How Can I Get Any SL Viewer to Work With Windows 8?

[Enya Tylman]

I just recently upgraded my computer to Windows 8. I love it everything was fine and dandy until I went to download Phoenix Firestorm. It downloaded fine, but when I went to open it up, it said that my graphics card needed to be updated. I thought that was crazy and started reading that a lot of people are having this issue, because some viewers aren't compatible with Windows 8. Well I tried Second Life Viewer (the most updated one to date) and some other 3rd party viewers and I have the same issue. Does anyone know which viewers are compatible with Windows 8 or what I can do to make it work? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Cerise Sorbet]

I'll never get why, but Microsoft likes to include lame versions of graphics drivers. Grab the one from Nvidia/AMD/Intel that matches your graphics and you will very likely have some success.

The only popular viewer that really wasn't compatible with Windows 8 was the old Phoenix, but that's essentially dead now anyway.

[Enya Tylman]

OK, great. Thank you I will give that a try!

[Enya Tylman]

Sorry to bother you, but you said to "Grab the one from Nvidia/AMD/Intel that matches your graphics and you will very likely have some success." How would I got about doing this? Do I got to a particular website, or what? Thanks again!

[Cerise Sorbet]

Pointers to drivers are in http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Graphics-cards/ta-p/700073

[Enya Tylman]

Thank you!

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Yes, they've been supplying really old graphics drivers since the turn of the century. From their point of view, they know it works, and that can be important. Direct X let them keep some control of that problem. But a lot of software uses OpenGL, and Microsoft never seems to update that. I have this problem when I installed Windows XP: the driver on the CD was badly out of date for OpenGL support.

Short Version: Microsoft supplies you with drivers good enough to let you get online and download the currenmt drivers for your hardware.

[Nalates Urriah]

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need.  To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

Otherwise, on Windows click Start and type DXDIAG, case doesn’t matter. That will open dxdiag in a panel. It will give you your system specs. We need to now video driver version, card brand & model, OpenGL version, …

[Rae Bluxome]

Here is my experience:

 

Bought a Microsoft Surface Pro with Win 8 last week and installed Firestorm v. 4.4.2. The application launched and ran, with some issues. Some sims experienced heavy flickering, others none. And right-click sometimes functioned, and sometimes did not.

 

HOWEVER: the system  files on my hardware were from February 2013, and Windows wanted to apply updates, 32 in total, including one Firmware update. After these updates, Friestorm will not launch. It gets to 'Initializing VFS' and crashes. I just tested Singularity 1.8 and Naran's Viewer 2.2 alpha and get exactly the same result. I did not test the SL viewer because it is not supported on Windows 8.

This regression was introduced by some Windows update. I do not have the time to go and test each update to isolate which of the 32 updates did this. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this? Any ideas on what to do to Windows 8 to fix this?

[Rae Bluxome]

I should add:

When this happened, I did a System Reset (not Restore) and reproduced the issue.

The Surface Pro uses an Intel GraphicsHD4000 chipset.

Uninstalling/reinstalling the viewer after the Windows Updates makes no difference.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Since everything is still fresh, meaning you can always do that system reset again, it wouldn't hurt to try this.

[Rae Bluxome]

Resolved.

Even though MS said I had the latest graphics driver, going to Intel.com and getting their latest driver fixed the launch issue.

 

:-)

[Christopher Whippet]

After some update my Surface Pro also will NOT run any viewer at all

Thats the reason i bough it

Can anyone help

[Cardinalwildflower Sommer]

I'm having this problem also.. updated driver but still getting error.. any other suggestions?  Video Card is ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670

[Ferentina]

Wow im so happy to see im not the only one with this problem! Sadly i have tried to update my grafic driver, but i just get a message from my computer saying it cant activate the update....Its very frustrating. Even more so since my computer only is 3 months old. And sadly i find no help from the rest of the comments here, for helping with my problem. Tho i hope someone will deliver the golden key to the win 8 promblem!

Crossing my fingers for all of us.

[666wally]

puts hand up same dramas ,was using sing did comparability test , came up as incompatible program, runs great for a few minutes then crashes, tried all viewers only one that gives no dramas and runs fine , is radegast , but for many reason radegast is not ideal answer .just gets you into sl but not much more , what really upsets me is  I had no dramas for first 3 days , since then nothing but dramas ,