Changed to Geforce4 4600...game crashes now

I had been running Secondlife with a Geforce4 MX 440 with no problems (other than slowww graphics). I just replaced that with a Geforce 4 4600 and the new 43.45 drivers from Nvidia and the game now crashes just after the game connects. No other changes have occurred. Bah!

Try uninstall and reinstall. Charlie had a similar problem (other direction though!) and that fixed it.

I'll give it a try tomorrow, thanks.

Hi Ama, did you mean he should uninstall and reinstall his video card or the game?

I think you mean the game

See yah

Peter

Yeah re-read and realized I wasn't clear. I meant the game, not the card. Uninstall and then reinstall the SL client.

Well, I uninstalled and reinstalled the client, with no effect. On the off chance that version 43.45 of the nVidia drivers might need Direct X 9.0a, I tried upgrading that to see if that helped...it didn't. The only thing I can think of is that the driver/card combination is incompatible with Second Life, although I haven't tried the MX440 with this driver in this machine yet.

The Geforce 4 4600 came out of another system. I was unable to connect successfully with that system also with that card When replaced with a Geforce FX 5800 Ultra it still doesn't work. So now I have two systems that will not connect/run Second Life.

System 1 Specs:
(this one worked with a Geforce 4 MX440)
Windows XP Pro
Geforce 4 4600
AMD XP 1900+
Soundblaster Live 5.1
768 mb ram

System 2 Specs:
(this system has never been able to run 2ndLife)
Windows XP Pro
Geforce FX 5800 Ultra
AMD XP 3000+
Soundblaster Audigy 2
1 gig ram

My textures didn't work right with the 43.45 nvidia drivers, but the game did run. The 41.09s work fine though.


Wish I could help you. What is the exact error message you are getting? Is it a windows error or a SL error? Or no error? When is it crashing? Before you can enter log in information or later?

...but no problems here. I hate when people say that to me though, so I"ll add that I did originally have problems with my card (if you mean the Vidtek one) due to windows file system protection.

WinXP will not allow you to overwrite files (without you agreeing to a dialog) that manipulate the OS or hardware unless those files are signed as being MS Compatible and so on. MS does put out drivers for XP for these cards, but when I used them, I had a LOT of trouble. How MS actually rewrites these files is they factor out anything not needed to actually get the card to run (which "may cause stability issues", but this has been noted to have the effect of removing subtle features, which can actually break things in high-end usage.

I then went to the nVidia site, grabbed the latest drivers, which when I installed gave me the warning, "these files are not MS compatible signed etc. etc. it is not recommended that you install these files do you wish to go ahead" and so on. You agree, and then the "real" drivers install. Since, I have never had a problem. If you have not seen this message anywhere during your install, then you may be using the MS flavor nVidia drivers and not the nVidia flavor nVidia drivers.

Oh btw you probably know this of course but always uninstall all nVidia drivers before reinstalling new ones, never just overwrite an installation.

Another suggestion, play with color depth in your display settings. Many games (NwN, EQ, AO), will not function correctly unless at a specific color depth (EQ uses 16, NwN 32 for example). The effect of having the wrong depth setting is crashing on connect/first render.

It's a longshot and may not be your issue but I figured I'd share that in the national interest.

As far as I can tell, all the drivers are 43.45 vintage...I did get the warning. I can try the bit-depth, although Nvidia cards are optimized for 32 bit and see what happens. I can also try uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers in case they are corrupted in some way.

I had a problem getting in the game with those drivers. the 43.revision ones.. I Changed aback to the 41.09 and I could enter the game fine. So you might want to try going to the site and getting the older ones. The new ones dont really do that much anyway. Hope this helps. -Sam

When I moved back to the 41.09 drivers on my older system, that fixed the crashes and now I can connect fine. Unfortunately I broke the rule that says to only change one thing at a time and I had upgraded 2ndLife also, so I am not absolutely sure the drivers were the problem, but it is very likely.

I upgraded to the newer version of 2ndlife on my other system with the 43.45 drivers, and that will still not connect without crashing, so it is probably the drivers, although this is a different video card. Unfortunately, 41.09 won't support the GF FX Ultra, so I'm stuck there.

Anyway thanks to everyone for their help.