2 Bugs
 

I wish the freshwater aquarium would have been out by now, but I guess I'll beta the MA :(
JIM GREAT JOB!

1) ATI Radeon 7500, Windows XP attached graphic, "rocks are black"
2) If you alt-tab while the "testfish window" appears, the aquarium crashes!

I will need to check, but I think the 7500 may be in the same boat as the 7200. If thats the case it probably wont run the aquarium as it supports only DX7 and MA3 needs higher than those old chipsets can produce. You can try a different driver and see if you get any better results. If so it would be good to know which one works as it may help solve some problems for the other card as well with the bad drivers there.

Definitely driver problems.

Two More Buggy Screen Caps
 

Both computers Windows XP Machines

Jim -- this can cause the Screen Saver Crash? Thought the drivers would only cause display issues?

Bugs in drivers can cause screen savers not to start, glitches in 3D as well as regular applications, or even the computer to crash. Drivers are a big deal.

I am guessing you have the "Automatic" or "Windows Update" drivers which usually are NOT optimized for 3D. I'd head to ATI's website and download the latest for your 7500 card.


P.S. I merged your two threads since it is the same issue. Please try different drivers.

The latest that ATI ever released is version 6.11.

If you noticed each screen capture was from a DIFFERENT computer running DIFFERENT Video Cards:
1) ATI Radeon 7500
2) Intel 82845G Graphics Controller
3) SiS 650_651_740
Each one presented with a different graphic error.

Drivers can absolutely cause a crash. If the driver and I both think we have control of a block of memory at the same time, the results are usually disastrous. The old "invalid page fault".

As I mentioed in another thread, driver problems are the most frustrating to me. I make a perfectly legal DirectX function call, then the drivers have their way with it. At that point it's out of my hands and into a closed system for which I do not have the source code. All we can do is make of list of incompatible equipment.

Wow. A string of bad luck then?

Jim's primary testing machine for the Aquarium is an Intel 845G motherboard and Windows XP.

Can you indicate if these are the automatic Windows Update drivers on all 3 computers? Or have you sought other drivers for them?