Thursday, April 23, 2015

Getting my Toshiba laptop to use the right graphics driver

I’ve recent upgradeg to version 9.5 of OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite, but instead of the browser becoming faster it had become decidedly unreliable and prone to “hanging”. Checking the compatibility requirements in OnOne support had me puzzled I had enough memory and a Nvidia graphics card also with required memory. Updating the cards drivers didn’t help. Finally the penny dropped, my Toshiba has two graphics card, one an Intel CPU (for standard widows stuff) and a Nvidia Card (for games and advanced video) and supposedly some intelligence to let the application find the right card and driver. Well basically the latest version of Perfect Browse was trapped in the standard Intel graphics card, when it actually wanted the more sporty Nvidia, Yes now I remember a similar issue long ago but how to fix it. Don’t bother with manuals, The answer is buried piece by piece across a number of forums. Here is my simplified approach for those with a Toshiba laptop with dual graphics cards.

Nvidia Control PanelThe Nvidia control panel does allow you to select the programs that you wish to start with its drivers (and overrides the supposed automatic select of the most appropriate driver).check Desktop settings On the Toshiba laptop with dual graphics card you need to go into the control panel then double click on the Nvidia Control panel. Here you just need to select the desktop item in the main menu and check that the item called Add "Run with graphics processor" Option to Context Menu. Now the final step is to right click on the Prefect Photo Suite icon on your desktop, which will bring up the context menu, now with the run with graphic processor option, and this will bring up a submenu.

Right click to get the Context Menu
Dialogue to Set Nvidia as the default driverYou can then select to run the perfect suite under the Nvidia driver for just one run. or better change the default driver associated with this program. Changing the default brings up the Nvidia Control panel again this time in a dialogue that lets you select the Nvidia processor as the default driver for a given program and the Perfect Photo Suite will be selected. Make sure the Nvidia processor is associate with it and then press Apply.

I realise this is a kind of double loop but you seem to need all these steps and  it worked for me, I now have a speedy photo browser in Perfect Photo Suite 9.5

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