Vista?

Having a similar problem. Just purchased a new computer, Nice Core2 Duo at 2.13 ghz with 2 gig ram, and of course with Vista. Thought SL would now be smoking! Very excited to get my SL as it was just not running well on the old one. Yup, new Radeon 256 mb 1300 video card...and now I can't even get to the log on screen. Don't have another video card to install...thought the Radeon would be a good one (best option available on the Dell build website). So now what? Will my Radeon run better if I am in XP? I downloaded the most current Radeon driver for the 1300. My old computer is a bit old and has been crashing cause the video card and RAM just can't keep up with SL. So I have not been able to log on for a few weeks. Any ideas?

It's a shame that you didn't buy a Nvidia card. I also bought a new computer with about your specs, but specifically chose a graphics card that works well with Vista and SL: Nvidia 7600GT. ATI cards aren't up to it yet.

I've been running SL on Vista for some weeks now. Had perhaps only one or two program crashes but have been logged in quite a lot over that period of time. I am using the updated Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT drivers. But I've also noticed I'm running SL in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. I think I must have set this when I first installed the SL client way back and had forgotten about it. It may make a difference for those still having SL Vista problems. Worth a try anyway.

how do i find out what kind of video card i have with windows vista, since when i bought it, it really didn't say much about it.

Vista shuts of Aero when you start Second Life or pretty much any other game I've tried to run in windowed mode.

ATI is apparently aware of the problem with SL crashing in Vista with certain graphics cards. Not much comfort, I know -

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

Julia Pegler (stuck in RL for the time being)

Just like on XP:
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Classic View ->
Administrative Tools -> Device Manager

Click on the plus sign next to "Display adapters" and
it should show you your card details.

thanks for that!

>.> I have a laptop with about... 900 RAM, 2GHz Proccesor, and 288 Vid Card NVidia... and Vista. The game works and all, granted some things seem... buggy. Could just be my compuyter, my network, or the servers lagging, but yeah.

However if you can help it... stick with XP. I just dont feel like reinstalling.

Plus it looks pretiful

I made the mistake yesterday of buying a new computer and a new video card to use with it, to help not just with Second Life, but with a lot of programs I use that are graphics intensive.

Every single PC came with Vista on it. So I could only have XP if I shelled out a few hundred more dollars for an operating system that will no longer be supported (in fact, for all intents and purposes, I'm sure XP support has pretty much ended).

And what video card did I buy, not realizing that it wouldn't work with Vista? Radeon ATI. Ugh.

The computer came with integrated nVidia-based video, so I can use that in the meantime. It's better than reverting to my old computer. Upgrading the processor speed and doubling the RAM has made a huge difference, even without being able to upgrade the video yet. Second Life actually performed smoothly, I thought.

As I understand it from ATI's website, the problem isn't on Second Life's end, but that ATI doesn't have the necessary access to Vista yet to create a driver that will support OpenGL. This isn't a problem with ATI cards in Windows XP.

The ATI site on troubleshooting:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=22468

Notable quote: "Windows Vista drivers are beta and do not fully support OpenGL."

So anyone in my situation has no choice but to wait for the ATI drivers. Or pay even more money to get a different card or operating system.

I do not have the problem of Vista rebooting on me. However, when I was loading things on the computer yesterday, Vista was fighting with me, refusing to run anything not made by Microsoft in the name of "security." Of course, I got no Vista manual with the computer, so I had to play hide and seek with the different "security" devices to turn them all off. Though Vista continues to warn me that my computer is now at a critical security risk, most of my programs are running as they should.

(The security measures are not to protect your computer; they are to protect Microsoft's monopoly-enhanced profits.)

One of the solutions to the rebooting problem imay be to turn off Vista's "security" measures. Another possible culprit could be the Data Execution Prevention "feature." (If executing data is a security risk, what in the world is a computer supposed to do?) Though the DEP problem generally causes crashes and not reboots. In XP, you could just turn off DEP. In Vista, you must have to have DEP; therefore you must manually add every single program you use as an exception.

My Nvidia works just fine on vista with SL. Of course, just fine is an oxymoron when talking about second life This same card gets 230fps in world of warcraft and it's happy to crank out 40+ FPS in SL.

Spent the whole day long practically, uninstalling Windows Vista and re-loading Windows XP. I had enough. Vista is not ready! I crashed constantly in SL.

Things are at least stable with XP.

The promise of Vista was always about forcing Vendors of equipment (like nVidia and ATI) to finally come forward with 64 bit drivers. Well, their half hearted attempts leave a lot to be desired. A lot!

When installing nVidia's "beta" today resulted in losing my Internet connection, that was it for me. Enough is enough. Vista is not ready. Blame it on the hardware all you want, it doesn't matter. Vista doesn't work... bottom line.

So I am back on-line at 2:31 a.m. And believe me, Vista does not die easily. At least on my machine it didn't. After three failed attempts where XP was pretending to install, I finally got the key. You have to kill your hard drive partition and then make a new one. Formatting alone, believe it or not, results in Vista still being there!

I am very close to uninstalling Vista on my new computer and installing Windows XP. The only problem is that I don't have a copy to install. Ideas on where to get a legal version cheap?

It's not like I have a whole bunch of stuff on my computer that I will have to re-install. Vista won't let me install anything.

From what I am hearing most things seem to run slower under Vista. I use Linix for work but play SL on Win2K... ummm.... It works!

