OpenGL programs/games freezing in 64 bit Vista

Hi, I recently picked up the gateway FX 1050u laptop. It is running a geforce 9800M GTS cuda with 1GB ram. I was previously on Vista 32 bit and had no problems running either Diablo II or PyMol (it is a 3D biochemical structure program, widely used amongst scientists to view structures). Both programs use OpenGL.

However with the gateway computer I am getting a lot of outright freezes in both programs. When Diablo freezes, I have to restart the computer entirely. Usually with PyMol it will freeze for a few seconds and then I can get out of it. I don't really game much outside Diablo II so I can't speak for other game programs, however I suspect something is wrong regarding the way these programs use OpenGL as I get error messages from PyMol saying it had an OpenGL error and then a C++ error.

I've tried messing with the video card settings the programs run with (there's a lot of customizable options), perhaps not enough, but nothing has seemed to help.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get it to work? I really can't live without PyMol... perhaps going to Windows 7 beta would help me out?

Hi bpward

Go to this link and update your drivers: Gateway Support - Drivers, Software and Firmware Updates

Once thats done click the link in my sig and do everything under Step 2

Yea I did that a few days ago. I updated the geforce driver to a 4/30 version and that didn't fix it last night. I just found there's a new nvidia cuda opengl package update though. Maybe that will help...

bpward said:

Hi, I recently picked up the gateway FX 1050u laptop. It is running a geforce 9800M GTS cuda with 1GB ram. I was previously on Vista 32 bit and had no problems running either Diablo II or PyMol (it is a 3D biochemical structure program, widely used amongst scientists to view structures). Both programs use OpenGL.

However with the gateway computer I am getting a lot of outright freezes in both programs. When Diablo freezes, I have to restart the computer entirely. Usually with PyMol it will freeze for a few seconds and then I can get out of it. I don't really game much outside Diablo II so I can't speak for other game programs, however I suspect something is wrong regarding the way these programs use OpenGL as I get error messages from PyMol saying it had an OpenGL error and then a C++ error.

I've tried messing with the video card settings the programs run with (there's a lot of customizable options), perhaps not enough, but nothing has seemed to help.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get it to work? I really can't live without PyMol... perhaps going to Windows 7 beta would help me out?

Click to expand...

What were you running before you picked up that laptop? Are you running Vista 64-bit now? From your description, it sounds like a 64-bit compatibility issue?

Also, "if" you are running Vista 64, than I'd recommend your get more RAM. The prevailing thought is to have at least 2gig on Vista and 4gig on Vista x64.

Lastly, make sure the OS is up to date on all patches and service pack.