SL saying video card driver update needed to run

"Second Life is unable to run because your video card drivers are out of date or unsuported"

I keep getting this message on attempting to start SL. I'm running a nvidia Geforce 7900 and according to the nvidia website i have the latest drivers... Is something wrong with the driver install do you think? I can't imagine SL is broken on current nvidia drivers.

Any tips appreciated.

Nvidia Geforce 7900 GT/GTO
Driver date: 5/16/2008
Driver Version: 6.14.11.7519

The drivers you say you have don't actualy match any drivers I can see on the NVidia website.

Try using this tool on there site to find your drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

Or if you tell me what operating system you have, I could find them for you.

Windows doesn't do the decimals correctly. What i have installed is 175.19 which is the last 5 digits windows gave me. I think nvidia just lists the last few digits while windows shows the whole thing for versions 6.14.11.7519 ---> 6141 175.19

From nVidia's website on hints and tips for installing drivers:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/driver_installation_hints.html

And from my experience.......uninstall all old drivers before installing new ones.

I don't know what operating system you are using but it you are using Vista 32 bit, try the driver I'm using for my 8600 GT. Your card is listed as supported. The driver version is 169.25.......it's listed in the archive for Vista 32 bit.

By the way using the automated scanner at nVidia's site it says I should be using 175.19 too. But, as long as my current driver works I'm not changing.

Its XP and i had to update the driver because the card was crashing the computer without the updated drivers. I guess if i really have to i can go back to the old drivers, but i would really rather not.

Hi BBen, welcome to the forums!

I know of two reasons why SL gives this message:

1. You did not uninstall the old drivers before installing the new ones. Uninstall both SL and the video driver, delete SL's Application Data directory, run a registry cleaner if you have one (there are also programs that specifically clean up after uninstalled drivers, but I forget what they're called), reboot. Then install the new driver, and then SL.

2. You changed a 3D graphics parameter (using Nvidia's driver tool) that SL depends on. Evidently some driver parameters can fool SL into thinking the card doesn't support what SL needs. I changed a video buffer bit depth once accidently to 16 instead of 32, and got this same message until I changed it back.

Good luck!
.

Thanks everyone for your help. It was indeed because i hadn't uninstalled the drivers before upgrading... I had upgraded several times before without doing the uninstall and SL worked fine through it... So i didn't think that was what it was, but it indeed turned out to be that.

Thankyou

That was very useful info! As it turns out SL didnt like my "adjustments" to my card. Reset to default and viola! Thanks! Glad the forums were helpful.