Video Card Update

I am not even sure I am posting in the right place, so please I apologize up front if I am not.

I have an ATI Radeon 9200 Vid card. I logged in yesterday with no problem, but only stayed for a minute. Today and for the duration prior to yesterday for a few months, I have gotten the:

"Second life is unable to run because your video card drivers did not install properly, are out of date, or are for unsupported hardware. Please make sure... yadda yadda, yadda..."

I have done the following:

1) Uninstalled and reinstalled SL
2) Updated drivers (at which point I was told I had the most up to date drivers
3) Attempted to follow the "turn off" venture for the Catalyst in my ATI control panel, but can not for the life of me find the 'off switch" in my CP. Maybe I am not looking for it in the right place.

I am very frustrated and wondered if anyone would be willing to help me through this.

I thank you in advance (and yes reading through some of the individuals with similar issues is like reading Greek and cannot find one that I am adapt to following that pertains to my situation.) Thank you!

Shayde

There are many problems specific to ATI cards, but this sounds like the more general issue that SL is very picky about driver installs. It checks the registry for inconsistent information about your video driver, so if you installed new drivers at any time without first *un*installing the previous driver, you can get this message because the initial driver left kruft behind it.

Solution: first thing to try is uninstalling your video driver, then reinstalling. Even better: after you've uninstalled, run a registry cleaner like "Driver Cleaner", THEN install the up-to-date drivers.

Good luck!
.

what is the best way to uninstall a driver? Through Device Manager?

The best way to uninstall a driver is via "add remove" (if XP) or "programs" > "programs and features" (if Vista). Both accessed through your control panel.

I've made the assumption you are using a Windows machine.

There are third party driver removal programs available. I, personally, don't use them but others swear by them.

And, another thing you might be experiencing is that your card is a new one. The SL program that checks for compatible devices is probably a few weeks or a month or so behind all the new hardware devices available. If there's a way to ignore or okay away from the error do it........SL should load for you.

About 3 or 4 months ago I had my video card fail on me and during the time it took me to get a replacement card I used my onboard Intell chipset graphics accelerator............I got the message too. I simply closed the error message or said okay and loaded SL anyway. Of course I had to reset all my graphics in preferrences and experienced low quality graphics for the couple weeks it took to get my new card but SL worked.

The problem is persisting even after doing what you suggested. I uninstalled and then ran my Driver Cleaner on this and reinstalling the drivers.

The odd thing about this is that I have not had this problem before. I was able to log in for a short time yesterday (I didn't stay long) and then all of a sudden now I can't? I haven't changed hardware or done anything other than use my system for normal things, so I am baffled.

My Video card is not new, in fact, I run 3 monitors on 2 different cards. My Radeon is actually the newest one and again, never had a problem in the past until just now.

I have submitted a ticket, but truly not sure how or when they will get back to me, so anyone with any additional insight on this issue, I would appreciate it.

Thank you!

You could try logging into a different sim, logging in as a different account, clearing cache and also jettisoning the folder in AppData after saving what you need from it or just moving/renaming it.

You could try -noprobe.

Hi,

That card should run SL okish. Sounds like a driver issue.

First, go to http://www.ati.com and download the latest driver for your card (it's not the latest catalyst driver, as the 9300 is not supported any longer).

Next, download and run http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745 Driver Cleaner. This will remove your ATI drivers completely.

Now reinstall the ATI driver.

Gomez

Which drivers are you using? Instead of the newest ones, try older ones. Are you running Vista or XP? It doesn't look like ATI even has Vista drivers and the XP drivers are from 2006.

Radeon 9200? Holy cats that's bad. Anyway, I'd try older drivers. Starting with 8.12.

I have the Radeon 9200 Mobility in my old laptop so I know it can run SL, and that SL supports it. If it worked yesterday and gives a video driver error today, and you haven't manually changed anything with the video driver, I'd really suspect SL had a botched shutdown.

Need to make sure that after you uninstall SL, that you manually go in and delete the whole Second Life folder from C:\Documents and Settings\*name*\Application Data\ after you save any chat or system logs you might want to keep from inside it. Also make sure the folder where you had SL installed to is completely removed. The hidden data that doesn't get removed by the uninstall routine MAY be hidden corrupted data, which would pollute any new install of SL unless it's removed before reinstalling SL.