1. Anyone who is upgrading to a new Microsoft OS within the first few weeks is simply asking for problems.

Posted at 4:24PM on Feb 5th 2007 by Bernabe Fugazi

2. I HAD this same problem with a NVIDIA GeForce FX5500. I had tried to download the lates drivers, but that told me that the driver was not copatible with my card. I actually corrected the problem by searching the Knowledge Base under my card and they had a link in the KB for the correct NVIDIA driver version for my card. In the case of the FX5500 card, you can find the link at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_96.85.html

I have been running a Beta copy of Vista for months whith a few NVIDIA based cards with SL and have had good luck. The actual release was where I had the hickup - which thankfully I could correct.

Posted at 4:47PM on Feb 5th 2007 by KC

3. same here - vista upgraded my ati drivers on auto update but sl wont have it

ati have no drivers "per-se" pre radeon 9500 - so even though vista recognises and allows me to use the dual monitor capability on my (9200) card sl says no can do...

Posted at 5:01PM on Feb 5th 2007 by mrlk

4. Yes, if your graphics card hasn't had a new driver written for it, it won't run and SL under Vista. Neither ATI or NVidia have done a good job with this. My machine, which runs SL perfectly under both XP and Linux, won't run SL under Vista.

Posted at 5:35PM on Feb 5th 2007 by Ian Betteridge

5. I am unfortunately another victim of this. Something in the API of querying the device name between RC2 and RTM/Retail of Vista broke SL's ability to detect video card types properly. It was working in beta, RC1 and RC2. RTM/Retail is a no-go. Even with the most current "Official" drivers from Nvidia, as well as the new beta drivers (Version 100.xxx as of Jan. 30th no less), SL fails to recognize it. I know the recognizing routing is fairly simply in that it call's for basically the Device name, and runs some regex's against it (text search routines) and then enables or disables certain visual features and capabilities based upon that.

The way to fix it should not be _TOO_ hard, but I will have to look at the source to the First Look viewer to see if I can figure it out.

Posted at 9:34PM on Feb 5th 2007 by Kylinae Worthington

6. I've been getting a lot of this while I'm on Live Help. severe fear and uncertainity about this, and I have the strangest feeling the problem may have something to do with Vista's insane insistance on ursurping OpenGL with a funky DirectX 10 wrapper. :(

Regardless, atm I can't find it in my heart to recommend that anyone go Vista.

\This issue is putting a crink in her considerations to upgrading her laptop. (any laptop made now by a reputable vendor would have Vista installed... )

Posted at 1:29AM on Feb 6th 2007 by Patchouli Woollahra

7. There is a work around for any NVidia Driver for Vista. Because all NVidia GPU's do use a generic driver that is tweaked in the GFX card specific install while building the driver package.

Check out http://www.omegadrivers.net/nvidia.php or http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ for modded .inf files so you can use the latest forceware drivers on any card.

I used this trick to get my notebook with a NVidia Quadro NVS110M going with the Vista RC1 and RC2, because the Nvidia driver from Microsoft in RC1 prevented me even from installing Vista.

I don't know if it works the same way for Vista RTM but i guess it would (I am still on RC2 build 5744). Once you have installed the tweaked driver, run SL and you will see the generic driver warning is gone.

Although it might be that SL is still giving you the wrong information about the GFX card's memory size. (eg. mine says it has only 64, while SL on XP [dual boot] reports 256 with the official Nvidia driver).

Try this, I bet it would help.

Posted at 2:08AM on Feb 6th 2007 by JW Russell

8. I had the same problem. I poked around on the NVidia website and found a link to a beta version of forceware vista drivers from this link:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_100.59.html

I installed these and SL runs fine now. I havent noticed any real side effects except after reboot I got some extra "Multimedia Video Controller" device detected and Vista cant find drivers for it. It doesnt seem to be breaking anything though.

I havent tested any other games except SL yet.

BTW my card is a GeForce6800 128MB.

Posted at 2:08PM on Feb 6th 2007 by shirokuro

9. Try running SL on a new Macintosh! I plugged my new mac in and it asked me to connect a firewire cable to my old machine - in a short time it was done syncing everything and I was up and happily bounding around SL without a problem! So perfect I'd swear it was my old machine except for much better performance and smokin' new OS! Now I can run SL, use Photoshop, Browse the web, and burn DVDs all at once! WOOT! Loves me new intel-mac! (dancing)

Posted at 4:41PM on Feb 6th 2007 by BillyGatesGruff

10. My Dell has a Nvidia Geforce 7400 that quit working with Vista too. I couldn't find anything to fix it at Nvidia's site but with a little searching I found a new Vista compatible driver at the Dell site. It looks like it works with lots of different NVidia cards. Here it is http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R142930&SystemID=XPS_M1210&os=WLH&osl=en&deviceid=10540&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=190734

Hope that helps,

If the link doesn't work just follow the Dell Support Drivers link for the M1210. That's how I got to it.

Posted at 5:56AM on Feb 9th 2007 by JD Voom

11. can anyone help me? I have an ati 1650/1700 on my vista that says it's open gl... right now, if I click on it, it goes to never never land.... doesn't even show up as being blocked after a second of loading. I've deleted and reinstalled the program several times. Also, could I just put another game card in the second slot and switch over or disable the duo feature when playing? (sigh) not a tech head, as you can tell, but sure trying to figure this out. HELP? ANYBODY?

Posted at 10:32AM on Mar 4th 2007 by Cat

12. Have vista running on my Compaq Presario V5000 laptop, It has ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 series display adapter. I've downloaded and installed the latest ATI/Vista drivers and everything seems to work fine, apart from SL.

Checked DXDIAG.EXE and all seems to be fine, so come on SL, sort it out or you will be loosing customers.

Posted at 12:46PM on Mar 8th 2007 by Ste

13. I have just purchased a new computer... HP pavilion a1720n ... with WINDOWS VISTA HOME EDITION. I wanted to have a superior image quality so i also purchased a GEFORCE 7600gs video card. At the beggining i had alot of problems with it...always restarting windows and wasnt running in the right size. I went onto NDIVIA site and picked up a VISTA update for my 7000 series card....just make sure the you know how many bits your Vista is running...because it makes a difference! 32 or 64 bits! Mine was 64...now my problem is solved. *** BUT i am experiencing a NEW problem in Second Life.....It started about 3 days ago. I log onto SL and then about 5-10 minits into the game it just crashes! I dont know what the problem is....my connection is high speed DSL (and never had problems with it before) What i will try is to RE-INSTALL Second Life to see that its not because of the default settings that i have changed that might be creating this problem!.... please keep me updated on any UPDATES for VISTA or anything at all about SL for that matter! TY SL COMMUNITY! ;-) see you in-world. Midnightrush Kidd

Posted at 10:21PM on Apr 23rd 2007 by Midnightrush

14. I had a problem with my new toshiba laptop running xp, so i upgraded to vista, losing my drivers for my nvidia i think, now whenever i try to install a driver it says could not find driver compatible with hardware or something like that.

Posted at 7:59PM on May 5th 2007 by cam