OpenGL & Windows 2000

I run a program in windows 2000 which it opened it fine; however after I press enter a few times the computer when black (crash). upon re-start the PC when on recovering some missplaced files; this PC is brand new and it has the required space, speed, etc.

If there any upgrade that I need? or OPENGL is not totally compatible with 2000.
The prgram that I run was a Life Form Simulation which I had run previously in windows 98 and 95 without (in an older computer) any problems.

Thanks

I don’t think it’s an OpenGL related problem, I better think that is a program fault.
I’m using opengl on win200 since about one year now and never had problems, just some weird mouse shadow behaviours…

Thanks rIO.
I think you are right . . . I went back to the win2000 and runned the prgram a couple of times. It seems that everytime I press enter (this is supposed to introduce a new life form into the running program) the MONITOR is turn off, therefore it looks like it crashed. and the only way to turn the monitor back on its by re-starting the PC.
I wonder what should I do? As I said before it never happen in my OLD PC running win 95 and 98.

Do you have any suggestions?

ThanX!

Originally posted by rIO:
I don’t think it’s an OpenGL related problem, I better think that is a program fault.
I’m using opengl on win200 since about one year now and never had problems, just some weird mouse shadow behaviours…

I write OpenGL drivers for my job. Both of my computers run only one OS – Windows 2000. Said OpenGL drivers run successfully on my computers. Therefore, Windows 2000 clearly does support OpenGL.

I never did quite understand how the rumor that Win2K doesn’t support OpenGL got started… I think it had to do with the driver builds shipped by MS not including OpenGL drivers. Of course, the people who started the rumor could have (1) noticed that opengl32.dll exists on Win2K, (2) noticed that we, among many others, were supplying beta Win2K drivers that did support HW OpenGL, and (3) thought for a second about how MS would have to be morons to drop HW OpenGL, because it would instantly destroy the booming NT 3D workstation business.

  • Matt

Speaking of which… IIRC MS were planning to ship a 1.2 implementation with Win2k SP2. Anybody happen to know whether they’re still on track to make that?

I think the rumor had to do with the fact that MS said they wouldn’t update opengl32.dll. I sure wish they would, having multi-mon support for openGL would be a great plus IMHO.

Perhaps NVIDIA can now “delay” the chipset for the Xbox, until MS updates the opengl32.dll a bit.

Hey matt, just curious, have you ever brought down win2k yet (BSOD) ? It would be intresting to see your computers uptime. hehehe

…except that Win2K’s opengl32.dll was updated to include multimon support, blowing a hole in that theory as well.

I have to reboot my test machine all the time to install new display drivers, but last summer I had a 2-month uptime (limited by the power being turned off in our building) on my development machine. At present I turn off both every night.

  • Matt

“Sleep” saves almost as much power as turning
the thing off, AND it saves you from that
horrible boot time in the morning.

I’ve started rejecting devices that come with
drivers that prevent sleep. Just a hint to
all driver writers out there :slight_smile:

mcraighead, you said that Win2K’s opengl32.dll was updated to include multimon support. Is only software rendering supported with multimon, or can you use hardware in multimon too? If so, how do you do this?

Thanks
Cletis

HW multimon is supported but requires explicit driver support.

  • Matt

Thanks Matt

Any ideas where I would look to find more info about this.

Cletis

That explains it Matt, I tried it in win2k, and my app switched from accelerated to that great generic driver from MS. I forgot what .1 fps looked like!

I assume that Nvidia cards (GF2/3 only?) can handle hardware acceleration with multi-mon then?

I run win2k multimon (GeForce & voodoo2) and the opengl is a bit wierd.

For starters, all opengl screensavers work great. The wobbling text thingy is fast while on the geforce but runs in software as the text crosses the monitorborder and while it’s on the v2. (I’m using some beta drivers for the v2 so it doesn’t support gl in hw.)

Apps that start up on the geforce gets all the funky extensions, but moving a window from the geforce to the v2 monitor hangs the system.

I sure hope they’ll get dual-output on the GF3’s. (Heck, the budget GF2MX has it, the hard-core GF2 doesn’t! What sort of wierd marketing policy is that?!!)

Hmm… it only hangs if I use my game which does use a few extensions. With LightWave it doesn’t. It just doesn’t render on the v2 monitor.

I suppose this has something to do with how you open the window. If you make it span across both monitors you might get gl-rendering on both?

Originally posted by macke:
I sure hope they’ll get dual-output on the GF3’s. (Heck, the budget GF2MX has it, the hard-core GF2 doesn’t! What sort of wierd marketing policy is that?!!)

It’s not a marketing policy, it’s a matter of whether the circuitry is actually in the chip or not.

  • Matt

Matt,

What would I have to do to get hardware accellerated GL in a multimon situation where one of my cards is a GF2MX? (not one with multiple outputs however) Every time I try to set the pixel format to one that is hardware accellerated, the app freezes at that line. (btw, I’m on W2K)

Is there a flag in the pixel format descriptor that I need to look for that indicates that the format supports multimon or anything like that?

Thanks
Cletis

I often saw the following with some various 3D demos (OpenGL and D3D) that you can find on scene sites :
The demo runs without any problem in Win 9X/Me and crashes in NT/2K with a GPF.
This is due to poorly programmed software.
An illegal memory access can pass in 9x/Me but not in NT or 2K.
NT based OS have a much better memory protection scheme.

Actually i think it’s because programs aren’t programmed with win2k in mind, and the programs dont handle small differences in the 9x/2k api’s. Most of the problems are due to NULL handles/pointers returned, which should have been taken care of instead of just using them.

[This message has been edited by Blaze (edited 03-10-2001).]