where your internet runs choppy, loses connection or you have mild to choppy latency during gameplay or any type of streaming.... this is the fix! Windows Xp has a service running by default called Wireless Zero Configuration Utility. It conflicts with some wireless cards and causes lag and dropped internet. You only need to turn it off and you're good to go! As soon as I did, I was a fraggin' maniac!! the whole system ran smoother.
To kill the service.. go to Start/Settings/Control panel/Administration Tools/Services...scroll down to Wireless zero configuration utility and double click, Select STOP, then in Start up type...pulldown the menu and select Disable, select OK. You are now good to go! I reloaded the new Railink drivers off the Sager site and installed them and my card recognizes the internet fine upon reboot. Here's the microsoft link with the fix info...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821400/EN-US/
I believe this is the fix for a series of problems I have seen out here regarding graphics slow downs and choppy gameplay with the 9880 and perhaps the 9860. If you have any latency issues, try this... you can always turn it back on. When doing my research I used the Speakeasy speed test for my connection... I noticed that half way through the download part of the test, the stream would slow down 50%....this is not internet traffic... its this darn Bill Gates utility... you may have this issue even if you are using a hard lin internet connection but still have your wireless card enabled. Check out the speed test site.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
I love my Sager once again and I now have lost my buyer's remorse since I upgraded from the 5670....which I now hope sells on ebay... can I plug it since I did all this research?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MESE%3AIT&rd=1
I hope this post helps you all with this problem! I will try to find people with this issue and refer them to this posting... Thanks PCTorque for a great forum... I have learned so much.
Mike Kelly
Sager 9880 Notebook: 9880
Display: 17" WUXGA LCD (Glossy 1920
X 1200)
Dead Pixel Policy: 0 Dead pixel
policy
Processor: 3.4GHZ P4 w/2MB L2 cache &
EM64T(650)
Graphics Card: nVIDIA GeForce Go 6800
Ultra w/GDDR3
RAM: 1024MB 533DDR2 (2 x512)
Primary Hard Drive: 80GB 5400RPM SATA
Secondary Hard Drive: 80GB 5400 RPM
SATA
Bay 1 Media Drive: 8x DVD+- with
DVD+R DL(Lightscribe Enabled)
Bay 2 Media Drive: 8X DVD/24X10X24
CDRW Combo Drive
TV Tuner: No
Modem: 56K RJ11 Phone Modem
Network Card: 10/100/1000 NIC
Operating System: Windows XP Home
(+SP2 CD)
Raid: Hardware Raid 0 configured with
OS pre-install
Floppy Drive: External 3.5" Floppy
Drive
Battery: 12 Cell Smart Li-Ion Battery
Case: Basic Black business case
Extra AC Power Adapter: Spare AC
Power Adapter
Port Replicator: No
Wireless Network: Internal 802.11g
wireless
Software Bundle: No
Office Software: No
Warranty: 1 year warranty, lifetime
tech support
Extended Warranty(US only): 1 Year
Extension w/ Onsite
I just got my new Sager 9880 a couple weeks ago and was plagued with a problem that confused me from the start. While gaming and using the wireless Railink mini-pci card I would get a slow down and choppy laggy loading pauses while playing my game, America's army which now is basically UT2004. I wouldn't get the loading pauses while running through or playing the maps offline or if I used a Hardline cable cat5 cable connection, a USB adapter or a pcmcia card.. it only happened when I used the mini-pci internal wireless. I have the new nvidia 6800 ultra card and I thought at first it was some kind of pci power bottleneck or something... I was also plagued by a graphics slow down when the unit appeared to get hot while trying to research this. My research yesterday has led me to two conclusions that fixed my problems entirely and I want to pass it along to all of you. I was very close to calling Sager support yesterday and asking for an RMA# if they didn't have a quick answer... I'm glad I didn't because, this baby runs fantastic now... This is what you need to know...
