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Vista and Second Life

Well, I tried to run Second Life in Vista a got this:
Second Life Error in Vista

I clicked Yes and then got
Second Life Error in Vista 2

Who’s fault is this? Well according to Linden Labs, it’s ATI’s fault:

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

Answer
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 will detect as a “GDI Generic” instead. This message means that Second Life has detected no hardware OpenGL support.

It is 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. However, it does not appear that ATI has provided Vista drivers with OpenGL support. (Check ATI’s website; they may have updated drivers since then.)

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

As far as I can tell my driver’s up-to-date so I’m stuck. Anyone got an answer that will actually help?

Published by Michael Sauers

Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.

3 Replies to “Vista and Second Life”

  1. i have same problem, monitor plugged in to radeon card yet generic card comes up on sl.i tried installing win xp on pc but it wont let me, but i think thats the best way to do it, partition drive and try and add xp and sl to new drive.
    not sure if it will work, but will try
    chrisoxford rolls

  2. I have a similar problem but i did find the x1400 under ‘mobility radeon’ on the ati site. Second life still crashes though but there are drivers (apparently) for OpenGL on the ati 7.2 upgrade

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