I recently acquired a new laptop with an NVIDIA GEFORCE4 440 Go with 64 Mbyte of memory. However, when I tried to run my opengl programs, I seem to run into problems. A typical one is where I cannot seem to get it to draw in wire frame mode. It shades the surface despite me putting a command to draw the edges only. Has anyone encountered a similar problem
- Does it work if you select a Microsoft pixelformat instead?
- No? Show some code.
- Yes? Have you tried to update drivers? (Might be a little more complicated on laptops.)
In discussion with the supplier of the laptop, it transpires that the NVIDIA GEForce4 440 does not fully support OPENGL. It has been designed to be more compatible with DIRECTX.
How do you mean when you say use Microsoft pixelformat.
The other funny thing is if I compile my program on a different machine and then run the EXE on the laptop, then it gives the result that I expect. Does this mean that during the compilation, it actually takes on the attributes or features of the graphics card/driver??
@Dave Smith:
>>How do you mean when you say use
>>Microsoft pixelformat.
i think he meant to select the software-rendering mode, not a 3D-accelerated one.
>>different machine and then run the EXE on
>>the laptop, then it gives the result that
>>I expect
your problem sounds to me like a driver “installation problem”.
I think NVIDIA might take issue with that supplier’s statement :-). Sounds to me like your laptop supplier’s front line support is giving you the standard line of bull**** to get you to go away.
From what I hear laptop drivers issues are slightly trickier to fix because you can’t always rely on getting the drivers straight from NVIDIA and cut out the bozos at the supplier or their suppliers who frequently manage to stuff things up or don’t update their drivers with the latest fixes etc once they do their Q&A. Something to do with custom tweaks to make laptops work. I don’t know the details or even if it still holds true.
The bottom line is your laptop supplier is responsible for giving you functional drivers (if it’s new), you have found a defect.
You may want to risk downloading and installing the drivers here:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
But I dunno if you’d end up with a paperweight that needs to be returned to be fixed (it’s extremely unlikely that you’d get it into a state you couldn’t recover from in safe mode with a simple driver rollback), it’ll probably refuse to install if there’s any incompatibility anyway.
I do hope that NVIDIA could respond to the contentious statement. I do realise that it was a fob off statement from the supplier. Thanks for the tip regarding the defective product. It will be going back on Monday if I do not find a solution.