Windows Vista and Second life?

Has anyone tried running second life on windows vista? I tried, but it doesnt work. but that could be becasue i have a radeon express video card.

I have Vista on a dual boot, and tried SL on it.. I have the vista beta drivers for my geforce 7300.. I tried a couple of months ago, and it was a NO GO... gave me the video card not compatible error crap. I tried loading with the latest drivers the other day and Second Life loaded up fine and was going to connect, but then I got that message saying I needed to install the latest Second Life. After installing the newest SL version, I once AGAIN got the video card imcompatible error. I've been meaning to ask LL if they will allow vista beta driver versions on the list of drivers accepted so that I can test drive SL on vista.

I just tried the same thing with RC1 (havent upped to RC2 yet), i've got a Geforce FX 5550, i get aero glass and all the other cool goodies, but sl DOES NOT WORK. With the pack-in drivers, i get a message saying my card is "GDI Generic", not supported, then it crashes.

I downloaded the beta drivers from nvidia's site, sl at least got as far as the login, but crashed right when the world would display.

Sl, on vista, current status: Not happening.

Well, I have not tried a vista build in a while because I did not have high speed for a while or a computer, but I came back and downloaded RC2.

I installed the RC1 display drivers from the NVidia site and it worked fine, downloaded and installed SL and it logs in fine and I can sit in the world for about 5 minutes...

After that little bit of time, the entire OS crashs and the computer is dead till I manually reset the power.

I have tried to track it down and everything I am seeing somehow has this being a SL bug. I would love to know if someone was able to stay in SL stable in RC2.

On my hardware I have a dfi board with nforce4 chipset, AMD Athlon 3800+ X2 overclocked to 2.5 ghz, 1 gig of ram, and GeForce 6600GT.

I think I'll wait for VistaSE..in a few months...hehe

this is upsetting I was really excited to get onto Second Life. I'm sure they'll fix it soon... right? RIGHT?!?!

ive tried with vista rc1 but came up with the generic card issue - i downloaded the lastest vista drivers from ati but of course my card is a 9200 and the drivers only support cards from 9500 onwards

vista is now in the bin and i cant see me buying a new card just to install vista and play sl

Yeah, I tried with rc1 a few weeks ago. I use an old geforce 2, and while it runs on xp wonderfully it ran choppy and slow on vista. After a whole bunch of tinkering and driver changes I finally got it to load up, but it was so laggy I couldn't really rez anything. I work with Vista at work and one trick a co worker told me that helped was loading in the old xp drivers. You do this by going to my computer right clicking on manage and then clicking on the device manager tab on the left hand side. Then go to your card, right click on it and click the first option, I think it says update driver or something like that. I was told that windows update stopped giving the Vista users the xp drivers (a few weeks ago it was all bundled together) but you can also get them by going to the nvidia site and then directing that update driver page to them. It should let you manually choose which drivers to load. Shrugs. It didn't make the game playable, but helped out tremendously on my crashing.. maybe that will do someone else some good. I also found out after switching back to xp that sl doesn't support my multi mon config though, so that could of been my problem too. I just like playin on the tv too much to give it up.. xbox spoiled me. Heh. I can't wait till sl supports Vista for reals.. it was the only reason I dragged myself back to xp. Setting up ad-hoc networks was sooo easy on Vista.

Jes

I actually tried the XP driver thing back when vista was pre RC and it did work, actually slipped my mind till I read about it again in your post, DevilPliers. I will try it in a sec and see if I crash the same.

I am still trying to track down if the crash is SL's problem or Vista's.

As of this afternoon, installed the new NVIDIA Vista RC2 drivers, and SL runs just fine in Vista RC2 for over an hour now.. good to go!

Well I am glad you got it to stay in stable, I am unsure what the problem is on my end or with any of the others but I posted a bug report to MS about it and this was short version of the reply:

"This is a known issue and has been forward to the vendor's development team for resolution."

So aside from the few that can get it up and running, to say the least is that MS is aware of it and it is likely in the hands of LL now.

Edit: Silly me, I see they did post new drivers today I am about to check out, when I glanced over your original post I read it as RC1 drivers. Trying them now to see.

Has anyone found similar problems with Vista and other games or applications not working? Or is it basically just Second Life?

(Phillip is usually on top of the technology loop. I'm sure they've already been working on SL for vista..... they're probably working on SL for playstation 3 too)

The problem is that Vista can't display OpenGL applications and the Aero Glass interface at the same time. (Interestingly enough, on my system, the glass interface is broken anyway - it glitches on the second monitor).

Turn off the glass interface: In your display options, select one of the profiles that doesn't have transparency. Then SL should work.

In the future, ATI and nVidia should have the GL problem fixed - after all, there are still quite a few programs that use OpenGL (the Quake series, Half-Life engine games, and every 3D Java program out there). Without accelerated GL support, it'll be harder for MS to get Vista adopted as the universal standard.

Heh. Yeah, most programs don't really work on Vista. Some do when you try the right click run as admin trick, since some applications just can't handle the lua (everytime a user with a limited account tries to run something they have to provide the admin password). But somethings are just broken. Even Deamon Tools, which was specifically build for rc1 was the biggest pain to install. Shrugs. Guess that's what I get for using a beta os.

Jes

All the more reason to switch to Mac. I am a born PC user, but was seriously considering to swtich to Mac, this would totally push me over to the "other" platform. LOL.

ive just gone to RC2 vista and still get the same problem (i have a radeon 9200)

i have updated drivers blah blah but still get the "generic" error

Simply do not use Vista.

Just thought I'd add my 2-bits worth....

