Virtual PCs and Second Life

I'm really hoping someone can answer this.

I've have absolutely had it with Vista...but not sure I'm ready to blow it away completely, because I'm not sure of the hardware compatabilities between XP and Vista. I purchased an OEM copy of XP Pro just in case I decided to remove Vista completely, but then I found information on VPC.

Has anyone tried running SL on a VPC? Is it slower? Does it work at all?

ok so i havent tried but i would guess that the virtualisation will not present a suitable graphics interface

Can you make your XP dual boot with your Vista?

I haven't tried anything yet. I guessing I'm exploring my options.

Now, on my daughter's Vista PC, I did create a dual boot, and immediately had issues - SL didn't see the...oh hell, it was either the network card, or the graphics, I can't remember which (this was last year, I barely remember yesterday). I believe she finally ended up running SL under Vista rather unsatisfactorily, and that PC was lost in our house fire (no big deal there, trust me).

I was toying with several ideas: Dual boot, VPC, or a second hard drive, if I have space in the box, that would hold XP and SL, but not sure how that would work.

To my knowledge and from my own experience virtual machines do not work with SL as there is no 3D hardware virtualization. I have done several searches on here and on the web in general and no one can get it to work and there are some really great explanations available on the web as to why it can't be done.

What is the problem with Vista? SL runs fine for me on it.

Thanks. I guess that's what I didn't want but needed to hear.

OK, before this gets turned into a thread about how Vista's working for everyone, the problem isn't Vista.

The problem is the dreaded nvlddmkm file that gets installed everytime I update my nVidia drivers. It's crashed fairly frequently in the past, but this morning it crashed no less than 10 times in an hour.

So, I really need to find another solution.

One problem I had on a computer that came with Vista and I wanted to load XP: The hard drives were SATA enabled and my XP install did not have those drivers. The drivers are needed at the beginning of the install process so slip-streaming them into the install does not work. I found a set of instructions for hooking up an old floppy drive and having them there, but could not get that to work either. I finally ended up going into the bios settings and disablign the SATA in order to get the XP to load.

Good to know. I'm also considering a dual boot to XP on my machine, but some research indicates that the driver issue may somehow be heat related, or a power supply that isn't strong enough (which may actually be the case) but I don't understand how hardware issues such as these could affect a software driver.

In this thread about this nvlddmkm problem, http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381&st=40 , one person reports that disabling Windows Defender solved the problem. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381&st=40# .

I mention this because it's such an easy thing to try if you are using Windows Defender.

Thanks Suezanne, I'll try that tonight, along with turning aero off again (it got turned back on when I did a rollback).

At this point, I'll even try selling my first born.

Tryed this yesterday with VMware so I could try and stream sl to the net, failed the vm video driver will not let me set it above 16bit color and sl needs 32bit. so if some how or way you can figure that out I suspect it would work

Its not Windows Defender. There were a gillion anecdotal, but failed solutions to this problem in those nvidia threads.

The cause of the nvlddmkm.sys error is old version of that file returning due to corrupted driver file or from Windows Update, due to a bad Nvidia driver in the first place. Best to delete the driver and then change windows update to tell you before it installs anything. Then you can tell windiows update to HIDE the nvidia driver when it is offered to you after the reboot. Then use driver clean up tool to remove nvidia completely and reinstall the latest driver. If that does not solve it, then it will turn out to be either bad ram, motherboard, display adapter or processor. With most warranties this may require trial and error and a complete factory reinstall of windows.


.....and temporarily turn off any security software on the computer before doing those driver reinstalls.

I agree with Cristalle....what is wrong? I been running the 32 bit version of Vista Pro for over a year even before SL had any kind of Visa support and have had not problems with it exception the initial learning curve of trying to find what I am looking for. However, the machine I am running it on was specifically built to SL specifications as of May of 2007.

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Vista? Updated all your device drivers including graphics card? Uninstalled and reinstalled SL?

Just my two cents worth.

/me blinks

This is an extremely well-documented driver error. Neither the MS team, nor the nVidia team have stepped up to the plate to resolve it. After several hours of research, it is safe to say that no individual has solved it. It will take the cooperation of MS and nVidia working together to resolve it. Thousands of people are experiencing the problem, so it's not just me.

Uninstalling and reinstalling SL, graphics card, device drivers...all been done. I'm not uninstalling and reinstalling Vista. If I uninstall it, I'm blowing it away.

