ok, this may have been posted before, but i haven’t found anything when i searched for it. my question is, does anyone have experience with or a solution to this problem: when i open blender, i can use it for 10 minutes or so, i never really timed it, and then it’ll just crash on me. another problem is that when i have blender running, then i minimize it, and then maximize it i will lose all the labels on the buttons. they just disappear! i put my mouse over the buttons and the labels come back but just disappear again when i move it away. i believe i already posted this problem before on the original blender messageboard but that was the day before the site was shut down. if anyone has a solution, or you need more information please let me know[/img]
try redownloading Blender
You are most likely experiencing compatibility problems between your graphic card drivers and Blender. What are you using ?
i have a SiS AG315-64 3d card on a windows XP system. i tried recently downloading newer drivers for it but that didn’t seem to solve anything. do you have any other ideas?
Maybe try older ones. Might be hard with XP. Did your problems started when you installed XP ? I never hear of your card : is it new ?
well, currently i can only assume it all started with XP. you see, it’s the entire computer that is new, not just the OS. i got it for christmas. the graphics card i think is pretty new, it’s a 64mb. i guess it could be the card but since my favourite saying is “because XP sucks”, i tend to blame my operating system. it isn’t just blender that doesn’t work properly on XP, there’s a bunch of other stuff. mainly games but there are a few programs that won’t cooperate which can’t be because of the graphics card since they aren’t really graphics dependant.
(sigh)
I’d like to help you but my combo Window '98/2000 is the last of Windows I’ll ever use (and it’s pretty good at that) so, XP… Nevertheless, there are many people running XP that also use Blender and you shouldn’t loose hope. I heard on TechTV that there was already a high number of patches for XP. Maybe if you update to them ?
Best luck
well, apparently not. i tried updating them, they finished downloading yesterday and i installed them this morning, but it seems they had no effect
OK. Find how to disable hardware acceleration in XP. Here it is right click on the desktop… well, it’s in French. Anyway, disable it : if Blender stops crashing (but il will be slooooowww!) it’s your graphic card, most likely the drivers. If it still crashes : XP is the culprit.
damn! you were right, it’s my graphics card! nooooooooooo!
Went to the SiS web site.
The drivers at http://www.sis.com/support/driver/315.htm
are of two sorts. you may want to try international support (the bigger file) if your system is not in English.
Those drivers are said to be different than those packaged. But I guess that they are the ones you tried to install earlier. Did you completely uninstall the previous drivers before attempting to install the new ones ?
Another possibility would be that you don’t have DirectX 8.0 or higher.
I know that it leaves little hope…
yeah, those are the drivers i installed the last time, but no i didn’t completely uninstall the old ones. could that be the problem?
Yes. All uninstallation programs aren’t created equal.
Maybe you should try the support at SiS, if there is any : they litterally give their cards away.
so you are saying i should uninstall the driver then reinstall? i’m worried about something bad happening…
It is a strange experience if you’ve never done it. 
You’ll be in 16 colors and 800X600 at best, maybe 640x480…
but otherwise it’s pretty much the same machine.
Now, if you don’t feel comfortable or if you can find help from SiS, or your dealer if he was the one deciding for that card…
Even uninstalling the driver is no garanty that the process will be thorough.
In short : I’m somewhat at my wits end. Sorry.
alright, i’ll try it… if i never come back that means i broke my computer and commited suicide 
ok, so my computer didn’t explode, so the process was successful. then again, i still have the same blender problems so i guess it wasn’t very successful after all. i guess i’ll just download blender on my dad’s computer…