Hi fellow VUEers!

I have an ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics card on a Quad Core 8 GB Ram system running Vista Home Premium.

Yesterday I bought the upgrade from Vue 6 infinite, downloaded and installed the program suite and the extras CD.
I then copied all folders from Vue 6 infinite which bear the same name as in the extras CD folder (e.g. Atmospheres, objects, plants etc) into the extras CD folder.

Upon launching the software a warning window popped up, warning me that my graphics card  wasn't compatible. I decided to find out if there would be problems and continued.
Vue 7 infinite seemed to work well and I started exploring the new features.
I went into the graphics options and in fact jacked up the display options to maximum.

I then enjoyed a fantastic performance in preview mode with smooth shaded models in all 4 windows.

When doing some test renders, the program crashed several times. I then reverted to Open GL software acceleration in wireframe mode. Thus I was back to my old orientation problems while compositing the scene but it didn't crash any more at least. Or so I thought.

Vue kept crashing.I saved scenes along almost every step. After just another crash I started in compatibility mode. I set up a nice scene for a final quality render, pressed "render", watched the render fill the screen for some time and went to sleep.

This morning there was no finished render and no Vue 7 infinite running. Apparently the software had crashed and the machine rebooted.Or my second daughter managed to push the power button. ;) I don't know.

The problem: Vue informed me that I had a bad activation number (remember that from the last system migration, I HAD activated Vue 7 infinite online before, just started as administrator now.But now the system freezes and crashes upon launch.What should I do?

A few things are coming to my mind here.
You said you pushed display sliders to the max, which is why I think you had crashes, not because your card is not compatible. I have a non compatible card, my sliders are just about the same as they were in Vue6, instant is 25% to the left, background is about 65% the the right, and it works nicely. OpenGL antialiasing is off.
Now about activation problem, you need to run Vue as admin when you activate it, so if you installed Vue and let the program start from the installation menu, you didn't activate it as administrator.
I think you need to uninstall/reinstall, but before you do thid, you need to delete any remaining Vue file from your machine, they might be inC:Users/yourname/e-on software OR in C:Users/document/e-onsoftware, AND also in C:Users/your name/AppData/Roaming/e-onsoftware, and the reg file you'll find in the windows directory.

I would seriously consider changing the graphic card, at least to make some tests. From many posts I read about Vue problems, the graphic card seems to be at the center of many of the problems. In your specific case, Vue even alerted you about compatibility issues. Maybe you can get a borrowed card from some friend or even from a store.

Did Vue crash always with the same scene or did you change scenes? Or maybe it could be something in common with all the scenes, a specific object or so. Do you have boolean objects or metablobs? I didn't try any of these in V7 yet but I had some occasional problems with it in V6 when rendering. To minimize it, I normally kept the mini preview window with auto-update off and baked the objects as soon as I could. Maybe you can try it.

Thanks a lot, Bruno!

Okay, I will try this. I installed Vue 7 infinite again over the existing installation but that didn't work indeed, still crashing upon launch.

Before I do the uninstall I will first have to repair my Vue 6 infinite.In my initial enthusiasm I transferred my personal Vue content files via drag and drop to the corresponding Vue 7 folders - which was, unknown to me, a cut/paste process instead of a mere copy/paste procedure. Thus now my Vue 6infinite is still running but has lots of entirely empty folders.

Step by step. Step by step, I SAID!

LOL

Thanks for the advice Rutra!

I paid some serious money less than three months ago for this video card.I LOVE it for what it does in some computer games. And I would HATE,HATE, HATE having to throw this out simpy because a new and expensive version of Vue isn't upto date. That's simply not how I define "progress" and "value for money".

I changed scenes and it crashed several times. I think I will really do a completely new install, be very modest with the video setting sliders. And that'll have to do for ***'s sake!

After all, it can't be THAT serious. I have SEEN Vue 7infinite do some very promising work on my computer before the lights went out.

After you do the reinstall, I suggest that you do not copy the Vue6 content to Vue7 folders. Maybe you are overwriting something you shouldn't, I'm not sure. Maybe that's what caused the problems. For example, Vue creates these prv files if they are not present in the objects folder. Maybe Vue7 creates different prv files from Vue6 and when you copied Vue6 prv files, Vue7 didn't create them and tried to use the existing ones, without success. Or some other thing along these lines.

Anyway, you don't need to do this copy. You can just create a new library in Vue7 and point it to the old Vue6 folders. This way, you'll have Vue6 folders intact and Vue7 folders as they originally are supposed to be. There's a slight inconvenience that when you want to load a tree or something you'll have to look in two folders, though.

Also check if your card's drivers are up to date.

Most of the time I read in any forum people complaining about OpenGL troubles, the name that pops up is... ATI. VERY seldom you see nVidia (my new computer has a 9500GT and it works like a charm).

Bye!!!

P.S.: people who have Intel integrated graphics adapters do not complaing about OpenGL: they are happy if they just see anything :lol:

Actually, if you look in the forums here at rendo, you'll see the same number of complaints about nvidia as well.

The problem is two companies have sewed up the graphics card market, and both are becoming slackers, in driver developement as a result, because there's no other options available.

 Alexcoppo - that is very funny and you are absolutely correct - they are happy if they just see anything!  Good for you!

Vue 7 doesn't think my card's Open GL is up to snuff, so I went ahead and used the software Open GL and it has worked without crashing yet.

Someone else had crashing problems and they went away when they turned off their virus-scan software. You might even try having it off when you install Vue 7 again.

Quote - Actually, if you look in the forums here at rendo, you'll see the same number of complaints about nvidia as well.

The problem is two companies have sewed up the graphics card market, and both are becoming slackers, in driver developement as a result, because there's no other options available.

Yes, you may be correct. But historically where Vue is concerned, nVidia seems to do much better than ATI.

Hi folks, here is what happened inbetween:

I tried to follow Bruno's advice and do a complete and clean new install:

I uninstalled Vue 7 infinite, deleted the extras CD, all registry files from the C:/ windows folder. I also copied my Vue 6 infinite as well as all Vue 7 download data to a backup drive which is now not connected to my computer and deleted all existing Vue files from my D partition where Vue files are located.

Then I inserted my burned Vue 7 DVD and installed again,including the serial numbers and activation code.

Upon launching the software.Vue warned me that "during your last session Vue crashed in compatibility mode... contact staff" etc.

Thus, Vue "knows" that Vue had been there installed before and crashed. Obviously I  haven't deleted everything on my Windows Vista system before the new install- But where is it???

My guess is that this is the root cause.

What, by the grace of the blue teapot and the flying spaghetthi monster, shall I do to resinstall Vue 7 infinite so that it works with my ATI radeon 3800?

Vue stuff did reply and asked me to furnish the scene where Vue crashes. I informed them of what I just wrote here: I am not getting even close to trying a render! This is getting really bad.

Aaaaaaw!

Did you delete the folder in AppData/roaming?

Why not just reinstall, on top of whatever's installed already?

I got that message too with my Radeon.  I ignored it and have not had problems.  I didn't touch any of my video settings yet though.  I do know that if I use software OGL, Vue 7 will crash at startup.  Vue 7 is using whatever the default hardware OGL settings are.

I finally managed to delete the folder in AppData/roaming. It took me more than a day to findout that it is a hidden folder. ;)

After that my fifth deinstall/reinstall atmpt took place and was successful for a change. Cautiously rendering now without too many crashes.I won't change graphics options to Software openGLor to compatibility mode.

there was a new ati driver release the last day or so.. maybe that will also help?