A little help please?

[chris]

Must just be something about the 7900?

Does anybody else here use one?

I do nearly all of my Celestia development on a system with a 7900 GTX and it works great.

--Chris

[selden]

Celestia Forum member Boux uses a 7950 GX2, for what that's worth.

[cartrite]

Parminio wrote:

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

I don't think you would have seen that if Microsoft's driver was either uninstallled or disabled. You would see something like this or Celestia would probally fail to run at all.
I wrote:

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Renderer: GeForce FX 5500/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!

Version: 2.0.1

Max simultaneous textures: 4

Max texture size: 4096

Point size range: 1.000000 - 63.375000

I remember way back when I first got my graphics card, device manager showed 2 drivers. Nvidia and Microsoft. Back then one of Nvidia's instrutions for installing drivers was to uninstall all drivers first. So that is what I did to get everything working. I remember it was tricky to get the damn card working. I was probally forgeting some small detail.

If your device manager shows 2 drivers you should right click on the Microsoft driver and choose properties/disable or properties/uninstall. Then run Celestia and if there are still problems, reinstall your Nvidia drivers.

cartrite

[Parminio]

If your device manager shows 2 drivers you should right click on the Microsoft driver and choose properties/disable or properties/uninstall. Then run Celestia and if there are still problems, reinstall your Nvidia drivers.

That's what's driving me nuts. The only thing it has shown from the beginning is Nvidia. I don't see Microsoft anywhere at all. I've uninstalled and re-installed 3 different Nvidia packages trying to get it to work and no dice.

The only odd thing I can mention is this:

When Nvidia starts its install, it gives the typical warning that "This is not signed by Microsoft". I click the install anyway. After it's said and done, at the bottom of the driver details, it says under digital signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher, BUT the provider is listed as Nvidia.

I find it odd that it warns you the driver isn't signed, yet after it's installed it is.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks for all the help and patience, guys. I've been looking for software like this forever. The only thing I ever had was Redshift 3 if that tells you anything.

Regards,
Parminio

[cartrite]

Which driver version are you currently using?

Did you try all this?

Driver Installation Hints

* "Download Accelerator" utilities should be disabled when downloading any drivers.

* Do not run virus protection software in the background while installing the drivers. This prevents the driver from configuring itself properly.

* Before installing new drivers make sure you uninstall all NVIDIA display drivers from the Windows Control Panel. Browse to the Start Menu > Windows Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs and search for "NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers" or "NVIDIA Display Drivers" and select remove.

[selden]

Unfortunately, you aren't providing all the details of what you do when you deinstall the old driver and then install the new driver. It's one of those "unimportant" details that is going wrong.

Please answer this question:
Did you install the new driver on top of the old one or did you use Add/Remove Programs to remove the old driver software first?

Installing on top of the old one never works.
You must deinstall the old driver and reboot before attempting to install the new driver.

Rebooting the system releases the file lock on the driver file itself. Otherwise it does *not* get replaced.

After rebooting and logging in to an Administrator account you might consider running Driver Cleaner Pro to get rid of all traces of the old drivers from the Registry.
http://www.drivercleaner.net/
I've never had to use it, so I can't say how good it actually is.

Then install the new driver using Nvidia's installation program.

After you've installed the new driver package and *rebooted again*, run glview and tell us *in detail* what it says about the versions of OpenGL routines that it finds.

[Parminio]

Guys...no offense...but I'm not stupid.

Yes, I use the control panel to uninstall the drivers. Yes, I reboot to complete the un-install. Yes, I cancel the windows installer after it reboots. Yes, I disable Norton Anti-Virus. Yes, I install the file:91.47_forceware_winxp2k_english_whql.exe from the NVidia site. Yes, I reboot the system. Yes, it installs the card properly.

There is ONLY Nvidia 7900GT/GTO listed in the device manager. In fact, here you go:







Everything on my system works great. I did find that GPL (Grand Prix Lengends) deffinately runs in OpenGL. I run it wide open at 1600 x 1200. (Of course, it's an older game, so it's not too graphically intense.) I also fired up NASCAR 2003 and used OpenGL and it runs as good as it does in D3D.

I'm completely stimied. I guess I'll just have to suck it up and use the older computer for now.

Regards,
Parminio

[selden]

GPL's OpenGL support is provided by a patch. There's also a separate patch for it to use DirecX. Considering its age, I suspect it is very unlikely to use any recent OpenGL features, so that Microsoft's v1.1 software will seem to work fine.

