No, SL, my video card IS supported.

Hi, I'm an SL newb. I've been wanting to try it for a while, but my computer has this nasty habit of restarting any time anything is rendered in 3D. I was using an off-brand card (ASUS, actually) and I'm pretty sure I need to get a new one.

That's not the issue right now, though.

Just today I borrowed a friend's video card to use temporarily until I get a new one. It's a GeForce FX 5200. I downloaded the right drivers, installed them, it's recognized by device manager, everything's great. Except for SL, that is. I try to run it and it tells me I'm using a GDI Generic and that SL is not going to work. For some reason it won't get it through its head that I installed everything correctly, that every other program sees it fine (Fable, for example, runs pretty well). It doesn't even try to open, just closes itself.

What do I do now?

Your old card was built into your motherboard I take it. Did you try disabling the onboard graphics in your system manager in the Windows control panel? Rebooting after doing suh a thing would be wise as well.

When you switch back to the onboard graphics from your friends card, be sure to re-enable it or you wont see a thing.

Nope, wasn't built in at all, I just made a poor purchase.

I just reinstalled the drivers again, every other program sees everything the way it should be except SL. I am having the biggest WTF right now.

Goto Drivercleaner.net and download Driver Cleaner Pro 1.4. Read the Readme file on how to use it. Clean out your cabs and ALL your video card drivers (your old card's plus your current card's). Then re-install your nVidia drivers. That should fix the problem as it sounds like a conflct. With videocards I've noticed that the driver installers tend to leave a mess behind even after conventional uninstallation wich may cause conflicts with some games.

I'd heard of that before, should've tried it to begin with. Thanks, that fixed it right up.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I will go onto something else before I go threw all that mess. Especialy if every other mmorpg I'm playing is fine. Sorry but when we have to jump threw hoops to get sl to run; there is a major problem. Damn sorry for anyone who has to go threw this.

On a positive not however thank god Ron knew how to fix it.

geez us unbelieveable.

Actually its good practice to always make sure old drivers are completely removed when updating to a new version as it may cause problems down the line, especially when you got 3 or 4 different versions of the same driver installed or had a competitor's device installed previously (ATI & nVidia drivers are natorious for conflicting with each other when switching brands). Think of AOL back in the day how it created a new directory with every install and how thousands of people where scratching their heads wondering where all their HD space went.

Back in the day when I first started working with windows when a new driver came out I'd just install the lastest over the old one. Noticed no difference in performance and sometimes it would revert back to the old driver fixing no problems I might have been experiencing wich became really annoying. Now that I'm making sure old stuff is completely removed I notice bugs being fixed and actual performance gains.

So really claiming that you have to bend over backwards so something works right is really just admitance of your neglect twoards regular maintance.

Just a thought, as it's a problem that I've had in the past giving the same error message.

I also play Sims Online, which requires 16 bit graphics mode. SL requires 32. I had graphics set as default for TSO and I got that message because I hadn't changed to true colour graphics.

Sims Online automatically detects the wrong colour depth, and asks me if I want to change it automatically for the duration of my gaming session, which I do, and returns to true colour afterwards.

Now I have it set at true colour, SL runs fine, and I click the little popup window every time I play TSO.

Assuming you don't know how to, Start > Control Panel > Display > Settings, and the Colour Quality box should say 32. If it doesn't, change it and apply.

May help, may not, but can't do any harm to check.

Lewis