Thousands of people WERE having the error. Most of those people, myself included, already have solved it.

As I posted, there are two issues. one was the bad Nvidia and ATI drivers in the past....3-4 or so official releases ago and previous to that and the other cause was hardware revisions that had problems. The more recent hardware that came out starting about a year and a half ago, and the new processors---had issues and these components have been revised.

For a while SL would not run on the newer hardware, but that problem too is in the past.

The point is it has been fixed---but not for you or others yet. Unfortunatly there is much incorrect info out there and the computer and component companies are not helpful or honest about it. It not Microsoft/Vista at all---what they did was to create a way to avoid most display error bluescreens by developing the Timeout and Recovery process. There was also some changes they had to make in Vista to address a memory use error, which they fixed a long time agp. The largest blame goes to Nvidia, ATI and Intel for releasing hardware and drivers that were not yet working properly and various application companies, dragging their feet to keep up with Vista changes. It was easy to blame MS, to try to get themselves off the hook.

On the hardware side of things, a lot of people are not aware that around 2-3 years ago new manufacturing techniques were adopted in making these newer components. The actual silicon stratum was changed. The companies keep their mouths shut on this due to their liability. They quietly revised their hardware and the RMA process fixed many of the nvlddmkm errors that were not solved even by the new drivers. They aren't about to admit they screwed up so don;t bother looking for ther admission of this.

Unfortunately systems with older revisons are still in the pipeline. People who do not use graphics intensive programs may not ever get those errors. Another thing about this problem is that once it starts there is some fundamental damage that happens to the components. That is why people would report they had it fixed and then a month later it returns and why so many people began having overheating problems as well and got sidetracked thinking it was the overheating that caused it.

You can keep suffering or you can do the painful thing return your computer and have all components replaced till it is solved and then reinstall windows and take the other steps I mentioned regarding the prevention of old driver files from getting back in there. I had to send my system back mulitple times.

What I did the last time I sent my computer back, was to buy a new hard drive from them with Windows factory installed on it, and keep my old hard drive so I could plug it in as a second drive to transfer my personal data over to the new drive.

I can tell you that Dell and Alienware have long since fixed the hardware related problems contributing to this, I can't speak for the other computer manufacturers, but don't expect them to openly admit the year of hell their customers went through was due to faulty hardware as well as faulty drivers.

I just removed Vista this weekend and replaced it with XP. I have had nothing but problems with Vista from day one.. And this is a new machine (high end) that was built with Vista in mind.. But Vista locks up, crashes, and to be honest runs very slow. It is slow to boot, slow to shut down, hogs all available ram and rankes right up there with OS2 or windows 3.0 as one of Microsofts greater boondogles.

(and yes I tried every trick and "fix" out there, shutting down Aero, Defender, etc.. Performance was still very sub par)

I just bought a new 500 gig hard drive ($87 @ Best Buy) and put XP on that.. I left the Vista drive in place.. I can switch boot drives in Bios so can go back to Vista if they every get around to fixing it. Until then I will be most happy running my nice stable XP pro..

By the way, my fresh install of XP just blows away Vista in performance.. FPS, load speed, start up/shutdown, everything. XP just blazes compared to Vista. I feel like a fool for ordering Vista on my new machine instead of XP. I will be wiser next time.

Probably not, Microsoft OS's are picky about which OS is on the first partition, and my guess is XP and Vista both want the same partition.


http://www.secondscripter.com

the factory loaded Vista comes with all sorts of "extras" that totally blow chunks for use with SL.

I bought a Vista stand alone from Staples and reformatted my puter with it. Now SL runs like a champ!

Honeybear are you talking about Microsoft's Virtual PC? I don't see why that wouldn't work with Second Life, it uses your existing hardware to create the virtual machine but it is resource hungry, you'd have to check you have enough ram for a start, you'll need more than you would for a standard OS install for it to function correctly.

It's a free download anyway, what's the worst that can happen?

yes they can be dual booted

yes

I have to do something. I opened the box, blew it out, turned it on, shut down Aero, shut down Defender, put the system on Windows classic, and was able to be in SL for 15 minutes before the crashing began again. My husband is picking up a hard drive for me for me tomorrow and I'll load XP on it and dual boot.

Does anyone know if I can put XP on the partition on my computer called E:\? It's 335gb, and was there when I got the computer.