Celestia only runs once per session

[NigelB]

Hello,

I've searched the forum but can't find anything matching this problem. I suspect this is a graphic driver issue, but I'd appreciate any comments.

When I start up my machine and run Celestia, it works beautifully. When I close Celestia (either through the File-Exit option or simply closing the window down) I don't see any error messages or odd behaviour. Celestia disappears from the processes list and the memory is free. However, if I try running Celestia again later in the session, the program appears in the Processes list of the task manager (usually taking up 18,036 K of memory and no CPU cycles), but no window appears, no taskbar tab - absolutely nothing. I've tried disabling antivirus, firewall, all other background tasks, changing screen resolution, colour bit depth, memory allocation priorities and everything listed in the preliminary FAQ, but nothing allows me to run more than once per session - apart from disabling hardware acceleration, which kills the performance to the point of being unusable. A reboot works well too...!

I know disabling acceleration gets around OpenGL problems, but I'm puzzled that I *can* run with full acceleration, once per session. I also find that dowloading other GeForce drivers cures the problem - but I'm running on a laptop with 1200 x 800 display, and the alternative drivers are not for this OEM application - they only allow me to run in 1200 x 768 mode. There are no updates for the OEM version of the driver yet. (This is what makes me think it's a driver issue and I'll have to wait for another release - but the nVIDIA website makes a big deal about Celestia, and I'm suprised this problem hasn't been spotted before; I'm not running an obscure, custom machine configuration.)

Any suggestions welcome! (My system specs are listed below).

Thanks.


Sony S3XP laptop, 2GHz processor, 1200 x 800 display.
nVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 graphic card, 128MB onboard memory plus the ability to use shared system memory. Driver version 7.0.8.7.
1024 MB System memory
Windows XP SP2
Celestia 1.3.2 (Also tried 1.4.0-pre-FT-1.2 ,and 1.3.2pre9 available on the nVidia website)
DirectX 9.0c (diagnostics all OK).

[selden]

I'd suggest upgrading your Nvidia device drivers as soon as you can. Contact the manufacturer of your laptop and try to get them to make them available sooner rather than later. The manufacturer is responsible for them since most integrated graphics chipsets are used with proprietary "glue" chips.

Celestia uses OpenGL, not DirectX.
The OpenGL component of the Nvidia hardware drivers that Microsoft ships with DirectX is buggy. Whenever you upgrade DirectX, you have to reinstall Nvidia's own drivers afterward.

Disabling hardware acceleration reverts to Microsoft's own very limited OpenGL software library, losing a lot of the eye-candy.