Why in the world won’t OpenGL work on my computer?

Alright, here’s the deal. I’m taking a graphics course with openGL and I am having a nightmare trying to get OpenGL to work. Whenever I try to run a demo application I get this error message:

GLUT: Fatal Error in C:\gl\OpenGLTest\Debug\OpenGLTest.exe: failed to create OpenGL rendering context.

My openGL32.dll version is 5.1.2600.1106

My glu.h and gl.h files came from Visual Studio 6.0

I am using WindowsXP with service pack 2 installed

I’ve downloaded the glut files from www.xmission.com/~nate/glut.html (although, I’m positive that it is not the glut files. It has a problem working with the win32 and SDL API as well)

I’m using a Dell 8100 laptop with a 32MB NVidia Geforce 2 go graphics card and I know it supports OpenGl 1.2. My driver version for this card is 4.4.8.2

Now, my demo will work if I replace the current opengl32.lib and glu32.lib files in system32 with the mesa files. However, immediately after I run the program, the files revert back to the Microsoft version.

A little more history on my computer…

OpenGl used to work. I know because I used Milkshape3D without having to use the mesa files. A couple of months back I messed with the registry and had to have my operating system reinstalled. I went to a computer place so they could back up all of my files. They also reinstalled the operating system and updated all of my drivers for me (or at least they said they did. My graphics card drivers appear to be current, but my bios was a couple of versions behind).

The first thing I noticed when I got my laptop back was that Milkshape3D didn’t run properly and I had to download the Mesa files and put them in the folder. I didn’t have too much concern over the whole thing until recently when I started the graphics course.

Direct3D works fine, but OpenGL doesn’t. Somebody please help. My instructor couldn’t figure out what was wrong and I am going insane over this.

I know almost nothing about GLUT. Or laptop cards :frowning: . But I’d try downloading and installing new drivers for your GeForce 2 Go. IIRC you can’t use NVIDIA reference drivers, but Dell should have some recent ones on their website. Try those. Old drivers shouldn’t affect your ability to create a rendering context though, unless you’re requesting an unusual one.

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