TF2 Graphics Settings

[Manana]

Hi,
Recently, I fixed my laptop and I install tf2 on it. I got on and much to my dismay, it lagged like the dickens. So, after some graphical tweaking and lowering; the game runs great. My graphics are at the absolute low. I have one problem though. The soldier's rockets, for instance, do not give off that smoke trail and they o not glow blue/red when critical (making it difficult to dodge) and the demo's bombs do not glow when crit either. Does anyone know what can be done to fix this or what section of the graphics is controlling this?

Thanks in advance,
Manana

 

[Volcom]

system specs?

 

[Atten]

It sounds to me like particles are set to off or way way way down. Are there any other types of smoke showing up?

 

[Manana]

To answer your questions, laptop is a toshiba satellite; 2.0 GHz processor, ATI radeon 6400 graphics/video card, and the tf2 setings are low or off for everything.
@Atten: I cannot see smoke, blood, body bits or kritz energy.

 

[jaxory]

Have you tried lowering your DirectX level at all, say to 8.

-dxlevel 80

in the launch options iirc.

 

[Kibo]

raise each of your settings by one level, and see what happens. then just keep altering it till you get what you want is my best bet.