Help !! Better card, 'old' MS opengl

[steve graham]

Any help on this would be much appreciated...

I've just had a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 card fitted to my PC I've installed the card opengl driver 'nvopengl.dll' (opengl ver 1.4) but unfortunately, Celestia is STILL picking up the old MS opengl driver 'opengl32.dll' (opengl ver 1.1). I've attempted to move and even delete the MS driver but it keeps on being created and is continuously being used instead of the card opengl driver.

So near and yet so far, I'm still waiting to use the 8k textures

Anybody out there solved this one ??

Incidentally, I'm running Windows Me with a 2GHz processor.

[selden]

Steve,

There are several reasons why you can't get it to work:
a) thre is more than one library required.
b)ME is protecting you from yourself (and viruses). It restores system libraries to their original states whenever it detects that they have been modified or are missing.
c) the MS 1.1 driver is what is used when you turn off hardware acceleration in the Display Manager, so you shouldn't delete it.

Solution: install the full Nvidia driver kit by running their all-in-one driver installation program. Don't try to install the drivers and libraries individually by hand.

A recent driver installation program should have been included on a CD that came with your graphics card. It's a single 13 MB program, not individual driver files. Either 40.72 or 41.6 should work fine.

Alternatively, go to the Web pagehttp://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp and download the most recent Nvidia installation program from there. Alternatively, you should be able to get a copy from the Web site of the manufacturer of your particular card. Don't get it from anywhere else: you don't know what you might be downloading.

Select Graphics Driver, GeForce and TNT, Windows 95/98/ME and Go
Then click on one of the 4 download sites, Accept the license, and then specify a reasonable download directory. After the download has finished,
run the installation program.

I hope this helps a little.

[steve graham]

Thanks Selden. I've re-installed my drivers from the NVIDIA website, rebooted the PC but unfortunatley still no joy. The OpenGL info under 'Help' in Celestia v 1.2.4 still points to the MS OpenGL driver v 1.1

[selden]

Did you check in the display manager to make sure that hardware acceleration is turned up all the way?

Use your Mouse to "Right-click" anywhere on the backdrop of your desktop.
Select Properties in the menu that pops up
Select the tab "Settings"
Select the button "Advanced"
The new pop-up window should be labeled something like "Default Monitor and NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200"
Select the tab "Troubleshhoot"
The "Hardware acceleratoin" slider should be all the way to the right.

Also, there should be a tab labelled "GeForce4 Ti4200". When you select it, you should be able to see all sorts of information about the card and associated drivers.

Does this help?

[steve graham]

Seldon, yes full acceleration is activated and all the appropriate drivers for the card appear to be there, including nvopengl.dll I'm really running out of options here. Is there anyway I can 'point' Celestia to the correct driver using a config file ?

[selden]

Steve,

My understanding is that Celestia just uses whatever library the operating system "provides". Unfortunately, you have now exceeded my knowledge of how ME handles such things.

Don Edwards is our resident expert on PC and Windows quirks: he installs and maintains them professionally. Maybe he can help. Presumably he'll notice this thread when next he logs in, although that may not be for a while. I do know that he has strong negative feelings about ME in general.

Sorry I can't help more: I use XP Professional on my home system these days.

[selden]

Steve,

I just realized that I've been making some perhaps unwarranted assumptions.

Did you remember to deinstall the complete driver kit for your old card before you iunplugged it? (using the add/remove software package in the Control Panel) If not, having old drivers in place often can cause problems. Trying to bypass the procedures that MS has so "kindly" provided often doesn't work well.

Also, did you do a full backup of your system before you changed video cards or some other procedure that'd make reverting to the previous machine state easy?

I'm trying to figure out how much work is involved in reverting your system to its previous condition so you can do the deinstall/reinstall "correctly". At this point, simply trying to remove the old drivers may cause even more problems.

To put it another way, given the way things are now, I'd have to suggest reinstalling ME from scratch and then instlling the Nvidia drivers.

I'm sure you didn't want to hear that, especially if you have a "packaged system" which can't be reinstalled without all the original hardware, not to mention lots of software you might have installed afterward.

I've gotten burned by similar situations often enough that I bought Ghost and always do a disk-to-disk copy before doing anything significant to my system. I don't know how many times I had to restore the system disk when I was trying to get a wireless card to function. (That was before I upgraded to XP, which "just worked".)

Maybe Don would have a better suggestion, short of upgrading to XP.

