Total crash of Celestia after 1.3.2 pre5 installation

[Darkmiss]

Glad to hear it Andrea, Welcome back

Good pickup on the dll file Don

[Don. Edwards]

Let me chime in here about the NVidia drivers. First they are not called Detonator drivers any longer they are called Forceware drivers. The Forceware 56.64 version drivers, of all their drivers over the last year, these I have found not to recommend. After installing them and rebooting I got an NTkernel panic. After going back in safe mode and trying the installer again I got the same thing. So I again went into safe mode and reinstalled the previous Forceware 53.03 version and I was back up and running. I don't know why they wouldn't work as I have one of NVidia's newest cards. I guess I have to wait for the next release.
Just though I would point out that there may be a problem with the Forceware 56.64 drivers for some users. I wouldn't want you install them and think your systems tanked on you. And if you do install the 56.64 drivers and your system gets buggy just reboot into safe mode and go back to the Forceware 53.03 driver set. They are rock solid and work beautifully for me for months now. Than again you may not have any problems at all.

Another thing to consider Andrea, is to never except any NVidia video drivers from Microsoft’s update site as they are always several generations older than what you can get from NVidia's web site. Also if the updater did any kind of update to your Direct X files this is a sure fire bet that it effected your NVidia drivers. As a standing rule always install any Direct X updates before you install your video drivers. As a computer tech you learn these things very fast. The things you are describing in your posts do sound like this could be because of a Direct X update. I saw very similar thing happening a few months back when I updated from Direct X 9.a to 9.b. Celestia wouldn't load and it kept giving me that the error was in the NVidia OpenGL drivers. A simple reinstall of the drivers and this fixed the problem. Hopefully this will help you debug your system.

Don. Edwards

[ANDREA]

The things you are describing in your posts do sound like this could be because of a Direct X update. I saw very similar thing happening a few months back when I updated from Direct X 9.a to 9.b. Celestia wouldn't load and it kept giving me that the error was in the NVidia OpenGL drivers. A simple reinstall of the drivers and this fixed the problem. Hopefully this will help you debug your system. Don. Edwards

Hello Don, you are right, as usual.
Some days ago I downloaded from MS a lot of upgrades for WIN XP, and among them there was one for Direct X.
Now it's clear, and next time BEFORE installing new Nvidia drivers I'll check and install eventual Direct X upgrades.
By the way, I have the doubt that the 56.64 is dedicated to FX cards, if it's so may be that it doesn't work correctly on Ti cards like mine.
Thank you again for your kind explanation.
From a happy Celestia user, by

Andrea

[Don. Edwards]

Andrea,
That is the funny thing. I have an FX card and the 56.64's do not work with it at all. XP will not even get to the logon screen and it crashes. As these were new drivers they should be suporting my new card just fine bu they arn't. BTW they do work on my brother's lowly GeForce4 MX. Idn't that the pits.
Oh well the 53.03 driver so work just fine and the new FX goodies that Chris had implemented work very nicely.

Don. Edwards

[TERRIER]

Don E / Andrea

I know it's no consolation to you, but I'm having no problems with the new 56.64 drivers.
All is working fine, and there are some more options available to me when clicking on the taskbar icon. This includes a list of screen resolution settings, and an "analog display" option which lets you go to the main driver settings and select some more advanced (and probably useless ) features.

regards
TERRIER