bought new video card...now SL doesn't load...

What should I do to fix this problem? I bought a ATI Radeon 7500. Works great for everything but SL. SL won't even open. So my question is, it says that my video drivers are not installed properly, or out dated. But it works with World of Warcraft. I don't understand how I can get SL to work if its not seeing that I have upgraded my video card. Any suggestions or help is greatly appreciated. Thanks...

Take it back and get something newer. That card is below the minimum requirements for SL.

Unfortuneately it is below the specs to run the current viewer. However it should run the older pre-windlight viewer. Try Boy Lanes cool viewer (pre-windlight version) and see if that helps: http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/solid

Radeon 7500 cards *are* supported in the 1.22 viewer and should run. But probably pretty slow (Milla, look in gpu_table.txt).

Your best bets are either CV as mentioned (v1.19)
http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/solid

or Nicholaz Old School (v1.1
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com

It's still below the minimum requirements for SL.

The Windows XP drivers haven't been updated since 2006, and as far as I can tell, there are no Windows Vista drivers for it. One of those may be the source of your problems.

Even if you can get a pre-Windlight version of SL to run on it, it's one of the worst cards you can possibly use.

Take it back and get something better.

ok, so for safe measure, I downloaded both your suggestions Boy. However, I must be doing something wrong. It still doesn't work. This is the message I get when I try to open SL.....SL is unable to run because your video card drivers are out of date or unsupported. Please make sure you have the latest video drivers installed.

Ok, I do. The real question is, what do I do now? I'm not completely sure I installed it right to begin with. But I gave it a try. Any other suggestions?

I would also recommend returning it if you can ATI in general have huge issues with SL, trust me, I have one. Even lower nVidia cards will run far better than higher ATI cards. I run the 'Oldschool' viewer, but my PC is old, and a piece of crap. If you have a decent setp and a receipt to return the card, I would so do it.

For the Oldschool, you need to download the old client v.18 I think, and delete the start.exe files and replace them with the Oldschool ones. Then drag a copy to your desktop, you will get a nonstop, 'update your client' error indefinately, but it should run. I Have 128 megs on this and it runs, and that is utter crap in SL standards.

Aww that sucks Michelle. Good luck with your card. I hope you are able to get one that will run SL for you.

If you are going to use that card, then definitely a non Windlight Viewer may be for you. You can try Nicholaz' Old School, which doesn't have Voice, or his BE (Bleeding Edge) which does. I've used them both and the worked well with my Radeon X300. You can also use Boy's Cool Viewer 1.19.5, which is what I am using now. it seems a bit quicker than the BE, and has a few more goodies in it.

Good luck with that.

I have a R8500 in an older XP still and it works with SL. Nothing spectacular but it works. I think the latest driver for that card is Catalyst 6.11. It's probably the same as with your R7500. You should be able to find the drivers at Guru3D or similar.

Update, here's a link: http://downloads.guru3d.com/ATI-Catalyst-6.11-Display-Driver-(32-bit)-download-1518.html

If you have a chance to return/exchange it I would recommend that also. A good working low end card these days is for instance a NVidia 8600GT. Your problem is likely you have only an AGP slot, so this quite limits your choice.

OK, so I understand getting that message if one's card is actually out of date - i just installed a GeForce 9600GT and I'm getting EXACTLY the same error. SL client will not even open. Any suggestions? I'm won't get anywhere with LL as I have a basic account

Try the following:
1) Uninstall SL
2) Delete your user settings folder in C:\Documents and Settings\<you>\Application Data\SecondLife\
3) Download the latest NVidia driver if you don't have already. That should be 182.50 (or 185.81 if you want to use the beta).
4) Uninstall your graphics driver.
5) Reboot (don't install the VGA driver it automaticallu offers)
6) Run Driver Sweeper you can find here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/Driver-Sweeper-beta-2.0.0-download-2186.html and delete all traces from any ATI or Nvidia driver.
7) Reboot again (don't install the VGA driver it automatically offers)
Install the Nvidia driver, reboot and make sure all works properly.
9) Install SL again.

Just a thought, are you using the drivers from the ATI/nVidia site or using the in-built windows ones? If you allowed windows to install default drivers for your card it will not support OpenGL and you will get this message?

If not then just a quick trawl of the web and it appears you are not alone. The general fix always comes down to drivers.

Quote "Yes I found the solution, but it was not related to the card it was a driver problem. Before I installed the 8800 GTS, I had an asus card, and the original nvidia drivers + some special asus drivers were installed on my machine. I didn't notice these special asus drivers, and when I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest nvidia drivers, the problem occurred. I found out about the special drivers by chance, removed them, reinstalled everything, and now everything works fine."

So have a good clear out of your current drivers and re-install a clean set and, fingers crossed you should be up and running...

Thanks! Will try that fix when time allows; it might not actually be a driver issue though - had a power surge, replaced power supply, found melted resistors on the graphics card, so now I have this one. I'm -hoping- this is all I need to do, and it's simply a driver issue... cuz there's still EVERYTHING else that might need replaced =/

Added a registry clean and a defrag to those instructions, and results are positve! Thanks for yer help, SL is running smoothly with no errors... in Windows anyway LOL Thanks again!