Recently I downloaded and installed Second Life. However, I have not been able to run Second Life since the initial install. When Second Life loads a message appears saying that the display mode has been changed to Windows Vista Basic because the program is not compatible with certain elements of Windows Vista. This is followed by a message advising that “Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered”. Despite the so-called “successful recovery” Second Life does not respond and must be closed down. I have tried uninstalling Second Life and deleting all the cache files (as advised by the Second Life help) and then reinstalled the program but the problem remains. The computer is running Windows Vista.

I assume that you have an ATI graphics card installed in your computer since the error message refers to a module within the ATI graphics card drivers (atikmdag) as causing the fault. Researching your question showed that a lot of users with ATI graphics cards were experiencing this exact problem when attempting to play a variety of different games and the ATI website indicates that this is a recognised problem: support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=27116 . Unfortunately the article on the ATI website is relatively generic and exploratory, and does not provide us with any specific methods to fix the problem. However, it would be worthwhile reviewing and working through the listed items to eliminate these as the cause of the problem.

All other users who experienced this problem reported it occurred when running Windows Vista with the 7.x version of the ATI drivers. Checking the ATI driver website (ati.amd.com/support/driver.html) it seems that the latest version of the drivers (at the time of writing) was version 8.12. Therefore, I would recommend that first you update the graphics drivers on the system. This is particularly important since you may be running the graphics card using the original drivers that came with the card, which would be quite dated and may have incompatibilities or bugs when running with Windows Vista. Once you have downloaded and installed the new drivers restart your computer and check whether the problem has been resolved.

If the problem still continues some users reported that the issue is caused due to a Windows Vista hotfix being installed on the computer through Windows Update. The KB952287 (support.microsoft.com/kb/952287) hotfix has been designed to fix some specific problems with Microsoft SQL Server but if this is not being used on your computer then you have no need for this fix. Users reported than when this hotfix was uninstalled the problem resolved itself. To check whether you have this hotfix installed on the computer, go to the Start menu > “Control Panel”. Open the “Programs and Features” control panel (you may need to first click the “Classic View” link in the left-hand sidebar). In the left-hand sidebar click the “View installed updates” link. A list will appear which will probably contain a lot of updates! Instead of having to look through each item you can search for the hotfix. In the search box at the top-right hand corner of the window, type “KB952287” (without the quotes). If this hotfix is installed you should see it as the only entry in the list of updates. Select the update and then click the “Uninstall” button. Confirm that you would like to uninstall the update. Once it has been uninstalled, restart the computer and then check whether the problem continues.