Laptop Crashing Problems

I usually play SL on my desktop computer but I recently purchased a new ibm laptop. SL usually logs on fine with no problem. Sometimes I can play for 30-45 mins with no problem but most of the time when I tp or involve my avie is something SL will crash. Im not sure what the problem is because sometimes I can tp fine and have no crashing problems for ahwhile but sometimes ill crash every 5 mins. When it crashes it usally gives me a bunch of numbers and says that the memory cant be read. If anyone knows thats wrong I would greatly appreciate it.

I dunno if this helps but my graphics card is : ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600 Series

Thx

so basically to make that whole thing shorter. SL is crashing at random times and i get a pop up saying error ds87fs87f file memory can not load.

What video drivers are you running? Try installing the Omega Drivers. Those work much better with laptops.

That sounds like your laptop uses shared video memory with the system memory. How much system memory do you have? If you have like 512m and you have 128 allocated to video memory, you basically run out of memory to run SL using some of the older drivers. My advice would be to check and make sure you have the latest motherboard and system drivers, use the latest Omega drivers for the video and be sure to turn off VPU recovery in the ATI properties tab.

will second life run even if you don't have one of the two specified video card but have the needed space and speed and whatnot?

Probably not, Intel Extreme chipset kinda works but most others like SIS won't

The problem is that SL makes low level graphical calls and doesn't use a standard API like DirectX to access the video. So, any cards that don't support the specific graphical requests will not work. The reason for going this route is one of performance. With a standard API you get very good cross vendor compatibilty, but at the expense of performance. Given the technology at the time and the demands of the game when the game was created, the obvious choice was performance.

ok I downloaded the Omega Drivers but im having trouble finding where to turn off the VPU in the ati properties tab. If anyone could guide me that would be great. Also do I have to remove anything in order for the Omega drivers to work or just installing them works?

Thx

I have the same GPU on my laptop, i ust used a Omega driver and it works better now, P.S u might have to tinker with SL's And the drivers settings to get it working well.

U will have to uninstall the driver b4 u install the omega one like it says in the warning b4 omega lets u initiate installation, just uninstall and install once windows has reverted to the default driver which i think is called Vgusave or somthing but Nvm bout that

No, this is not even close to being true. SL does use a standard API, OpenGL, and it most certainly does not make "low-level graphical calls". The reason there are differing levels of compatibility between video chipsets is because most video drivers have very shoddy implementations of OpenGL. Consequently, SL must determine when a computer has a Nvidia, ATI or Intel video chipset, then disable the specific OpenGL extensions the drivers claim to support, but don't.

Likewise, using Direct3D for rendering won't help if the card in question doesn't support it. It's not a cure-all to make any 3D app run on any computer.

I'd agree with this Catherine except for one thing: realistically speaking, what common graphics card produced in the last 5 years isn't Direct compatible? For the most part, most graphics cards are Direct3D and DirectX compatible. If they're not, imho person needs to go graphics card hunting / take back laptop / whatever option works.

I'd guess the basic problem is simply that it's a laptop. Rule of thumb I've discovered for laptops is that if it doesn't have a minimum proprietary 64 meg graphics card, or has a 128mb shared memory card with only 512m on the system, then SL is eating memory alive.

I have a Nvidia FX 5500 128mb on my system with 512mb system memory-- and that's the *minimum* configuration I'd recommend for SL (although smaller configurations will "work"... just asking for serious lag and crashes).

Yes, but whether that's DirectX 7/8/9/etc is another matter. Different cards are built to different versions of the spec, resulting in DirectX-compatible cards that don't run DirectX software, just as SL makes use of OpenGL extensions that many graphics card manufacturers only partially support.

So, what do you think it's doing when it needs a specific OpenGL extension that is not supported by the video card or not supported the way SL expects? And if it's disabling the card specific OpenGL extensions that are not coded properly, as you claim, why do people continue to have problems? Isn't this code being skipped/disabled?? It's because SL is bypassing the OpenGL standard to get the card to do what it needs the card to do, which is why only ATI and Nvidia are supported. There are plenty of other programs out there that use OpenGL on the PC and have no problems, because they don't circumvent the APIs to get to lower level functions.

I find it rather difficult to believe that no video card manufacturer supports OpenGL properly, but SL has all their affairs in order when it comes to the OpenGL standard. And if there are manufacturers that support the standard properly (which you seem to acknowledge, since you said "many graphics card manufacturers only partially support...", but did not say all), then why is SL not compatible with those cards, but instead limited to only two manufacturers, and still crashes with just those two??

Here are a few vendors who have highly robust 3D applications, who were kind enough to give a list of all the vendor and specific video cards that are certified to work with their OpenGL based applications. You will note, these applications support more than two vendors, and in most cases any bugs they found were limits in specific feature functionality, not usually application crashes:

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardtesting.html

http://www.softimage.com/partners/xsi/Hardware_Partners/Hardware_Cert/windows_xp_v4.htm

http://download.graphisoft.com/ftp/techsupport/downloads/pdf/opengl_compatibility_report.pdf