Need help stopping crashes

First the specs for my HP desktop.

* AMD Phenom(tm) 9650 Quad-Core Processor at 2310 MHz (x4)
* Windows Vista Home Premium x64 Edition 6.0 (build: 6002) Service Pack 2
* 7GB RAM
* NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT 1GB
* Not sure on sound, but it tells me RealTek High Definition Audio. Most likely it is an integrated sound card.

Just upgraded the video card and power supply last night. Have all the latest drivers installed. Have tried both the Emerald Viewer Optimized (which is the one I prefer) and the standard LL Viewer. Both have the same result. Anywhere from a few seconds to a couple minutes after logging in, the viewer crashes with a dialog box asking to send the error information. I have even tried setting it to run as Windows XP just to see if I had a different result. Of course, nothing changed, it still crashed. What was I doing in world? It didn't matter, because sometimes it would crash before I even had a chance to move.

So, any feedback would be appreciated. I spent money upgrading the video card and power supply specifically for SL. I'd really like to be able to take advantage of it.

BTW: I backed up the log files that were created in the crash dump, if anyone is interested in that.

You might try removing the video card and putting it back in, just to make sure it's seated properly.

What are the specs on the new power supply?

Was the computer running SL before the video card and power supply upgrade?

Have you cleared your SL cache?

Have you tried an uninstall, then deleting the settings.xml file, and a reinstall?

Are you sure you have the power supply correctly and completely connected to the video card?

Where did you get your updated driver from?

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Some folks get distressed at huge log file dumps here. Perhaps the last ten lines or so would do, or use one of the sites like http://cl1p.net/ to past the file to and post the url here.

Rocketfish, 550-Watt ATX CPU Power Supply
Dual +12V output rails


No, because my video card would crash it.


Yes, this was a completely new install of the latest build of Emerald. I had removed all temp files, cache files, settings, etc. In addition, I installed the default viewer plus several other viewers, one at a time, trying to see if any of them would work. All crashed.


Yes.


Windows Update. The provided CD wasn't working. Also checked the nVidia site, which didn't have any different drivers than what was on the Windows Update site.

That is why I didn't post it but gave it as an option for whoever was interested.

That site wouldn't let me post the log. Too big probably. Also, I can't seem to submit the post even with basic information from the logs. If necessary, I can upload a zip file containing the logs to my site that can be downloaded. Will do that if any want to see the logs.

Just a thought. Would upgrading to 64bit Windows 7 make a difference? Could it be a problem with Vista 64? I'd rather wait to upgrade my Windows, due to cost, but wonder if anyone else has any knowledge that might help here.

Well, I downloaded the nVidia drivers from the nVidia web site. Turns out there were newer drivers there, I missed them the first time I viewed the site.

I uninstalled all viewers and deleted associated folders and temporary files.

I installed the new nVidia drivers, turning off my firewall and virus protection at nVidia's suggestion and restarted my computer.

I installed the LL Default Viewer and launched it from the setup. Immediate viewer crash.

Relaunched LL Default Viewer and this time the login window appeared. I went into Edit -> Preferences before logging in to check settings and the viewer crashed again.

This is getting ridiculous now. Anyone have any other ideas on what I can look at?

If you are a premium account you should file a support ticket. It might be worthwhile in money and time and effort to go premium for a month in order to get support from LL.

You should be able to open the log file in notepad and cut and paste the last ten or twenty lines here.

When the previous video card installed, something crashed, something still crashes. Is the crashing just the same as it was before?


How do you know it was the older video card crashing it earlier, as opposed to something else crashing it?


I'm assuming you don't get an error message, but I'll ask just in case you forgot to post it.

You might want to do some cutting and pasting to get your problem seen by more people. If you haven't posted it in the Second Life Answers blog/forum thing, that couldn't hurt. I'd suggest signing up with sluniverse and posting in the forums there, and you might as well at least look at other sites like secondcitizen and slapt.me .

If you haven't posted a description of the problem in the SL Jira, that also couldn't hurt.

If you work up your problem description properly you can just paste the exact same text into all those other places, and then perhaps modify the one in the jira if needed to make it suit the jira system properly.

One thing folks suggest at times for crash problem is to try removing some memory chips and or swapping some around to see if there might be a problem with a chip that only has a consequence when a particular program manages to find it.

If you have enough time when you log in you should do a detach all.

