Cannot resolve slow & jerky movements

I need help, have gone through FAQ, knowledge base, lag help, and forums and tried the suggestions. If you have any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

I had to have a system restore because of a virus. Reinstalled everything. Been on SL for over a year and never had a problem like this.

After clearing cache and logging back on, everything runs fine and quickly. *Moments* later, things start to degenerate.
My av moves in disjointed, jerky movements.
TPing, inventory, everything else is fine.
One other thing that's strange (related?)- FILE/EDIT/VIEW... menu, capital letters look like they're breaking up just a little bit.

In SL I lowered all settings in Preferences.
I've tried logging in at different times of day and at different locations.

I even turned off firewall and antivirus - it didn't make any difference.

info from running dxdiag:
Windows XP Professional 5.1
System Model: Dell DM051
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 463MB used, 1996MB available
ATI Radeon X300/X550/X1050 Series
Driver Date/Size: 6/2/2008 23:21:06, 306688 bytes

Jerky movements ??? Sounds like a network problem to me. Try monitoring your ping time for a bit. View\Statistics Bar. And just watch what the numbers are when your avatar starts flailing about. Low numbers are good.

If they're all over the show, like mine are sometimes (today has been a real shocker /me wishes the rest of my country would get off their computers and go play outside =p )

Anyways, try turning on interpolation. Advanced\Network\ and put an X next to: Velocity Interpolate Objects and Ping Interpolate Object Positions. They tend to help smooth things a little while the network is donking around.

And umm! never turn your firewall off. Chances are you've been infected again already, and some nasty little email spambot is already happily ensconced on your computer and chewing up your bandwidth.

Thanks Tabliopa,
When I say "jerky" - it's more like my movements aren't smooth and jumping from one place to the next (dare I say lagging?). I looked at the stats bar - I see Ping Sim - it's gone up to 900 while I was moving around, around the 100's while idle.

I'm putting on the interpolation things and will see if that helps.
I also did a virus check and will leave the firewall on, didn't help, anyway.
Thanks.

900 ??? Thats not good when 100 or so is your norm. As you've done a full system restore it may be that your MS autoupdate is working in the background. Try goto MS Update website and do a manual update to hurry things along.

Did you get new virus software? If so, you might want to add an exception for SL..

Trying again, now my Ping Sim is around 800-1000.
Checked MS Update, too, took care of things, but that never was a problem in the past year either.
I added SL paths to the trusted areas of Norton & ZoneAlarm yesterday - I had both of those running in the past, too without ever doing that - don't know why now would be a problem. No changes.
Thanks so far everyone for your patience and help, I do appreciate it.

Relogging again seems to have helped.

When you did a system restore I just wonder if an older version of your network card driver was re-installed. Try: Control Panel \ Network Connections \ [Local Area Connection or whatever its named] \ Properties \ General.

Your card will be shown in the top box. Click the Configure button. Goto Driver page for the driver provider, date and version. Then goto the provider's website and see if there is an update.

Assuming that doesn't help, arg! then its going to be one of two things:

1) You have a hardware problem. A connection/cable is loose, or your router/modem is on the blink. (and I've lost count of the number of times I've driven myself crazy looking for a software problem that wasn't, because a cable wasn't plugged in properly or was toast =) )

2) Somewhere between you and LL there is a data transfer bottleneck. Data packets are being held up and/or being timed out.

A quick way to test this is to goto www.speedtest.com and do some tests between you and Texas/California. If you're getting 800-1000 doing that then its at your end - pretty much your hardware - check your cables/modem.

Otherwise, its a bottleneck. Which alot of people have discovered in the past and JIRA'd about. And its a tedious business to find out where exactly and even when you do know then there's not always alot you can do about it.

But if you're game, then you'll need a network tracer. Here's one if you need it:
http://www.pc-help.org/trace.htm

and here's a JIRA entry to help you get started:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4851

Edit: Saw your entry about relogging seemed to help. kool =) I'll leave this up in case anyone else may need it.

.

Ping Sim went up to 1300, fps went to .7 and av movement slowed down again. At least I had 40 good minutes.
/me sighs.

You were right, there was an older version of my network card - I updated it.

I think my connectivity and hardware are all set, otherwise I'd have other internet problems.

I did a speed test to CA: download speed of 6809kpbs & upload speed of 1024kpbs. (http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/)
And 4.43megabits per second, 540.6kilobytes per second in 3.781seconds
(http://www.bandwidthplace.com/)

I'll try the network tracer info you sent next.

I've tried installing the release candidate viewer and all I get are 10 minutes, maybe 30 then it all goes downhill again.

Maybe some sort of resource leak? Does this happen in just one region or anywhere you go in SL?

There's a Hardware Settings button (or something like that) in the Graphics tab of Preferences. Is the amount of video memory there match what you've got on your video card?

Also, does turning down the draw distance delay SL going all slow on you?

Sindy, this happens anywhere I go in SL. Last night, things were fine for a second or two when I TP'd - I'd actually get 30 or 40 FPS and a low Ping #, then within moments it went bad again. I can't tp back and forth....