You have my sympathy.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey guys,
Well it sounds like you got yourself into one of my favorite Windows Me problems Steve. Ok hopefully Win ME set a restore point for you when you did install the drivers. But first. What kind of video card was in your system before you put the Ti4200 in. I need to know brand and video chip, like ATI, S3, Trident, SIS, ect.........
Now on to what I can help solve your problem. Go to your start menu and click start. Then go to accesories-system tools-system restore and click that. This should open a window for the system restore program. Now click on the restore button and look in the little calandar window that comes up in the next display. Look for the date you did your first install of the NVidia drivers. It should be there. If you see one that says NVidia drivers install, click on that and then click the next button. If you don't see anything about NVidia drivers then choose a restore point that is close enough to the day you put in your video card. Don't go back to far or will will risk loosing data. I would recomend backing up any new downloads and documents you have worked on recently as you could loose theose files and restore older ones in there place. Now after hitting the next button just follow the instructions from there. There should be an animated status bar moving along and then the system will reboot. After the reboot you should be back to way the system was before you instlled the NVidia drivers. Now at this point I don't know what card you had before or wether it was an integrated video. If it was a card you personaly removed from the system we are one step closer. If its a built in video chip there are definetly going to be more steps to take to fix this.
Now asuming this was an add in video card and you know who made it, go to the add-remove programs app in the control panel. Open it up and look in there for a listing that has your video cards name on it or at least its brand. If you see it in there select to remove it. After it is removed I would reboot the system just to make sure. Also look inside your C:\ drive for a folder baring the name of vender that made your video card. You hopefuly can find a folder like ATI, SIS, Matrox, ect..... If not we are going to have to hope that the unistall worked. Also right click on the MY Computer icon on your desktop and select properties. Inside there, click the hardware tab and hit the button named Device Manager or something real close to that. The name of this app changes from Win98/ME to Win XP so I don't no off the top of my head the actual name, and I do not have a running copy of ME around to pop into to check. But thats going to change. I have Virtual PC 5 and I am going to have a few diferent versions of Windows running under so I can help people out like this. Now back to troubleshooting.
Now I hope your familiar with this program. What we need to do is see what video card Windows ME thinks is in your system. Go down to display adapters and click the little plus sign. You should see either NVidia or just VGA compatble. If you see anything other than those than we have what I call Windows being stupid and not letting go of drivers. If you see just VGA compatible or NVidia then we are in bussiness. If you see anything about another video card or a second video card still being present but no drivers loaded than we have a problem. That means Windows thinks there is another video card in the system or you have built in graphics that needs to shut off in your Computers BIOS. If you had a removable video card and it says there is a phantom card, right click on it and select remove. Know I can't be shure but there should be a button toward the bottom of the windows that says refresh or shearch for new hardware. Click it see if the card comes back. If it does than there is driver garbage that was left behind in the registry and thats next to imposible to get rid of or you still have the activated in the system BIOS. So you will need to go into your systems BIOS and see if there is a selection for turning internal video off. Most likely there will be a setting for this. Ther are half a dozen diferent names for this so I can't give you spacific info on your BIOS. If the card stays gone then reinstall your NVidia drivers. I sugest downloading the newest from NVidia's site as the drivers that often come on OEM cds are generaly a few months old. Now after the reinstall and reboot, you still can't get Celestia to work right then I sugest doing a more formal back-up of your important files and after that is done put your Windows ME disc in and let the setup app start running. This will alow you to do a (dirty install) of Windows ME on top of your present install. My hope is that while Windows does its hardware detecting it flushes out the registry of the old info and puts all new entries in for you. This should give you an almost a clean slate. If after this and a reinstall of drivers, the drivers still don't work and you can't get Celestia to work in hardware accelerated mode than the final alternative is a full format and a clean install of Windows ME. I personaly wouldn't push Windows ME off on my enemy, well maybe I would. But if you insist that this is you OS of choice you are going to have to live with its known quirks. If given a percentage I would put Windows ME's proper functionality and satifaction rating at only 50%. Windows 98/98SE at about 75-80%, Windows 2000 at 80% and Windows XP at a strong 90%. Nothing gets a 100% not even my favorite operating system OS X gets a 100% satifaction rating. If you have the means and the money I would highly recomend you seriously give a thought to Windows XP. If you look around you can find the Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade from anywhere between $79 and $99 US funds. There really is no reason to go to the Pro version except that it has built in Multiple CPU usage built in and has a slightly better file storage and retrieval system. Other than that save some money and get Home Edition Upgrade. Its only real major downfall is that old DOS games don't run well under it, if at all. I have said it a few times before that I did get Duke Nukem to work beautifuly once under Windows XP but I will be darned if I can remember how I did it. Any older Windows/Driect X games should run just fine under Windows XP. I hope this helps you out some. If none of this Windows ME stuff works out than I can try to help you out from scratch. I will check back latter to see how things went.
Don

[Guest]

Selden, Don Many thanks for those suggestions. I've tried virtually everything you guys have suggested other than a 'dirty' reboot of ME. I'm convinced that the only graphics drivers on my disk are those of the NVIDIA Geforce type.

In view of what's been said I may have to upgrade to windows XP, but having already spent money on the Geforce 4 card, I'm probably going to do this as a last resort. Don, do you reckon that a simple upgrade to XP will cure the problem or are there any other suggestions before I consider this?

[Guest]

....Just bought and installed XP. Now everything works fine !!!!!

[Don. Edwards]

Sorry I couldn't get back to you before your purchase. I had to pull a 12 hour shift at work and I had my notebook computer dismantled for part of the night. I also forgot to bring my network card so I coudn't get on the internet to check the forums till I got home. I am very happy to here that the upgrade did indeed fix your troubles. I hopoe you didn't pay to much for XP and found it on sale or something. I figured it would probably fix your troubles simply because of its diferent way of treating hardware. I think the more you get used to XP the more you will like it and you should really enjoy loosing the crashing that came with the old Win9x core. Any other questions just post them I can always see what I can come up with.