Unable to start game

I've joined on the 5 day trial, and if all goes according to what I've read, I plan on converting to a full membership. The descriptions and the raves of the beta testers makes it sound very cool.

The only problem is, I can't get the darn program to start. It dumps out of the program to my XP desktop after it says "connecting to region".

Is there a phone number I could call to get online support?

Barring this possibility, from what I've read, it has been suggested that one potential thing that could cause a problem would be my router.

My router is a Netgear Cable/DSL Prosafe VPN Firewall model# FVS318. My service provider is Adelphia. The high bandwidth is on the "slowish" side.

I also noticed a preferences section, where I can set speeds and video, etc. What is the barebones suggestion for these.

Any help is appreciated. Hey, if I can get online, home-warming at my second-life home (bring your own virtual beer).

Trantor Escher

Hi Trantor,

What you need to do is adjust the settings. At the log on screen, there is an option of.... what's it called? Something like "settings" Anyway, when you click on it you get a window with tabs... Now I'm not home to check, sorry I can't give you exact details, but what you need to do is set the band width to lower than you actually get. My DSL as a band width of only about 165kbs Pretty bad, but no alternative So I set my bandwidth to 100. After I did that, I never had (well seldom had ) any problems again.

I have plenty of disk space, so I put that as high as I can.

Give that a try, and if it doesn't work, drop me an email:
[email]ingiebee@hotmail.com[/email]
(because I may forget to look here again )

Love Ingie

Thanks for the reply Ingie. I actually tried to set the speed to 100, but it didn't help. I've tried some online bandwidth testers, and they peg me at 1500 to 500. This is probably a high estimate (done at a good time of the day), so I envision probably that 100 should work fine, but it still dumps after "connecting to region".

I've noticed that there are some pretty specific video card requirements for this game. My card is below:

S3 Graphics TwisterK HP

I'm wondering if this card is causing me the problems. It's not as simple for me to just replace the card, as I am using a laptop (hoping to game a bit on the road), but are there any suggestions for getting this to work?

Best Regards and thanks for the help so far.
Trantor Escher

You are correct, the game is very stringent on it's requirements, especially in the graphics card field. I think they try to be fully OpenGL compliant, so I would start researching driver compatibility with that chip and OpenGL. My immediate thoughts, and from briefly reading the XFree resource on the chip, is that you're going to be out of luck on the laptop though.

But, i'm not a Linden, so good luck to you!

Oh, yes, definately the video card. They're pretty easy to replace?? If you want to do it yourself?

If you want, I can locate a tutorial on how to change out a video card on the web for you (Tom's Hardware Guide probably has one)

Love Ingie

Problem with that Ingie is the machine is a laptop, and I never heard of being able to change gfx capabilities on a laptop (typically integrated into the mobo)....

Oh dear, do you not have a desk top? Yes, I have a 8mb rage m on my laptop and can't use it in SL. Well, I guess it's time for a new lap top, eh? LOL... any excuse is a good excuse for more power!!!

Oh well, joking aside, you really need a more powerful video card, sorry.

Ingie

I'm going to investigate with HP the possibility of putting new video capability into my laptop.

If I get a positive response, I will post the answer. Would be awesome to do SL on the road with my laptop. At home I really don't have the time (so I make it )

Best
Trantor Escher

I have a laptop that is able to play SL with extremely good framerates. I actually prefer playing SL on my laptop rather than my desktop. Its a Toshiba Satellite S607 or something like that. Its got a GeForce 4 440 Go card, which isnt that great, but, it does the job!

See, that's the way to go...

I bumped my s3 twister-k card up to 32 MB dedicated memory, but no go...it just wants the geoforce...DOAH!

I have a mole in HP who will be able to give me the inside scoop on changing the video card on my current laptop. Let's see what he says.

Best,
Trantor

I have an old dell latitude, and my boss just got a new dell latitude, and they look soooooooooo alike.... I'm almost tempted to throw out caution, and get the main board for his and try and squeeze it into mine, LOL.... sure the memory thingy is bigger, but I can put in the memory, then install the board, eh?????

I'd probably kill the poor thing, but, it'd be fun??? (I've already pulled mine limb from limb, and after a few trys, got it back together again, LOL... can't resist

Man...I just emailed HP with a "how do I convert this notebook to a geoforce" and they said "nope...ah, no, ah...well, probably...NO!" DOAH!

I'm not beaten yet, though I checked online to see if there were any cardbus geoforce adaptors to which I could shunt the video to, then reroute to the display, but no, there were only measley little 16 bit cards with 8 to 16 MB memory, at most.

I wonder if it is possible to engineer or jury rig a geoforce card with a USB connection in a similar manner? Although the voltage requirement for a full PCI card is probably MUCH higher than what the USB port supplies.

If I visit the same hotels on the road, maybe they will allow installation of SL on their computers

HELP...I'm an addict. I was up to 1 AM last night trying to figure out how to remove the pseudo hole in my deck (bug). Finally got it removed by shifting the floor up a couple of meters. Reminds me of several Star Trek episodes (Captain, I'm an addict, not a doctor, dammit).

Can you tell I want to use my laptop with this

Trantor

Since you've got an integrated video card, you most likely won't be able to change it. If you really really want to be able to play on the road, you're going to need a different notebook, preferably one with an ATI or nVidia chipset.

Also, it's spelled "GeForce".

Well, it would be wholly impossible to do it with USB or 1394, they're just way too slow for what you're going for.

Normal PCMCIA would be as well, Cardbus *might* squeak by with poor performance. Would require a LOT of engineering work though. (At levels which would be daunting even for graphics board companies)