I checked Graphics Preferences, Texture Memory is set to 128 which matches my graphics card.

I have my draw distance set to 64.

Graphics card driver ??? You have the latest version from the provider ???

You can also try changing to another port. \Preferences\Network\Custom Port. When you this your firewall will ask you to confirm, so just say yes.

/me also suggests double-checking that your graphics drivers are up to date. Stuff like Windows Update isn't very good at this - check ati.com (or where ever people usually go - I use nvidia and dunno ATI) for the latest ones.

Do you notice any difference in how the disk-access light on the PC is between when you first log in and are doing ok and when you're lagging?

Tried these out...
My ATI graphic drivers are up to date,
Tried the Custom Port &
I can't notice much difference in the the disk-access light on the PC between first log in and when things are lagging.

It's still sporadic, but a little bit better for now. I can't stay on long so can't be sure how much longer this will last. At least I'm not stuck at .5 FPS all the time.

Thanks again, I appreciate all the help I'm getting, at least it keeps me from getting too frustrated if there's still hope out there!

Keep smiling Ayla, there's always hope. /me grins

Suppose we have done all the things mentioned so far and its still sucky. Thats only Round 1 =)

Round 2: As Meade mentioned you've certainly got some kind of resource problem.

a) Start monitoring your computers resource management and consumption. Use your Windows Task Manager for this. Watch the Processes that are running when using SL. Are there other processes starting that maybe interfering. What CPU and Memory resources are they consuming when they do? What happens to the graphs on the Performance and Networking pages? You may get a lead on what else may be causing the problem.

b) Check your computer virtual memory settings and adjust the Paging file size.
Control Panel \ System \ Advanced \ Performance - Settings \ Advanced \ Virtual Memory - Change.
For some computers a smaller or no pagesize works better and for others a larger one.

c) As soon as we say "what else" we also begin to consider coincidences. Has something else happened that is coincidental to the system restore. Two hardware "what else's" spring to mind immediately.

1) Memory failure caused by a faulty memory chip.
2) Soft sectors on the harddrive where SL is now caching.

Your computer should have come with a diagnostic suite (maybe need to get from your computer maker's website). Run that. Defrag your harddrive also.

Round 3: Take your computer to the geekiest computer repair shop you can find and get them have a go at it.

Round 4: Pick your computer up and hurl it furiously on the floor and jump on it. That doesn't fix it, but at least you let the stupid thing know you're the boss. Something I have done twice to my eternal shame =)

I land in SL, things are great for a few moments. If I stay still, they degrade. .3 fps, 3000+ Ping Sim.
If I tp anywhere, all is well again! I'm upt to 30fps and under 100 Ping Sim.
But it never lasts long.
Keeping moving and tping seem to make things work nice, but it's not real practical.

I'm still taking suggestions if you have any!

**I just saw your most recent suggestions Tabliopa & I will look at them again tomorrow - thanks so much for your persistence! I've tried the first one this evening and am ready to shoot straight to the last right now....

For now at least....
Well, I kept going to the Dell website and uploaded necessary drivers. Then, was told that the dxdiag that I got my graphics card info could be incorrect, deleted my drivers again and got new drivers from the Dell site - for Radeon ATI x300 Hypersomething - and all is well.

I'm so relieved.

Thanks again everyone for your help! I really appreciate it.

woohoo! =)

Hmmm... and maybe its not... I am having the same problem today, and nothing changed from last night or last week. Just suddenly... fps drops to nothing. I am thinking network bottleneck here... the last time this happened so of sl's cohost servers were having dns problems...

Anyway, then there is hope...

Are your fonts still distorted?

You might try turning off Catalyst A.I.

It's possible that drivers from ATI might be better than ones from Dell.

It's possible that an older driver might work better than a current one.

What network speed limit is SL set at?

I'm having this exact same problem. I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (256MB graphics memory, 2GB system RAM) using the Mobile Catalyst 8.5 drivers. I can be standing in a single spot looking in one direction and get 20+ fps and <100 ping, then turn 180 degrees and go down to <1 fps and over 4000 ping. If I turn back around again, it's fine again. I'm guessing it's something to do with textures since it mostly happens in complicated areas like open shopping malls and large groups of avs. It's incredibly frustrating. It still happens even if I turn all the graphics options down to minimums. All my system and network drivers are updated. If anyone has any ideas how to help fix this, I'm all ears. :/

Kierne, see what happens when you turn vertex buffering off.

Preferences \ Graphics \ Hardware Options \ Enable VBO

Playing with VBO didn't seem to do much. I tried an older client that still displayed current and max texture memory in the Statistics window and noticed that max texture memory was indicating 336mb when my card only has 256mb. As the current texture memory got closer and closer to 256 it got slower and when it exceeded it it totally bogged down. Turning down my texture memory to about 160mb seems to have helped some.

I'm thinking it's a problem on my end with the video card swapping textures in and out of memory, not sure. It's frustrating, because SL automatically sets the graphics to the second notch, so I /should/ have enough horsepower to run this acceptably. It's just in areas with lots of textures, I've got about 10-15 minutes before my framerate tanks.