Under Windows Vista, my graphics card reports as a GDI generic. Why is that?

[Ayana Auer]

Can someone help me figure out why my graphics card is reporting as a GDI generic?

[Lexie Linden]

Second Life requires that the Windows drivers for the system's  graphics card fully support the OpenGL graphics standard. Any graphics  card whose installed driver does not support OpenGL detects as a "GDI  Generic" instead. This message means that Second Life has detected no  hardware with OpenGL support.

It's up to the graphics vendor (Nvidia or ATI) to provide drivers  that support both OpenGL and your operating system. As of this writing,  we have successfully run Second Life on Vista under several PCs  equipped with Nvidia's Geforce graphics cards.

If you receive this message under Vista, are running graphics hardware that meets our Minimum System Requirements,  and can't find a driver provided by your graphics vendor that provides  OpenGL support, you'll be unable to run Second Life under Windows Vista  on that computer.