Blender Help Please

[Nanodoc360]

Hello, and thank you to anyone who can possibly help me figure out this problem I'm having with blender.

 

installed everything on a windows 7 professional 64 bit system.

followed install directions to a T.

Blender starts up with the borders and logo's but no background or UI controls

When I minimize and bring back up still have borders but solid black filled work area

still no UI or work area displayed.

 

If i drag my mouse around inside the box, different icons for work pop up as i mouse over them.

 

Observe Screenshots

 

Display At Startup:

Blender On Startup

 

 

Display After Minimize:

Blender After Minimize

 

 

System Specs:

Windows 7: 64 Bit Professional

Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 940 (3.00 GHz)

Ram: 8 GB

Video: NVidia GeForce GTX 460

Video Drivers: 8.17.12.7533 (Most Up to date)

 

So far I have spent 3 days uninstalling, reinstalling, rebooting pc, disk defrag after each install item.

I have no clue what is causing this.

Never had these problems when i was still running Win XP

 

(curses my Westwood college making me update my OS)

 

Any help would be appreciated. Sometimes a new thought or fresh set of eyes helps.

[LHammonds]

Update your video card drivers. Blender relies heavily on OpenGL for display.

[Nanodoc360]

Current Nvidia Driver is 275.33 will try the new beta version if that doesnt work im clueless but thanks for responding LHammonds

[LHammonds]

The spec page for your video card says it supports OpenGL so it is not a matter of "if" Blender will work with it but a matter of the video driver to work properly.

 

If you are using a current version, try an older version...or like you said, a BETA version.

 

LHammonds

[Nanodoc360]

yup tried the newest beta version same effects, guess i got to start back stepping on my driver versions to find one that fixes the issue. argh this will be such a pain.

[Nanodoc360]

6 Driver rollbacks and finally got it working with NVidia Geforce GTX 460 Driver Version: 266.58 the newer versions for some reason conflict with the blender 2.49b UI display. Just in case anyone else has the same problem I did. Here is the fix. Thanks LHammonds, like i stated sometimes you just need a new set of fresh eyes to help figure it out.

[LHammonds]

I've never known NVidia drivers to be on "good terms" with anything related to OpenGL for some odd reason. But I do know that most people having display issues or performance problems in Blender is directly related to the video card and the OpenGL driver support.

 

If I would have been thinking clearly, I would have asked you to try Blender 2.5x and see if they worked with the drivers that did not like Blender 2.49b. I have an old video card that consistently performs poorly...but passable on Blender 2.4x. But the 2.5x platform runs quite smoothly by comparison. FYI - You can have a fully installed version of Blender 2.49b and all related components for importing and exporting NIF files AND have the ability to run Blender 2.5x as well...just need to download the ZIP version of 2.5x and extract to a folder and run directly from there. Since 2.5x cannot use the NIF plugins yet, it can be completely self-contained and run right beside a 2.49b installation. :thumbsup:

 

There are some preferences that can be changed to help some configurations perform better in 2.49b but no preference will fix the display issues you were experiencing.

 

LHammonds