Hardware New computer bluescreens when starting orbiter.

[Linguofreak]

The good news: I have a new computer that performs much better than my previous dinosaur.

The bad news: Orbiter manages to bluescreen XP (which I understand is a fairly big accomplishment) every time I try running it, without fail. The launchpad runs fine, but when I tried launching a scenario with AndyMc's Jupiter V-X it bluescreened and had to be rebooted. I wasn't really expecting that, so I wasn't paying enough attention to tell exactly when, but when I tried running the "Cape Canaveral" scenario it loaded the scenario fine, then bluescreened within a second and had to be restarted.

WinXP, 3.25 gigs RAM, 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics card with 256 megs of video memory.

EDIT: Tried a third time and wrote down the error details on the bluescreen:

*** STOP 0x0000008E (0x00000005, 0xBFC367AE, 0xA94----C, 0x00000000)
***ati3duag.dll - Address BFC367AE base at BFB2E000, Datestamp 46eb3954


The hex string with the four dashes in it (0xA94----C) was garbled to unreadability by a small black and yellow spot, so I put dashes in for the unreadable characters.

 

[Tommy]

Appears to be caused by the video drivers. ATI drivers are the reason I switched to NVidea. Perhaps try the catalyst drivers.

 

[Linguofreak]

What are catalyst drivers? Some type of 3rd party driver I assume?

In any case, I figured out what settings cause the bluescreen:

If I select a 3D device in the orbiter launchpad that uses "T&L HAL" (Either just "Direct3D T&L HAL" or "Direct3D T&L HAL (ATI Radeon HD 2400XT)"), I get a bluescreen. Other video modes will run, but poke holes in spacecraft and terrain.

 

[Tommy]

Catalyst drivers are officially supported by ATI, or at least were. Since ATI was bought out by AMD I'm not sure anymore. If you are using the latest drivers from ATI, try rolling back to an older driver that may be less beta-ish.

 

[TSPenguin]

ATI drivers indeed are a major PITA. You should try going through earlier version and try alternative drivers until you get your T&L mode working. It is what actualy makes use of your graphics cards abilities. It might also very well be that enabling anti aliasing and other image enhancing filtering won't work outside the T&L mode.

Are other T&L softwares working right?
Is there a difference between windowed and fullscreen mode?

 

[Linguofreak]

Catalyst drivers are officially supported by ATI, or at least were. Since ATI was bought out by AMD I'm not sure anymore. If you are using the latest drivers from ATI, try rolling back to an older driver that may be less beta-ish.

By going to the settings tab under display properties, hitting advanced, going to the adapter tab, hitting properties, and going to the driver tab, I'm getting a driver version of 8.420.0.0, and a driver date of 9/14/2007. It seems to be the standard ATI driver.


-----Post Added-----

Are other T&L softwares working right?

Such as what? I hardly play any commercial games anymore, so Orbiter is about the most graphics intensive program I'm using at the moment (A fair bit of the stuff I play nowadays is 2D). I do have X-Plane 7 sitting on my CD rack. Would that use T&L? If so, I'll check it in the morning.

 

[TSPenguin]

You should get ATItool. It is designed to test the stability of your card and is freely available. This will also give you a chance to see if the cooling works alright.

 

[Tommy]

That my be the Microsoft Generic ATI driver, go to ATI's website and get driver's from them. Also, get that ATItool and see what it tells you.

 

[jarmonik]

WinXP, 3.25 gigs RAM, 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics card with 256 megs of video memory.

Radeon HD 2400 XT is very low performance graphics card. That could be used by laptops those are not disigned for gaming or running 3D graphics. It doesn't match the orher specs of your computer.

This is pretty good source of graphics card information: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0

 

[streb2001]

If you have a bit of spare cash, I can recommend a NVidia 7600GS 256MB. My oldish PC (1.8GHz Athlon) has onboard graphics that ran Orbiter OK. Upgraded to that card and the difference was staggering even though it is by no means a top spec card. Best 50 notes spent in a long time.

 

[TSPenguin]

For a very comprehensive comparison of graphics card I can recommend the VGA charts of tomshardware.com

 

[Linguofreak]

I just saw a tab in my advanced display properties window that I had boneheadedly overlooked: "ATI Catalyst(R) Control Center".

Which seems to indicate rather strongly that I do in fact have the catalyst drivers here.

And, looking at the Catalyst control center, I think I've found my problem:

"Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0532"

According to Wikipedia, Direct3D 7 was the first to have hardware T&L support.

EDIT: Nope. That apparently is a version number for something having to do with Direct3D, but not direct 3D itself. I installed DirectX 9, and dxdiag isn't having any trouble testing Direct 3D 9 functionality, and Orbiter still isn't running right, so it's not that.


-----Post Added-----


Here's a thought: Does anybody think I might have better luck with one of the OVP clients?

 

[streb2001]

Is your PC's power supply up to the job? Is the graphics card's cooling system OK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop_dust.jpg

A bit like mine when it was crapping out last year. Fixed with a vacuum cleaner.

 

[Linguofreak]

Is your PC's power supply up to the job? Is the graphics card's cooling system OK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop_dust.jpg

A bit like mine when it was crapping out last year. Fixed with a vacuum cleaner.

It seems to be a software problem. We just got the thing yesterday, so dust shouldn't be a problem (and I'm not hearing the fan running overmuch, in fact, I have to put my ear right up to this machine to hear as much noise from it as I hear from our older machine across the room), and other than Orbiter not running in T&L mode, and there being glitches in non-T&L graphics, it seems to be running pretty well. I get good framerates in Orbiter despite the glitches, and X-plane seems to run fine with the best framerates I've ever seen from it, neither of which I would expect with overheating or power supply problems. I'd expect those to cause the machine to bog down. As it is, it's processing things quickly, but, at least in Orbiter, it's processing them wrong, which makes me suspect that the card is fine but the drivers are giving it bad instructions as to what to do. (I prefixed the thread as a hardware problem, didn't I? On second thought, I should have prefixed it as software).

 

[TSPenguin]

Did you try other driver versions yet?

 

[Linguofreak]

Did you try other driver versions yet?

Just installed the latest driver version (the version that came with the machine was so old the ATI site didn't even list it anymore), and T&L is working.

W00t!

 

[TSPenguin]

Congratulations

 

[Keatah]

for the hole-poking-texture issue, try 16 bit vs 32 bit. you might need to run in 16 bit mode.. whatever it takes..

 

[Linguofreak]

for the hole-poking-texture issue, try 16 bit vs 32 bit. you might need to run in 16 bit mode.. whatever it takes..

I solved this issue several days ago. 16 vs. 32 bit mode had nothing to do with it.