If you have any alternate accounts you should try them, and try logging in at different regions if you haven't tried that already.

If you have aeroglas turned on, you could try turning it off.

NEVER EVER EVER EVER let Windows update install an nVidia driver. Windows has no idea what the hell it's doing in this regard. ALWAYS download drivers directly from the nVidia website, and install them manually.

When you installed the new video drivers, did you first completely uninstall the old ones? If not, then that's very likely the cause of your trouble.

Windows is NOT fully capable of uninstalling nVidia graphics drivers (or ATI ones, for that matter) on its own. Stray files and registry entries almost always get left behind, and these can, and very often do, interfere with the proper installation/functioning of newer drivers.

To ensure a driver replacement goes the way it's supposed to, use the following procedure, each and every time:

1. Download the new driver installer from the nVidia website, but don't install it yet.

2. Download and install DriverCleaner from drivercleaner.net, if you don't already have it. The program costs US$10, and it's worth every penny. I usually say it's worth at least 10 times that price. It works flawlessly, every time. It's the only way I know of to ensure a 100% complete uninstall of existing drivers, aside from going in manually to delete every file and clean up every registry entry by hand.

3. Restart your machine in Safe Mode. To do this, tap F8 while the computer is first booting up, to bring up the boot menu. Then pick Safe Mode from the list.

4. Run DriverCleaner, and follow the onscreen instructions to remove your existing nVidia drivers. Also, if you previously had an ATI card in the machine, chances are some parts of its drivers will still be lingering. It's super important to remove those as well. ATI and nVidia drivers on the same machine almost never play well together. I've even had ATI TV tuner drivers crash nVidia video cards before. The two companies have radically different philosophies about how these things are supposed to work. Don't let their drivers mix.

5. After you've cleared out all traces of existing nVidia and ATI video drivers, restart the machine normally.

6. Now run the nVidia driver installer you downloaded in step 1. Your video card will function properly from this point on, assuming there's nothing wrong with the card itself.



Here's another thought. I notice you said there are 7GB of RAM in the machine. 7 is a very unusual number. 8 and 6 are much more common. This is because most RAM modules in use these days are designed to be installed in matched pairs. It's possible to arrive at 7GB from an atypical combination of paired modules, such as three pairs of 1GB modules, and one pair of 512KB modules. If that's what you're doing, then there's likely no problem with it. However, if you've got anything unmatched in there, take it out. You don't want to have, say, a pair of 2GB modules plus a lone 2GB and a lone 1GB. That can lead to stability problems.

Yeah, my account is premium. I forgot about the premium support option. *doh*

I'm going to exhaust ideas posted here then contact them if I have no success. Thanks.


Tried that earlier and it wouldn't let me post it for some odd reason. Kept getting a 404 not found when trying to submit, and without that it submits fine.


No, before it would lock up my computer or give me the BSOD. This is only the viewer crashing.


Because when it recovered from the BSOD, I was informed that the video caused the system failure.


No, would be nice if there were an error message. It just shuts down asking to send the error report.


I posted at SLU first, followed here later that day, and at Emerald's site yesterday (as that is the viewer I'd like to use once I get the default LL viewer stable).


I would, but I don't have enough info to give them to reproduce. I work in QA and as a developer, so I know how important it is to have reproducible steps to work with.


That is the catch isn't it? Trying to get the problem description correct.


If it were hardware only, there would be other problems. I know it is a software/driver issue of some kind. The problem is determining exactly what is causing my problems. If another software program may be interfering, if the drivers aren't installed properly, etc.


I haven't even been able to get past the log in screen now, which is frustrating.


I can turn off Aero.


Yeah, it was the end of a long night fighting with installing the power supply and video and the provided CD wasn't working. Should have gone to nVidia directly.


I'll try that and see how it works.


Yeah, I thought it was unusual as well. It is the way HP built this particular system. I have never upgraded the memory, only the video and power supply.

Im also getting these crashes as well have done everything listed above to no prevail...sometimes it will let me play just as long as i dont open another program while sl is open but as soon as i do open another program secondlife goes to not responding and i have to exit the program.

Im also using a quad core processor intel core quad 2.6 with 250 gts video card and it runs well on everything else so its not a hardware problem

...One thing i did notice when i reinstalled sl is that a screen poped up said that my hardware wont support sl.. Funny thing is i have played on this computer before and never had problems till recently.