You still haven't told us what glview says about the OpenGL driver. My guess is that it will see only the v1.1 software routines provided by Microsoft and not the v2.1 hardware routines provided by Nvidia.

Have you tried running the Driver Cleaner program to clean up the registry?

[Parminio]

It still list the 1.1 version in the help dialogue.

Now you've mentioned something I'm not educated about: The Driver Cleanup program???

Regards,
Parminio

[selden]

Please read up above. Driver Cleaner Pro removes registery entries for previous drivers.

Also, please get and run glview, also described above. It will list the OpenGL driver features and test each level of compatibility with a rotating cube, somewhat like Microsoft's DXDiag program.

[Parminio]

Will do. Back in a few.

Thanks,
Parminio

[selden]

Oh, and one other thing: you haven't said anything about (or shown a picture of) the hardware acceleration slider. Of course, it should be all the way to the right. When the slider is all the way to the left, it disables the hardware OpenGL and switches to using Microsoft's software v1.1 OpenGL library, which is consistant with what Celestia is reporting.

[cartrite]

Hey man, I don't think your stupid. Computers can drive anyone crazy. I am just trying to figure out your problem without being there. Here are a couple of screenhots of my Nvidia contol panel and the Hardare accelerator Selden was talking about. I know I have a different card but....

The hardware slider is showing the spot where Open Gl stopped working. It should be full to the right a Selden mentioned.





cartrite

[Parminio]

None of it worked. I did it all, per the instructions.

One thing I did notice: My card is NOT listed in the OpenGL utility at all. The 7900 is, but the 7900 GT, GTO, GS, GTX are not.

The utility also shows that I top out at OpenGL 1.2.

I used driver cleaner and cleaned every possible option. All of it. Just to be on the safe side.

Yes, I was in safe mode. Yes, I printed out the read me and followed the directions.

No result. All the same.

I really wanted this program to work on my system. Like I said before, guess I'll have to stick with the older, slower system. It's the only thing that works.

Funny, that. A Video card now worth 40 dollars tops outperforms a video card worth 400 dollars.

Then again, you can't even get Oblivion to start up on the other system. It simply can NOT run it. At all.

Guess the wife is just going to HALF to accept the fact that I'm going to be spending some time on her system. I've simply GOT to have this software. I've been looking for something like this all my life.

I thank all of you. Honestly.

No matter. I'll use my old system (the wife's) and enjoy it when I can. I'm the one that sits up and watches Cosmos by Carl Seagan on Discovery Channel. (Fact is, I saved my allowance for 4 months to by the book back when I was a kid. I've still got it.)

Thanks again to all who tried so hard to help.

Parminio

[symaski62]

Hey man, I don't think your stupid. Computers can drive anyone crazy. I am just trying to figure out your problem without being there. Here are a couple of screenhots of my Nvidia contol panel and the Hardare accelerator Selden was talking about. I know I have a different card but....

The hardware slider is showing the spot where Open Gl stopped working. It should be full to the right a Selden mentioned.

A =>



cartrite

A =>
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

1 fps

[cartrite]

I know this will probally be seen as a dumb suggestion, but try to find anything related to the video system or graphics acceleration in your bios.

[Malenfant]

I know this will probally be seen as a dumb suggestion, but try to find anything related to the video system or graphics acceleration in your bios.

Might be worth a shot, but if the card's being detected properly in Windows then the BIOS is unlikely to fix anything. This looks like a software issue, it looks like something is being disabled somewhere. It is rather baffling though, it looks like the 7900GTX should support Open GL 2.0 with no problem.

Parminio - have you tried cycling through the display modes (using Ctrl+V) in Celestia? What modes show up when you try that?

(and BTW, nobody here thinks you're stupid - but we have to go through all the options for you to try here, even if you think they're obvious).

[cartrite]

Keep an eye on this thread. It sounds like they may be related problems.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=19125

[Parminio]

Parminio - have you tried cycling through the display modes (using Ctrl+V) in Celestia? What modes show up when you try that?

When I hit control V, nothing happens.

Regards,
Parminio

p.s. I'm on my way to try to help that fellow with Oblivion problems. Something is DEFFINATELY up there as I run it wide open and it's flawless.[/b]

[cartrite]

I read in some other threads of that fourmn that some people were having problems with 7900 gtx cards and the 9x.xx series of drivers. Try driver 84.21.

Edit: You don't have an SLI motherboard, do you?