Vista stops displaying textures in FFXI (and GTA3: SA)

[Valyana]

This is very mysterious. A few days ago I had been playing GTA: San Andreas, exited to convert a .WAV to .M4A in iTunes (which had trouble opening for some reason), then went back to GTA and it was completely messed up; the loading screens had been replaced with blank white screens, and the menu was just gray blobs. Actually trying to start a game just failed.

I then discovered that FFXI had been hit by the same issue: text becomes unreadable, and nothing in the 3d field has any textures applied.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...211_124719.png

I've tried everything I can think of to fix this. I rolled back to a System Restore point from the previous day, reinstalled GTA:SA, reinstalled the graphics drivers (running guru3d driverclean between uninstall and reinstall), tried earlier and later versions of the graphics drivers, updated the chipset drivers, updated Vista to SP1, installed the latest DirectX redistributable package. Uninstalled iTunes and its associated programs, uninstalled the CCCP codec pack and various other programs I wasn't using.

I was about ready to decide it was a hardware problem and work on sending the video card back, but I tried installing XP on a separate platform and discovered to my surprise that FFXIBench3 works fine there, so it must be a software issue.

Any ideas? The wierdest thing about this is that every other game I've tried works fine, it's just these two that are broken.

Computer info:
Intel DP35DP mobo
2G RAM
Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0Ghz
Visiontek Radeon HD 3850
Vista Home Premium

[Shuemue]

<insert generic reply about upgrading to XP>

[Rags]

<insert generic reply about upgrading to XP>

I'll run Windows ME before I ever run Vista...

[Grandcross]

why?

[Shuemue]

because Vista offers no extra functionality or performance increase in 99.9% of situations

[Reality]

because Vista offers no extra functionality or performance increase in 99.9% of situations

one thing vista does that's invaluable for people like me, who run multiple monitors, is it supports full hardware acceleration across both screens. it's awesome when you can play FFXI on one screen at full framerate (whatever that may be, given FFXI's poorly coded engine), and supreme commander on my other screen

you can't do that with XP

also, while playing FFXI windowed, if for whatever reason I decide I wanna move the FFXI window to the other monitor, I can. Windows XP has a Primary/Secondary environment where only the Primary screen has full hardware acceleration. Moving the FFXI window to the secondary monitor under XP forces it to run at about 2-3FPS

i'm used to Vista now and I have no beefs with it, except for one problem with RAID controllers + 4GB of ram, but that's not an issue most would have using this OS

[Shuemue]

Hey guys, meet the 0.1%!

[Rags]

Hey guys, meet the 0.1%!

lol

[Reality]

Hey guys, meet the 0.1%!

i'd say you're vastly underestimating how many people run multiple monitor setups

[GSDragoon]

Hey guys, meet the 0.1%!

i'd say you're vastly underestimating how many people run multiple monitor setups

And you overestimate how many people run multiple monitor setups and have 2 games running.

[Reality]

Hey guys, meet the 0.1%!

i'd say you're vastly underestimating how many people run multiple monitor setups

And you overestimate how many people run multiple monitor setups and have 2 games running.

you're obviously just trying to argue, but i'll waste my precious time responding to this

hardware acceleration across both screens isn't ONLY USEFUL FOR RUNNING TWO GAMES AT ONCE. if you had read my whole post, it also allows you to drag whatever game you're running in a window, to the other screen if you'd like to use your primary or secondary screen for something else, ex. photoshop, youtube, a movie. this allows you to keep your FFXI instance still visible, if you have the need, instead of having to minimize it completely or take it out of focus with another window on top of it

point being, it's useful and probably more than you'd care to admit or realize

[Shuemue]

And if you think more than 1/1000 of PC users bother with two monitors, well, you're an LCD salesman.

[Kiarax]

And if you think more than 1/1000 of PC users bother with two monitors, well, you're an LCD salesman.

2 monitors is great and tons of people use multiple, some more then 2. Vista still sucks though.

[Viena]

you're obviously just trying to argue, but i'll waste my precious time responding to this

hardware acceleration across both screens isn't ONLY USEFUL FOR RUNNING TWO GAMES AT ONCE. if you had read my whole post, it also allows you to drag whatever game you're running in a window, to the other screen if you'd like to use your primary or secondary screen for something else, ex. photoshop, youtube, a movie. this allows you to keep your FFXI instance still visible, if you have the need, instead of having to minimize it completely or take it out of focus with another window on top of it

point being, it's useful and probably more than you'd care to admit or realize

XP supports hardware acceleration on multiple monitors. Just played Portal and moved the window from one monitor to another (or even leaving it in the middle) and the framerate didn't drop. Maybe it wouldn't be the case with two games doing the same, but that doesn't even fit your own examples (photoshop, youtube, a movie...).

Lolvista.

[Grandcross]

meh, works fine for me.