I have a very big problem: I just purchased a book called Beginning OpenGL Game Programming, by Dave Astle and Kevin Hawkins. And all the programs that come with the book crash with the same type of error message box every time on my laptop computer: "The instruction at 0x69666f60 referenced memory at 0x0019194c. The memory could not be written." This exact same kind of error also happens with every OpenGL program I write. The crash always occurs either on the first glClear(myflags) call, or on the first SwapBuffers(hdc) (if I skip the call to glClear() which it crashes on); I'm using wgl to write my opengl apps. All glut-based and wiggle-based OpenGL code crashes on my laptop pc: every single program that came with this book and all my own code as well. I DON'T GET IT!! I'm guessing it's some kind of graphics driver problem?? I just don't know how to resolve (and where to look) in order to fix this. My laptop computer uses onboard video hardware from nvidia 6800 equivalent. With every single Direct3D application I've written, these kinds of runtime crashes don't occur. I've been coding a very long time: so I'm very confident it's not due to a logic mistake. But nevertheless, this is a behavior I haven't seen before. My windows platform sdk allows for opengl and wgl calls to be made. Compiles and links without problems. Could it be that Microsoft is being evil, and is forcing the rest of us to use Direct3D? haha...maybe? Or is it nVidia? or both? Anyways, I'd deeply appreciate any help I can get on this. Thanks

That definitely sounds like either a problem with the drivers themselves or else with whatever code utility you are using to setup OpenGL.

I would try getting an OpenGL demo from someplace else and try running that. If it works, you can rule out the drivers, in which case it may be time to get a new version of GLUT :D.

Try using the Jogl demos. They run with Java Webstart so you don't even need to unpack anything. Just click the link and wait to see if they run or not. You can find them here: https://jogl-demos.dev.java.net/

Wow, I solved my own problem.

Now I feel kind of stupid for asking the question.

I just turned off driver instrumentation, and that solved the issue. Now all my opengl programs run correctly, including my Direct3D apps.