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Windows 8 won't run Second Life until...


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So today I updated from Win7 to Win8. I've been told to expect problems, but I'm an optimist. So, it takes just as long as every other OS in the world to install. I finally get it up and running, and decide to test SL, since so many people have been having trouble.

Well, it happened. SL wouldn't open because the "brand new" Windows 8 video drivers were'nt getting along with my ATI Radeon Mobility 4200 video card. Why does nobody ever say that's the error they're getting? And there was a notice that CCC was incompatible with my OS.

No problem. I fire up HP support assistant. It says my driver is up to date. Ummm, no it's not.

Okay, device manager. Same thing. It pretends my driver is up to date.

HP's website. Yeah, maybe support assistant is just being as useless as it always is. Uh oh, HP claims that there's nothing I can do. That since my computer was released before October 2011, it can't run the Windows 8 OS that I used to get online and see their site without bugs. HA! (well, technically they said my machine is unsupported and untested.)

Okay, type "device manager" click settings, click device manager, find video card info, select properties, click drivers, select "pudate." It says it's up to date. LIES!

Highlight name of video card, copy, open google, paste. Oh look, AMD has drivers for xp, vista, 7, AND 8! navigate their website, find a file called 13-1-legacy_vista_win7_win8_dd_ccc.exe. Save the file, then run. Answer the questions, accept the terms, watch the screen flash, then click "finish."

Click my favorite viewer, and no more error. It loads, but renders me as a cloud. Ctrl-Alt-R. Problem solved. I'm seeing sl perfectly, without even messing with .inf or .ini files.

I posted the whole experience instead of skipping right to what works as a way to show all of you who can't get it working that I can see where your frustration is coming from. The point is don't give up.

And, if you haven't been through all the troublshooting, then just skip right to the website of the company that manufactured your graphics card. Skip over the computer manufacturer completely. HP told me it wouldn't work, and if I would have believed them, then I wouldn't be running sl on Win8. I find it a bit disappointing that I had to go straight to AMD for the driver. I thought HP support was better than that.

Hope this helps.

*edit: Technically, I misused the term "video card." The mobility graphics are integrated graphics for laptops.

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First, I want to compliment you on your persistance.  Upgrading to a new OS is really quite an upgrade.......it's seldom as simple as the OS developer (and computer manufacturer) lead you to believe.  Windows will never cop to a problem....neither will the computer manufacturer (in your case, Hewlett Packard).  That really puts the users at a big disadvantage and for the most part left to whip wildly in the wind.....in other words completely on their own for solving the issues that come up when such a change is made.

Here's the thing though.  The driver manufacturers are also left to whip in that same wind. Especially for the video drivers developed for laptops.  Most laptop drivers are written for specific models that the computer manufacturer  requests........mostly for some features the manufacturer wants or needs and for power savings (battery life).  When someone comes to the video card manufacturer, finds a driver and installs it there is a good chance something that the computer manufacturer has built into the computer (software) will not work as the manufacturer wants........or, worse, cause problems that actually prevent the laptop from working at all.  Both AMD and nVidia have disclaimers addressing that potential problem. 

Where is the comsumer to go?  In your case, you took it upon yourself to go ahead and install a driver that HP would not recomment you installing.  It fixed your problem.......but it could have, just as easily, created an even worse problem.  I don't have an answer on what a comsumer needs to do to get this really awful issue resolved.  I don't use a laptop (partially becuase of issues like this) but there are many who do (and, if you believe the computer industry experts, an increasingly larger share of the user market).  I would give HP tech support a phone call and tell them what you told us...then ask them how are they going to fix that problem?

 

Thank you for your thread.....it's enlightening.

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I don't think I ever said, or even implied, that Win 8 was the problem.  I did imply (which is really say) that the computer was the problem.  The manufacturers of laptops (and even some desktops) have features built into the machine that require specialized drivers for those features to work as the manufacturer of the computer wants.  Things like battery life are paramount to laptop manufacturers.  Instead of developing better batteries (which can cost a ton of money and time to develop) they ask the driver developers to help them out (I'm sure they pay the chipset folks a good deal of money for those drivers).  When you go the chipset manufacturer's driver site you can't get those specialized drivers (because the laptop manufacturer has exclusive rights to those drivers.....afterall the laptop folks paid a good deal of money to the driver folks to provide those drivers).  All that puts the cusumer in a really bad position........the laptop folks have to tell the driver folks what is needed, pay for it and then the laptop folks have to make it available for the cusumer.  An added time factor is involved (it takes a while for any software to be written, tested and released.......that could be months).  Meanwhile someone with the laptop is twisting in the wind waiting.

I put the blame squarely on the computer manufacturers.  The operating system developers and the driver developers are not the cause in any way, shape or fashion.

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Fabiano Dover wrote:

i think the title is a little misleading, it's not W8 what is the problem but your machine.

drivers for graphics are known causes for glitches for many years, not only after updates.

 

I have W8 on 3 machines and all work just as promessed.

Actually, the most common complaint about Win8 is that by default it replaces the manufacturer supplied video driver with a microsoft video driver. If Win8 is installed on a computer with the video hardware that Microsofrt had in mind, then you are able to skip an installation step.

So, the problem is not Win8 OR my machine. Nor is the problem present on my machine. But there are several people who do have this problem that they can't get certain "legacy" programs to work after dooing the win7 to win8 upgrade. I knew I was going to need to fix drivers going into the install. I was ready for it before purchasing my OS. The drivers that are supplied by the hardware company always work better than the ones that the OS provides, so you should update when switching OS'es even if there are no warnings or apparent issues.

The only part of this that disturbed me is that the fix was basically a "one click" method that the manufacturer of the hardware has put out. Essentially, all I needed was the newest release from AMD. I can think of no excuse for HP not to link it, and make "support assistant" and "hp advisor" auto-update this.

What bothers me, not in a technical sense, but in a "this is bad business" sense, is that the update wasn't available directly from HP. And it got me thinking that there's a chance that some people who are having issues are just expecting that the name attached to their computer is the place to go for these updates. It's a very logical thing to think, so in this case, you can't blame the user. Blame goes strictly to the "brand name." My experience hasn't soured me at all, but it did make me wonder how many people believe the myth that if an OS install doesn't go without a hitch that it won't work at all. It also makes me wonder how many people might shy away from HP purchases in the future simply because nobody informed them that they would have to go further "upstream" to get the proper driver.

So, I disagree about the title being misleading. I made this post in direct response to the number of threads started by people asking for help after a Win8 install. The point that I was trying to make is simply that sometimes an OS install is incomplete until you verify that you have the latest updates. And sometimes you need to figure out not who assembled the computer, but who manufactured the parts.

 

Peggy, your points about the potential pitfalls of driver installs is well taken. In my case, I knew that I would lose little if any functionallity.  In my post, I forgot to stress that it's important to get the driver for your EXACT hardware, made by and for the exact manufacturer of it. (eg, the drivers for a radeon 5000 series would probably have misbehaved on my machine in exactly the way you described. That's why I made sure that I got the proper driver for the mobililty radeon 4200, and the package included the latest release of the ATI Catalyst Control Center) I suppose that there are people who will have to take further steps than I did, such as locating the old Win7 .inf file and manually placing it where the generic Microsoft Win8 file resides. But I really meant this to show how simple it can be. Oh, and making backups is important. I think you were trying to hint at that too. Always set a restore point before you do anything with drivers, and before making any major changes to your OS.

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