My video card is an older model, an ATI Radeon 9000. ATI has not updated the drivers in several years now. Indeed, they have stated they won't make a Win7 driver for the card. That's normal for them, I had an earlier ATI card that they refused to make an NT 4.0 driver for. (Alas that Nvidia's support is even worse.) However, I have been keeping the drivers and DirectX up to date all along. My video resolution has always been set to 32 bits. There is no OpenGL tab in the settings, and no compatibility setting in the Catalyst application. The only OpenGL settings are unrelated. I have managed this card through a whole horde of oddball applications and a great many games, so I find it difficult to understand that, at this late date, the problem is the video card. It is even more difficult to believe this since the problem will not go away -- that is, that closing and re-opening LiveView doesn't fix things, or that saving the file, quitting, restarting and re-opening doesn't restore things to the proper appearance. However, I will try lowering the acceleration -- which has worked very well with every other game and application I've thrown at it -- in hopes that this will prevent or at least reduce future problems. I was, however, looking for information about recovering from existing situations -- project files in which the textures have gone crazy. Is there any way I can restore them, or do I just have to write off all of that work?

I take it that since I have asked twice with no reply, there is no way to recover from the error, that the previous files are now hopelessly corrupt, and that I may as well delete them because I'll never get them right again. Is that correct? I've read the threads you referenced, but still don't see this issue addressed: how can driver problems cause permanent file corruption without that file being loaded? While I understand the issues regarding textures being misapplied -- e.g.,, to the sky instead of to the object (and I find it really odd that this wasn't addressed a long time ago -- "Change the sky texture? Are you sure you want to do that?" -- God knows, there are enough other little nags like that, what's one more?) this is not that issue. This texture was already in place, and I did not attempt to apply a new one. Rather, it spontaneously corrupted itself, not just for that instance, but for every future instance of application whether taken from the palette or the original library, and meanwhile appearing correctly on the palette. Indeed, I was "inside the house". when the sky/ground evil happened. I was "in another room" when the wall corruption occurred. Only when I looked through a window, did I notice that the sky had gone nuts.Only when I entered the first room did I see that the wallpaper had gone crazy. I read LMC's explanation about video drivers, and understand it. I don't agree with his reasoning because video mistakes can persist for a long time indeed and that wouldn't be acceptable to anyone, but the occasion of redrawing the whole screen, (the equivalent of getting a video "A" frame) however that comes about, seems like it ought to sort the problem he describes. It doesn't. It appears instead that there is a mistake which can occur in the rendering, and which once made, is thereafter written in stone: the wall/sky/ground/whatever will now forever reiterate that same rendering mistake and never get it right, even by accident. Rebooting or resetting ought to clear it, but does not. Murphy doesn't merely run riot, he stages a coup d'etat and has himself elected dictator for life. This is why I believe that something beyond the driver must be at the root of this issue. I have lowered the graphics acceleration and essentially started over. Two weeks down the drain. I do hope this will at least not happen again.

Hi there,

I received and I checked your file. For learning purposes, I am posting my answer here

The file and textures work flawless in my 3 computers, with different OS, different videocards and capabilities. I sent the images and they show the rendering without any issue
So, the problem is in your computer.
I understand (as per your email) that you are skeptical regarding the videocard issue, but I saw this videocard problem dozens of times in the last 9 years.
In addition, I experienced the same problem with a defective ATI Radeon 2600 series!!

A second problem, you have a corrupted texture--> for this reason, I elaborated a new texture and sent you the instructions for the installation and replacement in your palette
This will solve only the corruption problem but not the video card problem

Patricia

Hi bagby,

I think that you posted the message above before I posted my answer...:-)

Anyway, some notes
I didn't say that you didn't know how to change a texture--> Your texture seems corrupted, so I created a new texture, and explained how to replace it in your palette
The link I sent was regarding your comment of the PTX (Punch texture) format

Regarding my experience with a similar problem--> I had Diamond ATI Radeon Video card, 256 mb, it worked without problems during more than a year, so few months after I bought a second vc (same brand and model) for my second computer. Then, one day the first vc started to do weird rendering, including a sky full of pixelated parts of the interior of the house. The little man used to freeze. As result of this, each file I tried to render was damaged.
I will not describe all the the steps, but, in my case, nothing helped, the videocard was damaged--> few months after, the second video card showed the same problem--> I changed for new HIS ATI Radeon VC with 512 mb, with cooling system, working without problems

Hope this helps

Patricia