I’ve just started working on a new laptop running Vista. All seems well but whatever I try and render I can’t see. If I render an animation then the output is there but you just can’t see it…
I can monitor the progress in the little command prompt window but the Blender:Render window just stays black.
Any ideas?
Also, split window doesn’t seem to work either… How annoying.
EDIT: Actually it does… you just can’t see the bar being moved… only a black square where the split menu was. It’s like working blind! 
Can anyone help with this at all? These visual problems don’t seem too serious… just annoying. However, I’ve just tried compositing with nodes and I’m unable to see the little strings which link the nodes… so it’s impossible to see what’s going on. The computer I’m on is a laptop with a built-in Intel graphics card. Thanks.
Do you have lighting on the scene? perhaps it’s not aimed properly at your object…
Yes, there’s lights. The render comes out if you wait for it to finish and then resize the render window… it’s probably some display problem related to drivers… I’ve just put on the most up-to-date ones and this cured the node string problem but the others are the same.
Is it an Intel IG chip?
It’s an Intel mobile 4 series express?!?
I’m not sure if this is the same issue, but it sounds very similar.
Last year, I was looking to purchase a laptop computer. So I installed Blender onto a flash drive so that I could test the various laptops for performance. I found that there were a bunch of laptops that would display a black/blank screen when the F12 (render key) was pressed. The render would be working properly (in the background), but the render window wouldn’t display anything - hence the blank/black screen. Once the render was completed, if you would move the window (by grabbing the title bar), the rendered image would display fine. After some research, I realized that all of the laptops that displayed this problem had an onboard Intel graphics card. I don’t remember the exact graphics card model, but I do remember that they were all Intel video cards (that were built into the motherboard). Needless to say, I purchased a laptop with an AMD.
Well, this year I am looking to possibly upgrade my laptop. So once again, I installed Blender (2.49a) onto my flash drive and have been going to the various stores to test out laptops. Once again, I have run into the same issue. The laptops that have this issue all have the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD onboard video.
If this is your issue, then it probably has to do with the video “card” that you have on your computer. You might be able to fix the issue by purchasing a different card.
Thanks GeoPappas! I appreciate the response.
Graphics cards and Blender… what a pain!
Every time I open a computer to “mend” something I usually break something else so I’ll probably leave it well alone. I put new drivers on which cured some of the problems I was having but every now and then my display drivers crash which is very annoying.
Next time I’ll avoid Intel cards too!