1) The Battery is a power hog!! If you run the 9880 on battery power for any period of time the unit will want to recharge it when you plug it back in and it takes like 90 minutes to recharge. When you plug it in, the unit will lose a lot of its incoming power. If you try to use your video card and play any kind of game, you will have choppy slowed down gameplay, making the game laggy and impossible. Solution: Drop the battery.... they come out real easy using with a butter knife or a dime and can be put back in when the unit is idle using your fingernail to turn the screws only as tight as you need. Once 100% again the battery will not effect game play, but watch the charging levels...
2) This is a coup de gras (A French term for a signature death blow/one shot one kill solution to a problem) for the intermittent wireless/ choppy game play problem. Its not the Railink card, Its not a conflict with anything on your system, its not the drivers,its not your router, its not some sort of power glitch, its not your video card or its drivers or your RAID 0 setup. ITS FRIGGIN BILL GATES!! If you have any internet problems using the Railink mini-pci card where your internet runs choppy, loses connection or you have mild to choppy latency during gameplay or any type of streaming.... this is the fix! Windows Xp has a service running by default called Wireless Zero Configuration Utility. It conflicts with some wireless cards and causes lag and dropped internet. You only need to turn it off and you're good to go! As soon as I did, I was a fraggin' maniac!! the whole system ran smoother.
To kill the service.. go to Start/Settings/Control panel/Administration Tools/Services...scroll down to Wireless zero configuration utility and double click, Select STOP, then in Start up type...pulldown the menu and select Disable, select OK. You are now good to go! I reloaded the new Railink drivers off the Sager site and installed them and my card recognizes the internet fine upon reboot. Here's the microsoft link with the fix info...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821400/EN-US/
I believe this is the fix for a series of problems I have seen out here regarding graphics slow downs and choppy gameplay with the 9880 and perhaps the 9860. If you have any latency issues, try this... you can always turn it back on. When doing my research I used the Speakeasy speed test for my connection... I noticed that half way through the download part of the test, the stream would slow down 50%....this is not internet traffic... its this darn Bill Gates utility... you may have this issue even if you are using a hard lin internet connection but still have your wireless card enabled. Check out the speed test site.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
I love my Sager once again and I now have lost my buyer's remorse since I upgraded from the 5670....which I now hope sells on ebay... can I plug it since I did all this research?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MESE%3AIT&rd=1
I hope this post helps you all with this problem! I will try to find people with this issue and refer them to this posting... Thanks PCTorque for a great forum... I have learned so much.
Mike Kelly
Sager 9880 Notebook: 9880
Display: 17" WUXGA LCD (Glossy 1920
X 1200)
Dead Pixel Policy: 0 Dead pixel
policy
Processor: 3.4GHZ P4 w/2MB L2 cache &
EM64T(650)
Graphics Card: nVIDIA GeForce Go 6800
Ultra w/GDDR3
RAM: 1024MB 533DDR2 (2 x512)
Primary Hard Drive: 80GB 5400RPM SATA
Secondary Hard Drive: 80GB 5400 RPM
SATA
Bay 1 Media Drive: 8x DVD+- with
DVD+R DL(Lightscribe Enabled)
Bay 2 Media Drive: 8X DVD/24X10X24
CDRW Combo Drive
TV Tuner: No
Modem: 56K RJ11 Phone Modem
Network Card: 10/100/1000 NIC
Operating System: Windows XP Home
(+SP2 CD)
Raid: Hardware Raid 0 configured with
OS pre-install
Floppy Drive: External 3.5" Floppy
Drive
Battery: 12 Cell Smart Li-Ion Battery
Case: Basic Black business case
Extra AC Power Adapter: Spare AC
Power Adapter
Port Replicator: No
Wireless Network: Internal 802.11g
wireless
Software Bundle: No
Office Software: No
Warranty: 1 year warranty, lifetime
tech support
Extended Warranty(US only): 1 Year
Extension w/ Onsite
