SL can't work with ATI Radeon Xpress 200m even after driver update.

I searched diligently for a fix for this before i posted, but i ran SL on another computer normally and went to install it on my laptop. When i try to run SL i get a message stating that "Second Life cannot run because your video drivers are out of date or unsupported." So i updated my video driver via the web to no avail. If it's an "unsupported driver" issue, will it just be impossible for me to run the program? Any help would be appreciated.

I have your same problem. SL can't even start. It opens and immediately crashes before the login screen. I have vista and a ati radeaon xpress 200m graphics card. Hopefully you have Windows xp and not vista so you can use those non official ati drivers that reportedly work for second life.

I have the same with an ATI hd3650 card, what are those unofficial drivers ?

I have the same problem ive updated my driver at least 4 times each time it doesnt help. It gets to the screen and crashes. I havent even been able to get into the world yet.I also have a ATI Radeon Xpress 200 M graphics card strangely though it doesnt meet the minimum requirements.

So, what do you mean when you say that you "updated them via the web"? Where did you get the updated drivers?

im getting a similar message. i assume its due to the fact my PC is pretty basic. Do i need to be running a fairly high spec PC to be able to use second life? or is it as simple as updating the grapics card?

It's estimated that about 10% of commercial PC's on the market today can support Secondlife to the levels that they intended. With that said it is also clearly stated in many posts that ATI cards are also no longer supported by the grid any more. Having an ATI myself, and also a 4yo mobo, the option really is to buy a new computer. Sad but true, can I afford a new PC just to play SL, not a chance. So far I can dodge Windlight, but when the shadow engine comes online we are all doomed. I will buy a new PC then. I fail to see the point in updating myself when it will just be obscelete by the time I actually pay off the computer bill. You can try the standard preferences as well. Hit CTRL P in the boot screen, clear your cache, and set your slider to the absolute minimums.

As for the nVidia vs ATI, I don't know what factors in, but ATI really is useless as a company in my opinion. Of course I just bought that card last year, unfortunately I didn't realize it was also useless as well.

As for hacked ATI drivers, please share, the current ones crash non stop on me, even with a draw distance under 100m.

deleted message.

It's not an act of Congress to get into SL. It''s more like an act of doing some shopping for a midrange computer than has better than bargain basement graphics and more than 1 gig of RAM (for XP.......2 gigs for Vista). A PC around $500 should be farily easy to find (you probably won't need a monitor since you already have one..........so you can save there too). A laptop capable of running SL will cost closer to $1000.........mostly due to the laptop needing a graphics card instead of an onboard graphics accelerater.

That $299 E-Machine or $400 laptop will probably not do it. And, as someone already pointed out, a 4 year old computer will likely be way below capable.

if you biuld your own you can even get away with it in the 2-300$ range, and have quite decent performance, half of a commercial computers cost is the software on it, not saying go pirate your OS, but if you have a full licenced version theres a couple hundered saved right there

if not you could use something like linux, Ubuntu is what i use, and its actually just as easy to install and manage as XP, easier than vista

i was able to gut and rebiuld my wife;s desktop, reusing the old dvdr, hard disk (keyboard mouse and monitor) for 197$ + shipping ... and its a dual core 2.6 ghz, geforce 8600GTS 2gb of 800mhz dual channel ram, and its got room to breathe for another 200$ upgrade in a year or 2

You are a little off subject here.... The problem of the guy which started the topic (and my problem too) is that you can't even get to the login screen with Ati cards equipped with the latest drivers. The problem is not about a pc getting old : I can play Mass Effect, assassin's creed, and I can't do SL ?
My card (hd3650) is quite common, I can't see why it's unsupported....

For information on what cards are supported, look at the minimum and recommended standards, here:

http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php

Also check the WIKI page for graphics cards, which has links for the latest drivers:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Graphics_Cards

AIT is still supported just fine for SL, as long as you aren't trying to use an outmoded or low-end card. But I don't see the OP's "ATI Radeon Xpress 200 M graphics card" anywhere in the minimum or recommended standards. So I would guess it isn't supported. Time to upgrade.

At the bottom of the System requirements page is this footnote:

"The following cards have not been tested with Second Life, and compatibility is not certain:

NVIDIA cards that report as Quadro
ATI cards that report as RADEON IGP or RADEON XPRESS"

So it looks like the OP does have an unsupported video card - one LL hasn't tested the application against.

Also look here:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/15/typical-frame-rate-performance-by-graphics-cardgpu/

In the comparison of graphics card frame rates when running SL, this test, run in November 2007, showed the ATI Radeon XPRESS as getting an abyssmal 3 to 7 FPS performance. The only ATI card that was rated worse than that was the ATI Rage 128, at about 1 FPS. The client has gotten even more demanding since 2007, so some low-end cards that marginally worked in 2007 will no longer work at all.

So yeah. You want to run SL, you need a far better card than that old one that you have now. You can proably pick up a used, but newer model, Nvidia or ATI card at the Goodwill for 40 bucks or so that could run circles around that old ATI card.

There are some laptop video cards that run SL quite well. But if your laptop was set up for such a low-end card, your power supply capability may limit what you can do in terms of an upgrade. Honestly, if you really want to run SL on a laptop, you need a gaming-quality laptop, and those tend to be some of the most expensive ones out there.

I have been in SL over a year and a half running an ATI Mobility Radeon Express 200.

Granted performance is not stellar, Ceera's link to the SL blog post does give a good indication of performance expected.

Problem I have always had is updating the drivers.
I'm using a Toshiba Satellite laptop and its not recognised by the ATI Catalyst installer programs. The way round this I found was to install the drivers manually as described in this post.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=258626

Real fun that you have to fail an installation to actually get an install

"2. Double-click the installer and let the installation fail - all we needed to do was extract the files.|

Well it looks like you've answered my first thread right here. I too have the ATI Radeon Xpress 200m graphics card which I have tried to update to the latest driver version from the AMD website and, although download and installation are successful, it doesn't update the card at all! I do recall reading somewhere that quite often you can still play SL even when graphics card is not on the official supported list, presumably this is not the case at all! My laptop (which cost £400 GBP - $800 US Dollars) and is less than a year old, is obviously just not good enough for such a sophisticated game. Bring back good old TSO I say, there was nothing wrong with that game and I'm not bothered about 3D. Oh well, will have to go back to reading books I guess

The Windows driver that lists the card as an Xpress series card works but the updated drivers from ATI fail be cause it lists the card as a 200M.

Same card, older drivers, works fine, newer drivers is the suck for SL.

Pretty stupid in my opinion.

I wonder how hard it would be to add the exception to the SL launcher.

so is rehashing a year old thread