Graphics card trouble

I've just recently reinstalled second life on my desktop computer, with an ati 9550 graphics card, and it feeds me an error saying that my graphics card drivers are not up to date. I updated the drivers and it still gives me the same error, the website says that it is supported and all, and i cannot find answers anywhere else. I am running Vista, so that very well may be the cause. Any and all help is much appreciated, thanks in advance.

Please, I've tryed everything i can think of and still no luck, is there something I can do to force the game to play? I know my video card is supported and i definitely have the latest drivers, is there something else I can do?

ATI isn't supported by SL. It never really was, but since Windlight it has been getting worse. I have an ATI, I run on the absolute minimum settings. If I log on at low times I get to enable shiny as a treat, lol

That's odd that you still can't just log in. My laptop is a piece of crap, but when I travel I always bring it and get that warning, but still get the option to log in. There was a new ATI driver released a few months ago. Maybe try and find the older drivers. This may be a conflict or something. Newer isn't always better.

Well, looks like I wont be playing second life for a while then... of course, until I can round up enough cash for some ridiculous video card...

ATI will work with SL, but be sure you do a clean install.

Google "Driver Cleaner Pro", (free program), and follow the instructions. Remove any trace of any ATI program then reboot in the SAFE MODE. This will turn off unnecessary services and virus software.

Install the new drivers, I have had the best luck with 7.12, and do not install the Cataylist Control Center. (Makes a mess of things).

DO NOT let Windows install the drivers, be sure the installation is done by the ATI software.

Reboot, and give it a shot. I suggest at the login screen, before logging in, hit Ctrl P and put all of your graphic settings to the lowest. This will give you the best chance for a smooth startup.

Once in world, change your graphics settings gradually, noting each
result, in case you need to change it back.

BTW, I gave up on ATI and went to Nvidia, works quite well.

/me didnt see the vista part, but the same proceedure should work

ati is mismanaged and has poor support

get a geforce 7600gt, its faster than you have now and cheaper to boot + its not dedicated to screwball software support (like 15 bit color)

I don't know if this will work but maybe setting the NoHardwareProbe debug setting to true will help.

if you can log in once the magic "no probe" option is set to true in the settings.xml file

and thus has no effect afterwards

I have used a Radeon 1600Pro, a Radeon 1950Pro and the built in Radeon HD3200 in my current mobo and have had zero issues with any of them in SL.... The only problems I ever had was the RC viewer a while back having black lines in the sky... That was not ATI's fault as LL fixed it.


Also ATI IS supported by SL..... http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php

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There are just as many "problems" with Nvidia cards as there is with ATI's... I also use a Nvidia GF5500 and 6100 also with no problems....

Maybe it is not the vid card.....

It's not so much the cards as it's the drivers put out by the manufacturers with OpenGL support. At the moment nVidia seems to have the advantage........who knows what the future holds.

My guess is ATI got in bed with Microsoft and DirectX........it will take time to get out of that big bed I guess.

they are btw, and i dont see it changing within the next gen

histoicly ati has always had some form of issue with open GL, in the early days they even made their own 3d interface simmilar to 3dfx glide, then started doing the nasty with directX

(which if you didnt know directX is a old half assed patch to windows 95 to circumvent the windows kernel to improve performance to games by re-allowing direct access to hardware resources, like dos did, if it didnt exist windows games would be just now running like a N64
i remeber installing 95 on my computer at the time and my 386 out ran my pentium 100mhz)

Try the Omega Drivers for ATI - www.omegadrivers.net

I've used a Radeon 9600 for almost 3 years with pretty good results.

P2

To be specific, DirectX was a method of providing a consistant API set across all Windows platforms for games and other applications to use.

Before DirectX, games would require specific graphics cards. This was due to a lack of a common API that could be used, thus requiring games to be written for specific cards.

Also, about the direct hardware access thing, you're thinking of NT. Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME all allowed for direct hardware access, mostly because they are essentially MS-DOS with a pretty(-ish) shell.

Windows NT removed direct hardware access back in 1993-ish, and instead replaced it with the HAL. This was for stability and security reasons (you don't want software accessing hardware directly in most cases. It leads to problems).

Also, I shudder at the thought of Win95 on a 386. It ran pretty good on Pentium's, and it ran decently on 486's. Never got up the nerve to try on a 386, though. It was the minimum processor requirement, even.

Peggy: ATI and MS aren't really in bed. ATI actually has pretty alright support for Linux, which is, as we all know, OpenGL. No DirectX there.

well i know the microsoft version of that story, but originally in windows 95 you could not directly access the hardware, it went thu a hardware manager, windows 95 was supota be the unifing layer, but since it did it all in software it sucked, but your right the way ppl got around it was to just continue using dos access with a pushbutton frontend (look at first edition quake disk's for an example)



and i wasnt running it on a 386, i had dos on that, i was saying my 100mhz pentium ran slower than my 386 with 95 pre direct X in windows based games

There's no "Microsoft version" so much as the "Writing games sucked without a common API set" story. It just so happens that Microsofts version of the story is the way that it happened.

Windows 95 kinda had memory protection, but...not really. You know how if one program crashed, the entire system had a tendancy to become unstable? Yeah, there you go. Reading on the subject: http://everything2.com/e2node/Windows%25209x%2520does%2520not%2520have%2520true%2520memory%2520protection

But yes, like I said, there was no standard API set, which is where DirectX came in. It does allow for hardware acceleration, of course, but it's not required for hardware acceleration (although it makes it much easier than trying to interface directly with the hardware).

As far as your 386 being faster...something was seriously wrong with your Pentium machine, either at the hardware level or software level. Pentium's were gobs faster than 386's when operating properly.

oh here we go again

quit being a argumentative fucktard

a dos game running on a 386 was faster than a non direct X windows game on the hardware of the time

offically done

Why do you insist on name calling? Let's be adults here.

I don't doubt that the game on your 386 ran faster than the game on your Pentium. My point was that your Pentium must have had a serious problem if it was so much slower (reason being, a DOS game running under 95 had the same hardware access as a DOS game running under DOS).

I don't doubt your story, I'm just telling you why.

EDIT: Unless it wasn't the same game, in which case your comparison makes absolutely no sense. It'd be like saying "Oh, well, Wolf3D ran great on my 486, but Crysis runs horribly on my P4." (Ignoring the GPU, of course, since GPU's back in the Pentium Classic/MMX days were weak to say the least).

LA LA LA i cant hear you

i really like this ignore list thing

You sure you're an adult?

EDIT: Just as well you have me on ignore. You're the most childish person I've met in a long time. And this is the Internet, so it says a lot.