New computer issue

[Jo Ellsmere]

Hello, all! First time poster here.

I'm sure this topic has been covered a thousand times but darned if I can see a way to search *forums.* I can see a *blog* search function but no forum-search.

I have a new computer. It's a wonderful upgrade from my old machine (the equivalent of stone knives and bearskins, to quote Mr. Spock) but I'm having one annoying issue. There are unexplainable star-shaped artifacts in my SL skies, to be exact. Wherever clouds appear, they're covered with these shapes.

This effect is consistent, day and night, and changes to my graphics settings have no effect.

I've read enough of the forums to wonder whether the graphics card driver installed on my machine may be the issue, but I'm not sure just what to do about that.

Here are my new machine specs:

ASUS Notebook G73

CPU: Intel Core Series Processor (1596 MHz)

Memory: 6069 MB

OS Version: Professional (Build 7600)

Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technology Inc.

Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.14.0010.0716

OpenGL Version: 3/2/9236

libcurl Version: libcurl/7/18.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3

J2C Decoder Version: KDU

Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3/740000

LLMozLib Version: - 2.01.31935 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.21_0000000000)

Assuming that it is the graphics card driver, how do I go about changing that? Assuming that it isn't, does anyone know what may be causing this issue? Stuff like this throws me since, contrary to popular belief, I'm no computer genius.

Other than this issue the new machine does SL very well.

Thank you in advance!

Jo Ellsmere

P.S. Is there a way to copy and paste text into a forum post? I tried to do that with the machine specs but apparently wasn't able to? Is there a preview function? Oh...these forums are not for the faint of heart!

[Jo Ellsmere]

It occurred to me that perhaps I had posted this question to the wrong forum...Maybe I'll have better luck here.

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Yes, your problem has come up before and the previous poster had a picture that looks just like yours.

Of course, now the key is finding it    I will poke around.  But try searching to blogs for ATI Mobility Radeon  because it was an ATI graphics drivers issue.

--Cinn

[Jo Ellsmere]

Thank you, Cinnamon. I will do that.

[Jo Ellsmere]

Sadly, the only blog entry that comes up with that search is mine.

[Luc Starsider]

Tried to search to see if I could find the thread Cinnamon mentioned, but no luck.

From what I've read on these forums, quite a few problems with ATI cards are solved by turning 'vertex buffer objects' off.
I have no idea if it will help with your specific problem, but it does not hurt to try turning VBO off. Go to Preferences->Graphics->Hardware and uncheck 'Enable vertex buffer objects' (or whatever the text says) and see if it helps. If it doesn't help, I'm afraid I don't have any other suggestions for solutions to give.

Hope you get the problem sorted out, and good luck with your new pc.

Luc

[Jo Ellsmere]

Thank you, Luc.

I wasn't able to find any pertinent posts, either, despite a number of different searches.

The funny thing about this is that I know someone with my exact computer who has had no problems at all getting up and running. Hopefully our on-line schedules will mesh soon so that I can get this all ironed out. It is a little aggravating, to say the least.

[Luc Starsider]

I had a little dig around again, and found this. Apparently, there has been (and probably still is) a problem with the ATI drivers. There are some possible solutions in the comments of the jira.

Luc

[Jo Ellsmere]

Oh, this information looks very promising! Thank you so much, Luc!

I'm not on my main computer at the moment. When I am later I'll try an older graphics driver and report back.

Thanks again.

 

-Jo

[Luc Starsider]

Your welcome, Jo.

Good luck!

[Jo Ellsmere]

Problem resolved.

I downloaded the latest driver update for my graphics card and it got rid of the unwanted stars.

This site was very helpful (I wouldn't have been able to do it without this information!):

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GraphicsDriverInstallationInstructionforMicrosoftWindows7.aspx#header2

Thank you, all who responded, for your wonderful help! ''

 

-Jo

[Jessika Rang]

Yay Jo! Congrats on the new computer and I tried to search for the old/other threads... /me is a little tech challenged so glad you solved the issue - see you in owrld soon i hopes!