Graphics Help

[Astinus]

I've been playing with Celestia now for nearly a month and just today I began having some strange problems. This has never happened before, and I have not installed or uninstalled anything recently.

As for my video drivers, they are the most recent released.

• Zooming in close to any object causes the program to lag, going at about 3 FPS.
• Attempting to enter full screen gives me an error that causes Celestia to close.

Within Celestia, my OpenGL information is:

Vendor: Microsoft Corporation
Renderer: GDI Generic
Version: 1.1.0
Max simultaneous textures: 1
Max texture size: 1024
Point size range: 0.500000 - 10.000000

Supported Extensions:
GL_WIN_swap_hint
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_paletted_texture

Shouldn't the renderer be my video card?

My computer information:

Microsoft Windows XP: Home Edition SP2
Pentium 4 2.2GHz
768 MB RAM
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
Driver Packaging Version: 8.205-060104a-029602C-ATI
CATALYST?® Version: 06.1
2D Driver Version: 6.14.10.6587
Direct3D Version: 6.14.10.0362
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.5529
AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version: 6.14.10.6238
AIW/VIVO WDM SP Driver Version: 6.14.10.6238

The error message that pops up is:

AppName: celestia.exe AppVer: 1.3.2.0 ModName: unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00000000

Now, sometimes it will actually go into full screen mode, however nothing discernable is display but random colors. The Celestia menu still functions at the top of the screen.

Another thing I've noticed is that, in the past, I couldn't see the drop down menu options unless I arrowed over them, as the screen render would overlap it. This does not happen anymore.

This all happened today, and I'm not sure how or why... I'm at a loss.

[selden]

Code: Select all

Renderer: GDI Generic

This means that something has caused your system to switch to using Microsoft's software OpenGL drivers instead of ATI's hardware drivers.

Try turning "hardware acceleration" all the way on.

Open the desktop properties menu (right-mouse-button-click anywhere in an open area of the desktip).
Select Properties (at the bottom)
In the "Display Properties" popup window,
Select the Settings tab
Select the Advanced button
In the new popup window,
Select the Troubleshoot tab
Move the "hardware acceleration" slider all the way to the right.
Select OK on both menus.

[Astinus]

Sorry, I forgot to mention in my post that I do have hardware accel. to max (all the way to the right.) I saw that in a few posts when I performed a search and made sure to double check it.

Oh, I've also uninstalled and reinstalled Celestia.

[selden]

For some reason, your system is not using the hardware graphics drivers. If it was using them, it would display "ATI", not "Microsoft Corporation, GDI Generic".

You need to deinstall the ATI graphics drivers,
reboot
then install the newest ones.

Don't try any shortcuts: the deinstall and reboot steps are required in order to make sure the current (broken) drivers are properly deleted.

[Astinus]

I'm giving up for tonight (or I guess this-morning... heh). I completed uninstalled all graphic drivers, rebooted, double checked to make sure the files were 100% gone, rebooted again because I love seeing the windows start up logo, then reinstalled the drivers... ...

... and besides getting a workout from having to dig up my old CRT monitor, I had no success. It is still doing what it was doing.

[selden]

If you are still getting the Microsoft drivers instead of the ATI drivers even though hardware acceleration is enabled, I don't know what to suggest. Something is very broken in the system software.

Maybe our resident PC expert (Don Edwards) might have some suggestions.