ureadit

Last week as the family prepared to go geocaching, I fired up Google Earth on my PC to check some coordinates. Google Earth had been running flawlessly on my PC up until this point, but for some reason, when I clicked on it, the PC crashed. I vaguely remembered that Google Earth had just been updated to the latest revision. Apparently the folks at Google enhanced the program. :-)

I rebooted the PC and tried again. This time, just before the PC crashed, I saw a message from the Vista operating system, saying something about a problem with the display driver. I figured that I wasn’t going to solve the problem at that time, and everyone was getting anxious to go geocaching. I shut down the PC, and we went geocaching.

Later, after returning home, I looked online and saw that there was something in the latest enhancement from Google that was crashing a lot of machines. Lots of people tried different solutions, but nothing seemed to work.

Then I remembered the hint I received that last time that the PC crashed: something happened to the display driver. With this hint in mind, I poked around the Google program a bit and noticed something interesting. Apparently, Google Earth can run in two different graphics modes: DirectX and OpenGL. I figured that if one didn’t work, maybe the other would.

It was a gamble, but I had little to lose. As it turned out, the gamble paid off. I was able to get Google Earth running again.

Here’s how you can do this little trick, and hopefully, if you’re having problems with Google Earth, this might help.

Go to the “Start Programs” button, then select “All Programs” and navigate to the “Google Earth” folder. Under this folder, you will see two options for running the program, as I show in the screen-shot below. The two options are:  1) Start Google Earth in DirectX mode, and 2) Start Google Earth in OpenGL mode.

 

 

Both DirectX and OpenGL are known as Application Programming Interfaces (API). There are many types of APIs in the world of computer programming. The specific APIs in this case are used to control 2D and 3D graphics. DirectX is Microsoft’s version, and OpenGL is a version that is in the realm of “Open” software.

Try clicking on one of these selections when starting your Google Earth program. In my case, I suspected that my PC was already trying to run the DirectX version, so I selected OpenGL. As I clicked on this selection, Google Earth popped up a message that said OpenGL would be used automatically from this point forward. And within a few seconds, Google Earth was running flawlessly.

Tada!

 

I personally depend on Google Earth when geocaching. Though it’s not an absolute necessity, I like to put extra “way-points” into my GPS so that I know where certain points of interest (like trail heads) are located so that I don’t miss them when hiking. It’s a great tool when you’re trying to find your way around the surface of the planet and there are no road signs.

BTW: Be sure to visit the geocaching site for more information on this really fun and geeky hobby.

Best,

Dan

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