Possible Graphic Card/Computer Issue

[Vala Antonelli]

I have not been able to play Second life for a little over a year now due to family issues. Now I am able... yet I can't seem to get the program to even open. I am not a technical person, But I recently purchased a new computer and am wondering if may the settings are incorrect, or the graphics card is not compatible. Here is the information about my computer:

Windows Vista˜ Home Premium Service Pack 2

Dell Inspiron 537S

Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 450 @ 2.20 GHz 2.19GHz

Memory (RAM): 2.00 GB

System Type: 64-bit Operating System

Graphics Card: ASUS EAH4550 (Powered by ATI RADEON HD 4550 GPU)

I have tried every single viewer I could find, 3rd party and all and the only thing I can seem to get to work is Metavolt and that is chat only

If anyone could possibly help or just out and out tell me it is pointless due to incompatibility I would appreciate it greatly.

Vala Antonelli

[Peggy Paperdoll]

That card should work..........not the greatest but it's good enough for med low to med settings in preferrences.  You might need to go the ATI's driver download site and do a search for that card for a newer driver........it's very common to have an outdated driver on a new machine.  But, if you can tell what error message you are getting it will help give some more specific guesses on what may help you.

[Faubio Alter]

http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/

OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250 or better

I'd still search for the driver.

A graphics card (not chipset) upgrade might help.

[Vala Antonelli]

I don't get any error message. When the program crashes, it closes and brings up SL Crash Logger (Due to unexpected reasons, or such) And then when I attempt to send the crash report, it fails to connect. I have checked all security settings as well, to assure myself that Vista wasn't somehow blocking the program.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Hi Vala!

The specs and reviews for the Asus EAH4550 are good and it should run Second Life very easily.

You can check what driver the card is using by opening your Catalyst Control Centre from the Start Menu > Programs and looking at the Information Center tab. The latest for your card is Catalyst Version 10.4 but unless your card is showing a driver in the early to mid 8's (which caused some problems with SL - 8.11 and 8.12 actually came after 8.9 and just before 9.1 and were fine) it still should run fine without updating. My new computer runs on Catalyst 10.4 but my older computer runs happily on 8.9 when the latest driver for it is actually 10.2. If updating the driver, you need to unistall the existing one first.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

If the driver is ok and still crashing, I would suggest you open your Catalyst Control Centre and select the 3D Graphics tab then disable Catalyst AI. Also disable Antialiasing. Have Smoothvision Anistropic Filtering set to Let the application decide. Then try opening Second Life.

If you can get to the login screen now, select Prefs > Graphics > Hardware Options and disable antialiasing if ticked. Then you can go back into Catalyst Control Centre and change Antialiasing to Let the application decide. You should also have Enable VBO unticked in SL Prefs Hardware Options.

Nyll

[Stefanik Dagostino]

Thanks to all you nice folks who help others.  You make the forums in SL great!

[wil007 Auer]

The only good ATI driver for me working with SL

Is the 8.5 one, so the newest isnt always the best.

I get way higher frames a second with that old driver.

And Secondlife has a problem with the open GL settings also,

that has to be ticked of also.

And by reading your post, it could also be a buggy connection.

[Vala Antonelli]

Everything is fixed and Second Life is running wonderfully!! Thanks to everyone for all of the advice and suggestions and maybe I will see you in world!! Nyll your the bestest!!!!

[Nyll Bergbahn]

You're very welcome Vala and I'm so glad you're able to access Second Life again. Enjoy and have fun!

Nyll

[Vala Antonelli]

*facepalms* So I had SL working great, did everything you said and it worked perfectly! Only now, without changing anything other then 1 windows defender update it is doing the same thing again. (Here is the link for the original, I just saw how many questions you answered and realized you prolly wouldn't remember mine http://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/22083 ) Do you have any other suggestions? I am more then willing to take a video for you to see what is going on, I just wanna play SL again! lol.

Vala

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Hi Vala!

Gosh that's a bummer!

I have no idea what the windows update may have done unless it has messed up the graphics driver. But it shouldn't have so perhaps it's totally unrelated.

Anyway, what shows up in your Device Manager?  Does it say 'generic display adaptor' or some such description?

To  access Device Manager:

1. Click on the Start button and then choose Control Panel.

   
   

2. Click  on the System and Maintenance link.

   
   

3. In the System  and Security window, click on the Device Manager link located under the System heading.

   
   

If the Display Adaptor under Display Device is not the ATI Radeon but the generic windows one, right click on it select " update driver software " and direct it to the correct ATI Radeon driver. If it is showing the ATI driver, then I don't know what could now be wrong. I'm sorry but I really don't know how the windows update could have changed things. Hopefully someone else will.

Nyll