"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" Windows 7

[Amethyst Jetaime]

SL requires a very high performance graphics card.  If your card is integrated that is probably the problem. Since you didn't post your graphics card brand model and specs I assume yours is. If that's true you can try running your graphics at low r you will need to purchase a separate card meeting the minimum specs here.

If you have a separate card post check to make sure you have the most up to date drivers, even if your computer is new.  If you do post all the information about your card for more help.  Not all brands of graphics cards are supported by SL.

Please do not create a new post. Edit your original post instead. You can edit your post to add additional information by logging in to the web site, going to the post you want to edit, then clicking "Options" at the top right of the post and choosing edit.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

SL requires a very high performance graphics card.  If your card is integrated that is probably the problem. Since you didn't post your graphics card brand model and specs I assume yours is. If that's true you can try running your graphics at low r you will need to purchase a separate card meeting the minimum specs here.

If you have a separate card post check to make sure you have the most up to date drivers, even if your computer is new.  If you do post all the information about your card for more help.  Not all brands of graphics cards are supported by SL.

Please do not create a new post. Edit your original post instead. You can edit your post to add additional information by logging in to the web site, going to the post you want to edit, then clicking "Options" at the top right of the post and choosing edit.

[steph Arnott]

This is not good for SL, Graphics Card: Intel® HD Graphics 2500, it just can not cope. SL is heavy on cards, setting preferences to min may help, but you really need a far better card.

ADDED: If you are using the offkial veiwer then i suggest you switch to a third party veiwer such as Firestorm, that will give your graphics at least a fighting chance.

[Rolig Loon]

As Steph and Amethyst have said, your machine is not up to the job of running a SL viewer.  That Intel graphics chip is designed for light office use (e-mail, web browsing .... ), and will overheat and destroy itself if you try to push it to run something as demanding as SL.  As one of the industry reviewers of performance says, "Compared to the faster HD Graphics 4000, the 2500 one features less Execution Units (6 versus 16) and only one texture sampler. Therefore, the performance should be clearly worse and only suited for low demanding gaming."  SL residents often have bad luck with the HD 4000 chip.  If the HD 2500 chip is "clearly worse", it's not going to work at all for you.

[Lindal Kidd]

Yep, you need a better graphics card.  What you have is graphics that are integrated with your main processor chip, and a pretty old version at that.

And, you did just the right thing by editing your original post to add information.  You have to do it that way...as you found, there's no way to reply to your own original post in this forum.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

To summarize for all future PC purchasers looking at PCs with the Intel Graphics Subsystems in them - [ e.g.Graphics Card Vendor: Intel Graphics Card: Intel® HD Graphics 2500 ]...

These Intel Graphics subsystems are designed specifically to support:

1) Business Graphics
2) Media Streaming [e.g. Your Blue Ray DVD's movie will look great

Gaming is an afterthought! GPU processing on these subsystems is limited by design to optimize 2D applications like these.

Serious gamers need a Graphics Subsystem that focuses on 3D rendering and high GPU processing tasks. This is why you see the large cooling systems on higher-end Graphic Cards, to cool the GPU when it is busy calculating the 3D imagery & shading calculations for display multiple times per second.