Will SL Work on Windows Vista?

I recently bought ane laptop and guess what, it is running on Vista. I love the new visual nature of Vista, but quickly found that I could not run SL on it. Major bummer. I had to reach back to my troubleshooting days for this one. SL is now running beautifully on my machine, and yes Vista is still my OS. lol Try this before you completely give up on Vista. I know most of you have probably already tried this, but I'll put it out in case you haven't.
-Right click on your desktop SL icon. (The one you use to start SL.)
-Select properties from the bottom of the list.
-Once the properties window opens, click on the "Compatibility" tab.
The following configuration worked for me, you may have to play with yours a bit to get it to work. Don't forget to press "Apply" or "Ok" each time you change the settings.

Settings:
*Run this program in compatibility for: [Windows XP(Service Pack2)]
*Disable Visual Themes
*Disable Desktop Composition

Hope it helps!

Hi

I have a sony vaio that runs Vista and sl works fine for me And GASP.. I only have 1gig of ram!! lol

Hope this helps

No such thing from MS. Millenium edition was a pile of pants and they withdrew support for that before they withdrew support for Windows 2000, which was older.

Yep.

Im on vista too with nvidia and it runs great.

I am happy to say: YES, it does, =)

I am using Windows Vista and I had to install no drivers whatever.

The about window shows:

Second Life 1.17.2 (0) Jun 26 2007 16:23:00

You are at 255013.5, 264236.1, 78.6 in Scape located at sim1039.agni.lindenlab.com (72.5.12.189:13006)

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 (Unknown model) (2992 MHz)
Memory: 2046 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista (Build 6000)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 7500 LE/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.0
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 1774/623351 (0.3%)
Viewer Digest: 2d419016-2cdf-12a8-bc96-9146228929ff

it works for me. no probs at all. i bought an HP in February. never had a glitch one.

however, Vista uses more memory than XP because it has a few added features, and SL uses up more memory each upgrade. so, you won't probably be able to run moer than 1-2 windows unless you have an infinite memory card.

Am I the only one having trouble? I installed the new version of First Look, and now I can't get in to Second Life any more. I'm using Vista, started using First Look because the last version of the regular Second Life was giving me problems. Now neither version works.

As long as you have a 256Mb (dedicated) VRAM graphic card (ATI/nVidia... doesn't matter), and 1Gb RAM, Vista does great !! Even better performance than Windows XP !!! Yup, its amazing, unbelievable... but true ^_^ And, if you plug a fast USB pendrive you can use it as "extra RAM" (it's called ReadyBoost).

For those of you with an old laptop (less than 256Mb VRAM Graph, or shared VRAM... just get 2GB RAM and every game should run smoothly). Even thou Vista consumes up to 3 times more RAM than XP (600Mb vs 180Mb), it's so much better running many appz at the same time that you don't get to feel any lack of memory. And else, try to run your antivirus, MS Word, MS Outlook and a P2P program while listening to anything on Winamp or Windows Media Player over Windows XP - all at the same time - BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH for lack of RAM for sure !!! - well, that never happens on Windows Vista

You can still get nasty Blue Screens for software bugs thou... but the guys from Redmond did a really good job with the new Multitask performance, and by putting an end to the BSODs due to Hardware conflicts - by making Vista totally independent from the Hardware Abstract Layer.

Any questions? just mail me: shuldden (at) hot...mail... dot you know what ^_^

-=ShulddeN=-

BTW: I've been fooling around with Vista since November 2006

I'm running SL on my gaming laptop that's using Vista. I find SL to be faster and less crash-prone in Vista than XP.

I just bought a new PC w/ Vista, 256MB dedicated nVidia and 2 GB RAM.
SL crashes every now and then, sometimes 3 times in 5 minutes. Any advice?

I've run with Vista for 4 months now, with a dual core processor 2.16 GHz, 2GB Ram (soon to be 4GB) and NVidia 8800 GTS with 640mb and compared to my old XP when running SL, the speed and graphics are unbelievable far, far better than XP.

Took delivery updated the Nvidia drivers and that was all.

Runs superb, and for those that use CS2, I can run that and SL at the same time and switch between and upload without hesitation, no more logging off and opening and closing prgrams.

As with all other computers it does crash out of SL but I think thats the norm from time to time with SL and not a problem of Vista.

However, as I understand from previous posts, Vista and ATI cards are the major setback and do not run SL.

Never heard of Vista and Nvidia cards not running together on SL unless someone wants to correct me now.........

Does it crash mostly after teleporting?

Oh so true. I have two Vista machines here. One runs Vista Business 64, and is entirely usable and rational. Stable, not that much slower than it was under XP... the OTHER one is a crock. Vista Home Premium 64 on an Opteron 250 (it won't see the other one!), decent PCI Express card - but if you turn off bloody Aero Glass (the translucent window effect) the machine crawls to a stop. MS have discarded any 2D accelleration in the display card altogether, to force you to go with Aero Glass; and while AG is active, any OpenGL program (that is, Second Life!) is tranlated to DirectX ON... THE... FLY for the display!!!

So I really, really badly need my second processor slot to get SL to run at any speed at all.

