Installed AMD XFX 7850; now PinballX crashes

[jnovek]

Hi!

I was previous running a GTX 750. In the near future I hope to upgrade from two to three monitors in my cabinet, but right now PinballX crashes with two monitors on my new video card.

PinballX crashes with "PinballX has stopped working." when I attempt to start a game -- any game -- from the wheel. All games seem to work great if I launch them directly in Visual Pinball.

PinballX loads fine and shows the appropriate table image and backglass for all my games.

Video drivers are up to date.

The log is unhelpful:

19:20:43.8  3/1/2015:  PinballX - Version 1.9719:20:43.9  3/1/2015:  Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 64-bit (3.9GB)19:20:43.9  3/1/2015:  Loading Settings19:20:43.9  3/1/2015:  Initialize Component19:20:44.0  3/1/2015:  Initialize Display19:20:45.1  3/1/2015:  Loading PlugIns19:20:45.4  3/1/2015:  Created DirectX BackGlass Window19:20:45.5  3/1/2015:  Hiding Cursor19:20:45.5  3/1/2015:  Hiding Taskbar19:20:45.6  3/1/2015:  CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU G1610 @ 2.60GHz19:20:45.6  3/1/2015:  GPU 1: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series19:20:45.6  3/1/2015:  Displays: 319:20:45.6  3/1/2015:  Load Game List19:20:45.6  3/1/2015:  Loading Database: Pinball FX219:20:45.7  3/1/2015:  Loading Database: Future Pinball19:20:45.7  3/1/2015:  Loading Database: Visual Pinball19:20:45.7  3/1/2015:  Loading Database: Pinball FX219:20:45.7  3/1/2015:  Loading Database: Physmod519:20:45.7  3/1/2015:  Finding and matching artwork and videos19:20:46.9  3/1/2015:  Loading Game Statistics and Scores19:20:47.2  3/1/2015:  Loading Surfaces19:20:47.5  3/1/2015:  Finished Loading Surfaces19:20:47.5  3/1/2015:  Initialize Audio19:20:47.5  3/1/2015:  Set Keyboard Controls19:20:47.5  3/1/2015:  Initialize Joystick19:20:47.6  3/1/2015:  1 Joystick Attached19:20:47.6  3/1/2015:  Started19:20:53.4  3/1/2015:  Launch System19:20:53.4  3/1/2015:  Waiting for threads19:20:53.4  3/1/2015:  Disposing display

Any ideas?

[tthurman]

Generally speaking, it's not always a smooth transition when changing GPU manufacturers, as the drivers tend to leave remnants.

A couple suggestions.

Uninstall your current AMD driver, download CCleaner free, and run the registry cleaner

Reboot

Re-install current AMD drivers.

Alternatively, uninstall your current AMD driver then download and run Display Driver Uninstaller to clean out the leftover nvidia and AMD drivers.

Reboot

Re-install current AMD drivers

Admittedly I haven't used the current display driver uninstaller, but previous uninstallers made available at guru3d have always worked well for me. As always, YMMV.

[Draco1962]

An added caution, always update your video drivers from the manufacturer and not via Windows updates. I have found that the nVidia updater has been the best in my environment for letting me know if an update is available and it does a great job of uninstalling the old drivers.

[jnovek]

I've completely uninstalled and re-installed display drivers and switched back to the old GPU. At this point I'm pretty confident that something else is going on.

It appears that Windows has installed Windows updates recently. Could this be part of the problem?

To reiterate, everything is fine until I start loading a game, then it shows the "Loading" screen for a few seconds and bombs out.

[tthurman]

It's always possible that updates can create problems, but I believe it to be more the exception than the rule. The fact this coincided with a GPU change makes me think it's something else.

If you cleaned your registry of the old entries and reinstalled the drivers, then you've eliminated one piece of the puzzle.

What codecs are you using? Shark 32 bit are the recommended, and this is the version linked on the PBX site.

[jnovek]

I can certainly install the codecs, but I don't currently use any videos. Just a table image and backglass image.

I'm going to try a fresh install. Are there some registry entries that I should nuke?

[tthurman]

PinballX needs the codecs to function properly.