I can't see why Windows insists you upgrade, why not install WIN2K as a second OS on the same machine and use it for legacy apps.

Or am I being too simple here?

S

Go to your hard drive manufacturers website, download the utilities disc then low level wipe the hard disc.

Believe me, its the only way (unless we blow it out of the airlock... But thats (c) Sigourney Weaver in Alien.. bless)

S

This, you may find interesting. Now that I am back on Windows XP, a few items I had purchased that were "lost inventory" have returned! I just noticed doubles last night for the ones I had begged the sellers to replace.

I very rarely use Second Look when making a purchase, so maybe that had something to do with it. But no amount of clearing cache in either Second Look or the production viewer would return these items to my invetory.

I'm hearing not very good things about the newest nVidia beta driver for Vista (101.41), either. So glad I'm glad to be out of the early adopters crowd.

I'll post this info on my "Missing Inventory" thread, as well.

I'm SURE you are completly and utterly WRONG about XP support. Why do people say stuff like this and have no clue what they are talking about? See the following:

http://thesource.ofallevil.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-24ExtendedSupportWindowsMA.mspx?source=rss&WT.dl=0

SL has actually been running a bit faster for me in Vista than it did in XP.


For me Aero is still there while in windowed mode SL and the only game I play in windowed mode is The Lord of The Rings Online beta and it has Aero still, but of course it is a Games for Windows game.

I've been studying my ATI video card and it seem to be some of the same problems with the computer but not as bad. I find the card to be somewhat unstable at times but yet working! I'm not saying anything nav about this, it's just could use some fine tuning.

Cause I have Windows Vista (Home basic) notebook compaq with a ATI video card. It's series200.
Now I went to the ATI website and downloaded the new verison for windows vista but it seem's to unstable at and shuts down at times.

I plan tol contact ATI as well so I will see what happens.

Now once I installed this upgrade I was able to get a stable load of the (SL first look) window but shortly after it opens the crash logger, shuts the thing down, just before the logon screen shows up.

I will say this about Vista: Objects rezzed way faster under Vista, and very noticeably when you're in a store

I intend to un-install Vista and install Windows XP. I just got an OEM disc for XP (which means basically the disc with no documentation).

I would appreciate it if someone would either list the steps to un-installing Vista and installing XP, or pointing me to a web site for that information. Thanks.

Hi, Amity,

I ended up having to re-partition my hard drive, format it, and boot from the Windows XP CD to re-install it. Of course I backed everything I wanted to keep using straight file copy to another PC on my home network first.

Rather drastic, I know, but in my case that's what it took. If you do this, you'll need to re-install all of your software, too. If you have SATA drives, don't forget to press F6 during the XP install to load drivers from your disk manufacturer.

I took the extra steps of updating my chipset drivers and BIOS while I was at it.

The good news is my PC's performance is fantastic now, and I haven't crashed once since doing this. SL is much smoother and faster, some of my "lost objects" came back, albeit rezzing seems quite a bit slower that it was in Vista.

Good luck!

Have you actually tried to switch back to XP? I ask, because somebody I know bought a computer specifically to run Second Life. She has an NVidia card which should work with Vista, but she gets a message that the card is not suitable.

She decided to uninstall Vista, and go back to XP But it didn't work. When she loaded XP the loader went into a loop.

It turns out that this is a 'feature' of Vista. It seems to leave something on your computer which prevents you from loading XP. The local computer man said he could fix it for $150.

It is beginning to seem to me that Vista, apart from its other unappealing features, is specifically designed to prevent you from ever loading another operating system.

Ah, when I wrote this I hadn't seen the posting above. I reported the case as it was told to me by the person concerned after she had spent hours on the phone to the computer retailer and Microsoft. If anyone has an explanation, I would be very grateful.

I successfully used a new OEM copy of Windows XP to install over Vista. It runs well.

I ended up following instructions from a tutorial I found on the web. I had a glitch that caused me to have to try twice to get it done, but I got it done. Afterwards, I had to call technical support to HP to help configure my hardware (finding that one of the steps that the web tutorial did not cover was installing a chipset driver right after the Windows XP installation). I then had to go and find drivers for each piece of hardware to install, and I had to do all the settings. But the overall process wasn't too hard.

It wasn't perfect. I ended up with C: having a small recovery position and D: being the main boot partition (I know there is some way to switch the letters to what I want, but I'll just live with it). It also seems like a small piece of the hard drive was not partitioned at all (a C: partition, a D: partition, and unpartitioned). The unpartioned part is small (10 MB or something) so I decided to just not worry about it.

The nice thing about the OEM copy is that I didn't get a lot of unwanted crap to slow down my computer. It boots immediately. It's not cluttered.

I had a problem running Second Life for the first time after the install because SL did not think my video card would run it. My computer has an integrated nVidea, but I installed an ATI PCI card. If I recall correctly, I fixed the problem with new downloaded drivers, confirming that the nVidea integrated was disabled, and fixing the settings for the ATI to make sure my computer recognized the full memory.

If I can find the web tutorial I used to install XP over Vista, I will edit this post with a link.

Edit: I can't find the specific tutorial I used. I should have bookmarked it. There are quite a few sites though that come up on Google search; one is http://www.windowsreinstall.com/ .

Are we saying here that for someone buying a new laptop, it is still the case that one should definitely avoid buying one with Vista on it?