Except; I installed the extra-buttons driver for my (Microsoft!) wireless mouse. Latest release, for Vista, yada yada. Hasta la vista (ho ho) to being able to get the right-click menu up in SL - even after I uninstalled the driver. No right click: no party.

Then there's a site I use which has implemented, nice and early, DRM on downloaded video. This is where Vista is supposed to score heavily for content producers, securing their rights and giving the user a "better experience": except, the DRM system notices that what I download on the Vista machine has missed some initial handshake download associated with my site membership (somehow...) and when I legitimately receive my content, it tells me I'm a naughty pirate and refuses to play in Windows Media Player.

I'm back on my nice old XP box: it has foibles, but at least it's not an unfinished pile of junk whose features have been designed by the people who write those piracy warnings at the start of DVDs... Vista has to be the biggest motivator for hackers and crackers yet invented, and I have an uncomfortable feeling that when it gets busted, the "features" will ensure that NO Vista user will be able to run without a complete re-install.

I now have a dual-core iMac for my important work.

I got a new desktop, preconfigured with Vista on it.
I debated cleaning it out but decided to give it a shot.
SL crashed right away.
Graphics is ATI x1650, I bought a new machine, 2G RAM, 1G video ram 2GHz Dual Core.
I almost immediately got an update to the ATI drivers, and after that SL runs fine. Only problem is switching from windowed to full screen occasionalle crashes SL.

All the other stuff which wasnt supposed to work on Vista, Like Visual Studio 2005, works fine as well.

So I guess i wont put in my XP SP2 copy after all....
The only thing I cant get to work is Voice. It keeps saying it reconnects to voice server.. read al the JIRA notes but no help.

Never mind i dual boot with Ubuntu 7.04 Linux also. That works fine with SL too, but at lower res for some reason.

I have been using windows Vista for 3 months now and it runs perfect for me....never had a problem. I do have the right video card though...thats a must. Hope this helps you

Microsft give longer support on their professional OS than on their home os, wich is why i run on ... windows server 2003-R2 .

SO far for me its the rolls royce of the microsoft OSes .

Oh yeah and for the vista multitasking advocators, i can run SL, 3dsmax and photoshop at the same time on dual screen without seeing my system grind to a halt.

Prettier os for me that just means slower. And i have a computer for using my applications, i don't care about the bit of software that is sitting between my apps and the hardware as long as it's making itself invisible.

Got a new PC since monday, Vista, Nvidia graphics, 2gb RAM - and SL runs better and more stable than on the "old" PC (that only was from february, lol).

I'm a strong Vista hater, So I won't try to convince you of what you should or should not get....but PLEASE remember this......

If you buy a Dell, and it comes with Vista (and I'm not exactly sure they will put XP on it even if you get on your knees and beg) you can't downgrade to XP. If you end up hating Vista or finding that it will not work for you, the only way to go back to XP is to reformat your harddrive and then reinstall XP on it. Once you do this, it makes all warranties null and void.

Just something to think about.

I just bought a new laptop with Vista. Mobile Intel display driver (sniffle), but SL runs fantastically on it. I have zero problems with SL on it. Maybe it's the 2GB RAM...

Yep, another positive experience with Vista & SL:
E6600 dual core
2 x nvidia 8600GTS in SLi
3Gb RAM
Vista Ultimate

Never had a problem that can be attributed to Vista; only problems have been from SL itself (which happened regardless of the Windows OS) or inadequate PSU unit (which resolved by upgrading PSU unit from 550W to 850W)

All-round happy with Vista itself and most applications have benefited from a performance boost. No problems simultaneously running SL in a window on one monitor and CS3 on the other.

My Mac won't start today after it tried to restart after the automatic Mac update. I have had a Mac for over a year now and it is largely overrated.

I have the appropriate ATI x1600 driver required to run SL on Vista but SL still won't start.

I am running Vista via bootcamp on my MacBook Pro (least that is still working) and so have no way to get driver updates (if there are any) as ATI does not provide updates itself, only through its PC/Mac manufacturing partners. A Mac update will do me no good.

Is there anyway to get updated drivers? It is hard to tell whether it is an SL bug or I need new drivers.

[EDIT: Did an online check and Vista reports that my driver is the most current one however it is listed as one that works by LL]

Thanks for any help!

well - your using a WINDOWS os on a MAC : rarely do ppl have issues (cuz mac really is better at vista) but then again, VISTA itself is a windows...so - it can happen. may just need to clear your cache or old-temp-install files : common issue is conflicting programs or files (uselly from TEMP or cache) good luck

Hi thanks for your post!

SL is the only program I have installed on Vista so it is pretty clean in there. I cleared the two text install files with today's date but this did not resolve the issue.

If the video card works with the Mac OS, should it work with Vista? It is listed by LL as a supported card. Should I bother to contact LL support? (as I suspect they will just throw their hands in the air)

I will take my Mac in for service tomorrow (and am more than a little pissed that the Mac update caused the problem - great business model Apple has: create problems and then charge your customers to fix them)

Thanks for any help!

Errr, ATI does provide driver updates:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista32/common-vista32.html

Catalyst drivers for Windows Vista 32 bit. What's the problem?

Happy to help

Edited to add: what is the specific ATI hardware in the MacBook, that would help, kthxbye

Thanks for that - been there - you end up here:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=26978

Mobility Radeon™ X1600