Windows 8 and graphics card problems

[Joanne Galicia]

I have played sl for years and know that it used to work on my current laptop fine (although previously with windows 7). I upgraded to Windows 8 a short while ago. Had no problems at all, everything went smoothly. I play WoW and that plays fine, amongst many other things that have run as before without any glitches.

I tried to load second life the other day for the first time since going to windows 8 and I got an error message: - 

"Second Life is unable to run because your video card drivers did not install properly, are out of date, or are for unsupported hardware. Please make sure you have the latest video card drivers and even if you do have the latest, please try reinstalling them."

I have spent the last few days trying alsorts. I have done the enter safe mode, uninstall, reinstal new drivers etc. I have updated the drivers to the latest available. I have tried to run the main sl viewer, Phoenix Viewer and Singularity Viewer and all show the same message. 

Any ideas anyone?!

 

Im on Windows 8 Pro OS

Intel i5 M 430 @ 2.27GHz 

4.00 GB RAM  64 bit OS x64 based processor

ATI Mobility Radeo HD 5000 WDDM v 1.20

[Cincia Singh]

Try this: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalystlegacywin8.aspx

[Joanne Galicia]

Hey,

Thanks, but I have the HD 5000 card. I have updated the new driver from that site for the HD 5000 - 

 

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

[Rolig Loon]

It may be your Intel M 430 chip. It's a little over three years old now.  Some older Intel graphics controller chips will not support OpenGL (the graphics system that is the basis for Second Life) on Windows 8 at all. If the M 430 is one of those that Intel no longer provides upgrades for, you might check with Microsoft Windows Update to see if they have one.

[Ansariel Hiller]

Intel M430 is the CPU.

[Rolig Loon]

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Ansariel Hiller wrote:

Intel M430 is the CPU.

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Right you are. My head is in Sunday mode.  Forget I said it.

[Joanne Galicia]

lol yep and no worries!

I dont think there is any other problems with anything being out of date etc though as I could get into sl one day, upgraded to windows 8 and then couldnt get onto sl the next day. At that point I was using the same version of sl viewer etc as before.
Since then I have reinstalled the newer version of sl veiwer (and the beta viewer, and firestorm, and singularity in some vain hope) 

Im starting to get really fed up now and I have no idea what is wrong let alone where to start in fixing it. 

Any advice/suggestions very very welcome!

[Joanne Galicia]

It is an Acer Aspire 5742 if that helps in any way!

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Joanne Galicia wrote:

It is an Acer Aspire 5742 if that helps in any way!

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Something isn't right. The specs on that computer say that it has Intel graphics and there's no such thing as a Radeon HD 5000 - 5000 is a series number and the actual card would have a number like 5570.

[161488303349]

would seem that is not switching to use the AMD 5xxx series video card driver and can only see the Intel HD graphics

this can sometimes be caused by your Intel drivers not being up-to-date for Win8.

check all your Intels here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

don't rely on Microsoft Win8 Update for drivers. the generic drivers for WIn8 default install and still on Win8 Update are hopeless out of date now for lots of computers if having problems with drivers on Win8 then best to check directly on the manufacturers website

+

lots of games can run on the Intel HD. is maybe why you haven't noticed yet before now

[UsikuFarasi Kanarik]

Just a cautionary word on trying to use SL on an upgraded Windows 8 computer, especially if it is an all-in-one that allowed SL to run when it had Windows 7 OS...you just might have to bite the bullet and but a midtower desktop in order to run SL again, as most all-in-ones tend not to have room to allow a GPU upgrade.

Personal experience...I bought an Acer Veriton Z290G (don't laugh, at the time it was an emergency purchase in a cash-challenged timeframe). Anyway, when this system was a Windows 7 64-bit machine, SL did run on it, not great, but I could do things and interact with online folks.  Then, I had the chance to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro 64-bit for a mere $40.  Yes, I was nervous, new way of doing things, the question of if I could adapt to a Start Screen instead of a Start Menu, yadda, yadda.  Decided to take the plunge.  Did the upgrade, spent about a day flipping out over getting used to a new way of doing things, but them settled down to just using the new OS.

 Old standbys like Skype, WoW, Office (yes, I also bit on going to the new Office 2013), running tools like CCleaner and MalwareBytes, Nero, scanner software, printer software, network printer, a couple of other games -- all just worked.  THEN I tried SL.  I thought I was home free when I logged on and started chatting with an online friend.  But no...SL barfed after about 4 minutes.  I logged on again, and SL strangled after two minutes.  Tried a third time...and SL threw up it's virtual hands in gibbering madness - I saw that dreaded message about unsupported driver/unknown hardware.

Well, I wondered if I could run Windows 7's driver software instead... found that the onboard card is an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150, downloaded the most recent-dated one from Intel's website...and discovered that the driver in Windows 8 for that card is marked as newer than the newest one for Windows 7.  Got cold feet at this point...I've neither trying running the older driver, nor have I tried downgrading back to Windows 7 64-bit.  I DID try installing and running FireStorm, and that proggie suicided even faster that SL's base v3 viewer did.

I am just going to have to suck eggs until I can get another computer that I can UPGRADE in more ways than just RAM.  Da**it, I actually LIKE Windows 8...  *sighs*