Error caused by video device driver (or not)

I used to run SL on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with an AMD Athlon 1.3 GHz CPU (forgot the CPU model #, and AMD apparently doesn't print that on the chip itself). It ran fine except for the occasional crash, when it would pop up the SL crash logger tool and send a report to LL.

Then I bought Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and went through a nightmarish upgrade process to get my system up to par for the game, starting with a CPU upgrade that resulted in a system that wouldn't go through POST...

I ended up with an almost completely different system.

New 450-watt power supply, new Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 motherboard, new Athlon 64 2.0 GHz CPU, and a complete reinstall of Windows XP on a different hard drive.

I reinstalled Second Life, and it started crashing HARD, freezing the entire system and blacking out the screen.

The major component that I hadn't changed was my ATI All-In-Wonder 9600. I thought it was dying, so I replaced it with an eVGA GeForce 6200. Wiped the ATI drivers off my system, replaced them with the latest nVidia drivers.

Second Life still froze and went black-screen.

I replaced one of my RAM modules, thinking that some incompatibility between them could be causing the error. Now I have 2 512MB modules that are EXACTLY the same, even having the same part number: Buffalo DD4002-S512/B

Second Life still froze and went black-screen.

I updated my motherboard drivers (nForce3 chipset) and updated the BIOS to version F8, the latest one. Even fixed the RAM timing.

Second Life still froze and went black-screen.

There is nothing left hardware wise that I can change.

The ONLY clues I have now are:

1 - The error message that appears on restarting the system after crashing: "Error caused by a video device driver" and "THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER". This seems to indicate the driver as the problem, BUT... it happens on BOTH ATI and nVidia drivers.

2 - SL only seems to crash when a lot of avatars are in the near vicinity; it can run for an hour if I'm the only av within a certain area (draw range set to lowest level). As soon as other avs start coming near, SL destabilizes.

What could be causing the problem??

Heads up on that error "THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER" ,

The times i had that one it was, usually when i stressed pc with game/rendering, it wouldnt show up unless i actually did something it had a hard time with ;

ati 9800pro > vidcard dead, ram fried/warranty
this one worked really fine till i actually tried to install driver then all hell broke loose

nvidia 6600 something >vidcard dead, ram fried/warranty

nvidia card 6800gt > fixed it by reformatting , reinstalling

Its one highly aggrivating error to get, betting you only get this when you stress pc , and not just normal handling.


I dont know if you reformatted and tried again or not (horrible skim reader ),

?

So, you're saying all my components are fried, and I just wasted $600 in upgrades???

Yeah, right. Oblivion still runs.

Oblivion dont even get my vid card half the temp SL manage to do ,nah but i was thinking SL might toss over the edge when youre near heavy prims rendering chucks of polygons and vid card goes "o.O ow"

If i where you , id return it , vid cards usually have pretty long warranty (3years on mine, wich usually i manage to kill in 1)

First of all, SL was doing EXACTLY the same thing on my ATI card, before I got the GeForce.

Second, I was using the ATI card with my old motherboard (ASUS A7N8X Deluxe), and I wasn't having any problems above and beyond infrequent crash-to-desktop errors.

Third... I think I found a clue.


I checked the logfiles in C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\SecondLife\logs and found THIS:

2006-05-09T04:15:43Z INFO: Stopping GL during deactivation
2006-05-09T04:15:43Z INFO: Shutting down GL...
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z INFO: Remaining allocated texture memory: 0 bytes
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z INFO: Muting audio on minimize
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z INFO: resetDisplayResolution START
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z INFO: resetDisplayResolution END
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z WARNING: Trying to bind a texture while GL is disabled!
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z WARNING: Trying to bind a texture while GL is disabled!
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z WARNING: Trying to bind a texture while GL is disabled!
2006-05-09T04:15:44Z WARNING: LLViewerImage::bindTexture failed.

The "Trying to bind a texture while GL is disabled" and "LLViewerImage::bindTexture failed" errors continue to the end.

So, I think this narrows down the problem a little... my system handles DirectX OK, but OpenGL destabilizes it, regardless of the video card used!

Is there any way to fix OpenGL?

Can I force Second Life to render using DirectX instead?

What they are best at

Ati > Directx
Nvidia > OpenGL

Oblivion Directx

SL is OpenGL ,soo not to sure what you should do there, this is where a punchingbag come in handy near pc , grrr

All i can say is good luck cause this one always made me want to murder someone, but ended up with a new vid card every time ~.~

Prob someone who has better clue out there *poke* anyone

I think I might have found something... it's not necessarily a fix for my OpenGL issues, but it may be a nice workaround...

SciTech GLDirect

http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/ent/gld_home.php

It claims to make OpenGL apps run in DirectX

I'm gonna see if it works tomorrow

didn't work

Upon loading Second Life with GLDirect installed, I got the following message:

"Second Life is unable to run because it can't get an 8 bit alpha channel. Usually this is due to video card driver issues. Please make sure you have the latest video card drivers installed. Also be sure your monitor is set to True Color (32-bit) in Control Panels -> Display -> Settings. If you continue to receive this message, contact customer service."


So, I'm right back to where I was before... wondering what to do.

Only thing I can think of now is to rip out my new motherboard and reinstall the old one, hoping it will boot this time.

HELP

Can I please get a Linden's opinion on this? Are there any experts out there who might know what's going on??


--UPDATE--

Just found something utterly mindless... I went to eVGA.com and found the ForceWare 84.56 drivers. nVidia's website still has 84.21 as the latest drivers. WTF?

I'm installing ForceWare 84.56 immediately

New video drivers didn't work, so I gave up.

I just downgraded to my old A7N8X board, and managed to get it working again.

Either the Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 has a problem with OpenGL rendering, or Second Life just isn't ready for 64-bit processing yet.

SL doesn't support 64bit, multicore, multiprocessor, nor HyperThreading. Maybe you should have tried setting the affinity to a single core for SL. Also make sure you downloaded the 64bit drivers and not the 32bit.