Installed OM in car and...

Well, I finally got my carpc up to a running state. First thing I had to do, install/configure OM... if only it was easy banghead...

I originally had .Net 4.0 installed. It error'd upon install because of not having 3.5, doh! So I downloaded and installed .Net 3.5 even though it took forever, stupid wireless signal from the house to the car. Anyways I opened up the program to install the plugins, nothing. It error'd upon opening that saying something like packages could not be found and lists nothing in the plugin or skin sections... So I transferred all my plugins/skins to the car from my dev pc. I then attempted to open up OM...

It looked like 4 different windows opened, or the same window resized about 4 times. I couldn't check the task manager to see if more than once instance of OM was running as I don't have access to a keyboard in the drivers seat. So OM ran like worse than a snail :(. If I clicked a button on the main menu, 2 seconds later it would try to transition the panels with great lag. I disabled enhanced graphics but that didn't make a difference.

What I know about the hardware:
Lenovo IdeaPad Netbook
1.00ghz to 1.66ghz (someone in there)
1gb ram
windows xp sp3 (no nlite, normal home install - doing a reinstall is not likely, main LCD laptop screen is broken and can't see anything, not even bios :().
.net 3.5/4 frameworks installed
winamp/riderunner/OM installed (so no other bloating programs)
everything disabled in msconfig
7" USB touchscreen monitor (USB for power/video/data, uses 2 USB's total)******

I think the touchscreen having to run power/video/data through USB might be a problem as it couldn't run winamp visualizations one time when I tried. Couldn't do certain graphics, but it never complained about openGL.

Just an fyi thread because I would love to use OM and since developing a couple plugins, would be nice if I could use those as well. I'm not sure if I missed anything about trying to optimize OM, so any recommendations would be welcome!

Ahh USB monitor could be the problem. For a while I was looking at one of them or a USB to VGA adapter but was afraid of all of them cause they don't talk about specifics. If you look at the top of your debug it will record if it is using software rendering or not. Should at least let you know you need to try different video drivers if there are better ones.

I'm running OM on a Lilliput 7" USB monitor on my dev computer just fine. Have not had any complaints about OM running in software mode on that one.

But post your debug as this will make it a lot easier to help out.

Here is the debug.

http://www.mediafire.com/?4y9cxdh2xc6qnd6

Yea the graphics drivers you installed don't support openGL thats where the problem is.

Try downloading video card drivers right from the video card manufacturers website....the ones that install from windows update are usually crippled.

I thought that might be it, but then I thought nah, it works fine on my dev machine with windows updated drivers and nothing manufacturer specific. Didn't even think about my dev machine being amd dual core, 4gb ram, ati card, etc... oops :)

I'll try to update tomorrow morning before work and report back how that goes.

Just so you know what to look for you want to see something like

Code:

---

------------------Software-------------------
OS: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
Framework: Mono v2.0.50727.1433
Open Mobile: v0.8.0.5
Open GL v.3.0.0 NVIDIA 195.36.24
------------------Hardware-------------------
Processors: 8
Architecture: x64
Screens: 1
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 240/PCI/SSE2

---

Instead of

Code:

---

------------------Software-------------------
OS: Windows XP
Framework: Microsoft .Net v4
Open Mobile: v0.8.0.6
Open GL v.1.1.0
------------------Hardware-------------------
Processors: 2
Architecture: x86
Screens: 1
Graphics Card: GDI Generic

---

Once you have it fixed it will no longer say GDI and have a OpenGL version number > 1.1 most likely.

Well, I found a little bit of time to install a set of Intel graphic drivers made for the Lenovo S10 series. I didn't uninstall any previous graphic drivers at this point (including the windows updates one if they existed on the machine. The install said "successfully installed Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Drivers". Opened up OM and still debug said GDI Generic. OM still ran sluggish...

I figured it wouldn't be this easy since I didn't have time to properly uninstall the old driver first. I should be able to do this in the morning. I also didn't want to chance something going graphically wrong with uninstalling the only graphic driver since the monitor is usb and not vga enabled, but maybe i'm being paranoid since I finally just got it functional at all...

Well, quite an interesting night I'd say...

Uninstalled the 2 'extra' display adapters that were in device manager leaving the 2 displaylink drivers intact. Rebooted. 2 Intel VGA adapters were now not found in the device manager and another unkown device was not found!?

I downloaded fresh copies of the graphics drivers and chipset drivers off IBM sites for the 4333 Lenovo model laptop. Booted the laptop and the touchscreen didn't display anything but it had power. Had issues with this a little before but replaced the usb hub for a powered usb hub. Touchscreen problem solved, yay!

But now my inverter, running off cig lighter (I know bad, but have no idea where to look for ign wire yet) doesn't provide enough power to run my laptop and usb hub. So my laptop almost died while trying to do drivers stuff. Anyways this what I found out...

Installed graphic drivers, reboot, and both vga adapters were still unkown. Installed chipset drivers, reboot, and still both were unkown. Ran OM just for the sake of trying it and still had GDI Generic show up.

Laptop almost dead, I checked the power settings and no hibernation tab or standby appears!? Downloaded/installed Lenovo's power management stuff and the extra unkown device disappeared, 1 down! Power management allows hibernation, but doesn't allow configuring times for standby/hibernation :(.

I'm thinking I might just run windows update to try to clear up the vga devices for now. I'm experiencing so many problems and just want a functional system to start.

Anyways, thanks for suggestions above! Off to bed after these nightmares...

Edit: I wonder if the displaylink drivers cause issues with OpenGL? I've heard of some issues on this but mostly osx side. I think it's still kind of dependent on the main graphics drivers which are my issues in the first place.

I admire your persistence. I would have just wiped out my hard drive and started with a fresh windows and set of Lenovo drivers.

John