This computer's video card can't play themes

[torrentg]

I actually told a slight tale in my last post. I didn't have it installed but did a while ago and knew it worked well.

So I downloaded it from Windows Update and installed so to give you 100% certainty. (Grrr now I have to reset my default programs to open picture files. lol) It functions perfectly well when I hit "preview."

This is the result:

 

[JohanA]

torrentg,

I really appretiate that you took this bullet for me!

This gives me hope that it should work!

I'll report back as soon as I know anything new.

Regards,
Johan

 

[torrentg]

You're welcome. Come to think of it, on my secondary machine (not in specs, but with NVIDIA AGP 6200A-LE) I had the same error you're getting with this. I didn't do anything special and it just seemed to resolve itself one day.

Maybe it's because I updated chipset drivers or video card drivers along the way. I don't really know.

But ya - the fact is that it wasn't working there and then did all of a sudden.

 

[JohanA]

I ran Driver sweeper in safe mode and checked the ATI box, I did not check the 3 Nvida boxes since I didn't understand them. But I guess I shouldn't have Nvida installed anyway.

Unfortunately it was not possible to install the driver in safe mode so I had to do it in normal mode, but still the problem persist.

Chipset driver was mentioned, I don't really know how to find the latest, at Asus homepage the latest driver was from 22 September and it's the one I have.

 

[Frostmourne]

Why didn't the driver install in safe mode? If anything, it should have installed.

 

[TheRone]

Mine worked fine right after I installed the Windows Live Photo Gallery on a very fresh install of Windows 7. However, the next day it stopped working. So Torrentg, please let us know if your themes continue to work in a few days.

I installed the Windows Live Essentials on 10/27 and on 10/28 Windows Update downloaded and installed 6 updates. They were various security updates, an update for Silverlight, Office XP and IE 8 compatablilty list. These were the only changes made to my system (that I'm aware of) between the time the Windows Photo Gallery themes worked and when they did not. Just more info to perhaps trigger some ideas....or not.

 

[JohanA]

Frostmourne: I recieved some error messages that I didn't write down and at the end of the process the program concluded that the installation failed. I re-started a couple of times in safe mode but still the same.

But I understand why it's a good idea to to this in safe mode since it only take a minute or two without the driver for Windows to "fix the issue itself"... so what I did was to restart normally and run the drivers as fast as possible to "beat" the system, but I don't know if I was successful.

 

[smarteyeball]

so what I did was to restart normally and run the drivers as fast as possible to "beat" the system, but I don't know if I was successful.

Unfortunately it's not a race, so either it was successful or it wasn't :huh:

Any driver hand over (from the default VGA driver to the ATI driver) has already been done by the time you have hit the desktop.

 

[Veritech]

Any update on solving this issue? Mine also initially worked then later on I noticed it stopped working.

 

[JohanA]

I don't know if it helps but if as many persons as possible click "I need an answer to this question" in the following Microsoft support links maybe some kind of aftermarket quality trigger is set and Microsoft starts working on it.

So if you have problem with this please visit these three Microsoft support links, and click to the "I need an answer"
"This computer's video card can't play themes." (in this thread an interesting solution was proposed, basically to manually set the performance of the computer but it was a Vista guide and I did not manage to do it for Windows 7. But then again I didn't even know how to enter the Registry at first so there you got a snapshot of my computer skills...

Windows 7 have downgraded Photo screen saver compared to Vista?

Did Microsoft remove features from the screen saver in Windows 7 that were present in Windows Vista?

Regards,
Johan

 

[Frostmourne]

To enter the registry type regedit in the start menu and press enter.

 

[JohanA]

Thanks, I managed finally but it didn't look the same in the Registry as descibed in the post so I didn't suceed in getting this to work anyway.

 

[Veritech]

Well I tried exporting the registry key from my laptop to my desktop but without success. Maybe I need to go higher in the tree, will test out tonight when I go home. This is where I'm looking at right now:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\Slideshow

In the LastRunSettings key there's a list of the enabled themes which was present in my laptop but not my desktop.

 

[JohanA]

Hello!!!!

It's solved, please follow the guide that Ramesh at Microsoft made after assisting me in this thread "This computer's video card can't play themes."

It seams to be possible to give "credits" to these guys so if you go into this link please do that since he is the only one (I came across) at Microsoft that 1. understood that it was a problem and 2. solved it.

Regards,
Johan

 

[torrentg]

Great work, Ramesh!

 

[Veritech]

Can't wait to get home and fix my computer now!

 

[JohanA]

Next issue just arised.

In this photo screen saver it doesn't matter if I have the "shuffle" box ticked in or not. It's always starting from the same picture (first...) so if the computer are running for a very long time I'm happy if I'm in 2004. So it get's a bit boring.

I must have bad carma...