Im running a AMD Athlon x64 3800+ 2.71GHz 2Gb RAM with a NVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128Mb

I have been using Vista x64 RC-1 with NVidia 96.33 drivers. Was never able to get SL to work - it would bring up the logon screen, accept my username and password, and the percentage bar would happily scroll along to 100% and even friends who were online at the time would get a notification saying I had come online - but the SL client would go non-responding, soon followed by a crash message asking if I wanted to tell M$ all about it etc...

Updated to Vista x64 RC-2 (which took the best part of 1.5 hours to do!) and the NVidia 96.85 drivers - and bingo! Works like a charm!

I have a 20Mbit broadband connection so lag usually isn't an issue, but there didnt appear to be any performance degradation to when I would run it in Windows XP x64 on the same machine.

Very happy its all working - I can finally use SL without having to swap between the two OS's I have dual booted on my PC.

Looks like most stuff works in RC-2 now (well, programs I previously couldn't get to work) so it might be nearing the time for the XP partition to get the axe!

Brent.

After speaking with someone who knows a bit more about why we have the issues with SL and Vista right now, I can confirm the problem lies in the nVidia drivers.

We should have a bit more of a better outlook on the issue when it finally hits RTM since NV has a bit more work to go in the drivers to make everything as spiffy as the rest of the OS is.

The newest one that people have been playing with, however they got their hands on it, is 5840 which is the RTM branch and it has the debug code removed and very much faster.

Microsoft is pushing NV to have their final drivers functioning before January. So till then we just twiddle our thumbs and use XP for SL.

Well I heard that Vista will just never support OpenGL in any normal way so I wouldn't hold your breath. Microsoft generally only cares about it's own standards, not open source or collaborative ones like OpenGL.

Even if they eventually get it working though, why would anyone want to put a piece of junk like Vista on a perfectly good computer?

All you need to know about Vista is:

- Costs 400 dollars! (plus an extra 80 bucks to make it secure)
- Requires 2 Gigs of RAM just to run.
- Comes with built-in spyware

Wow! what an operating system!

anyway i use ati....

ive installed 3 betas now and they get larger and larger - 9gig is the final space

currently d/loading suse.....

what? 2 gigs of ram just to run? No... I have 512Megs and can use the full aero interface and play half-life 2 just fine. 2 gigs is definitely not necessary.

Jeremy, I'd like to agree with you. I think Microsoft is money hungry, bloated, and overbearing. However, your statements don't really hold true.


That's not MS's fault. That's the graphics card manufacturers' fault. Microsoft actually developed an OpenGL wrapper that allows all 3D graphics cards to use OpenGL. This is actually better than the GL situation under XP, 2000, 98, and 95, where accelerated OpenGL support had to be provided by the graphics card manufacturer.

To date, only a few graphics cards have even bothered supplying OpenGL ICD's, and only nVidia has provided full support. To say that ATI's support has been lacking would be an understatement. Every time I fire up an OpenGL app on my notebook, the debug window fills with messages telling me that the ATI driver doesn't support certain extensions, even though the driver reports that it does. So the truth is that the majority of the consumer graphics card industry has basically ignored OpenGL. So don't blame Microsoft. Blame the video card makers.


Vista's UI is not really any better - it's just different. Personally, I don't like the organization much, and I don't think we've seen a truely new thing in OS design since Windows 2000. However, there are improvements in terms of security, peer networking (one of the biggest strengths in Windows since the WFW days, and also the biggest problem with Windows since the WFW days), and packaged applications. There are lots of reasons to run Vista, and once it goes Final, it'll be on all 3 of my computers. I will keep XP around in a Virtual PC session for testing, just like I do with 2000, 98, and 3.1.

One of my favorite new features is the mutli-client audio mixer. You can now change volume levels for each application that's running. THis lets you use voice chat while playing video games, for example, and adjust the game's volume separately from the chat program. VERY handy.

Also, WinFX looks very promising: GUI and 3D programming will be easier than it ever was.


Incorrect. The Vista purchase prices are very similar to the similar XP versions. XP currently ships in 3 flavors: Home, Pro, and Media Center. Vista adds a new version, ultimate. Ultimate is around $400. The rest are competitively priced with the same level of XP.

As far as $80 to make it secure... I downloaded and installed AVG Free last weekend. Worked like a charm.


Incorrect. Yes, memory is nice to have, as the footprint is bigger, but not that much bigger - only about 25% in my tests. If nothing else, moving the video subsystem to its on memory space will use more RAM. This is nice, though, since the video subsystem can now reset itself without crashing the OS. I've already experienced this, thanks to flakey beta video drivers (nVidia supplied).


Would that be WGA? The same WGA that's pretty much required when you download anything from MS's web site? Who do you blame when criminals break in to your house and steal your furniture? The owner of the house for not putting bars on the windows?


Just like with the 9x to XP "upgrade", most of the user base will simply shrug their shoulders and move on. Most people want their computers to "just work", and from what I've seen, Microsoft is taking steps in that direction. Do I agree with their choices? Not entirely. In fact, some decisions are downright supid, in my opinion.

However, you might consider making informed statements, rather than knee-jerk comments, and make sure you have your facts straight. Spreading misinformation doesn't help anyone, credibility is too important a thing to lose.

Good luck with that. THe last time I tried Linux on my nForce motherboard, I never got 3D acceleration, audio, or networking to work.

Dr Tardis, I see you actually are very knowledgeable about what is forthcoming with Vista and I like how you handle replies to those who are to say the least, uninformed.

On my quote about the final of the NV drivers, that was from an internal source of mine and was not a speculation.

As for ATI's handling of Vista and overall 3d, I will also agree with Dr since I have never had favorable experiences with it, either in windows or linux the times I have tried one.

I will not go into more technical detail here since Dr did it pretty well.

To most I do not think Vista is a piece of junk, I am actually looking forward to it and do not run it other than just to do some basic software testing and development since it does not run SL more than few moments at a time.