Crashing on startup?
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Morse Dillon
Lifetime Member
Join date: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 142
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12-11-2003 20:50
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, I spent a good 15 minutes looking for somewhere better.
Anyway, I ran across SL tonight and was awfully excited to start my free trial. Unfortunately, after installing the SL client, I can't get it to run properly.
I'm running Windows XP on the following hardware:
-Shuttle FB65 Mainboard (Intel 865 chipset) -Pentium 4 2.8GHz/1 GB DDR400 RAM -Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB Video Card
I have the very latest Catalyst 3.9 video drivers, and have every available patch installed from Windows Update. I have also tried disabling Norton Antivirus 2004. Everything about my system is pretty much "stock", no crazy programs running in the background or anything.
I've allowed the crash reporter to send a report, but beyond that is there anything else I can try in order to get things running? I have already been through the Knowledge Base and the 1.1.10 Release Notes, but didn't see anything that applied.
I am REALLY anxious to get started. You see, a friend and I were talking about MMORPGs about 2 weeks ago, and I was describing a set of "new ideas" I had for the genre. Then I run across Second Life and it's almost as if Linden Labs had tapped my phone conversation - most of what I had in mind is being implemented verbatim! Unbelievable... So needless to say I'm already looking at a lifetime membership - sight unseen no less. I just hope that I can get this running before the supply of lifetime memberships run out
Thanks in advance for any help, and I again apologize if this is the wrong place to make this post.
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James Miller
Village Idiot
Join date: 9 Jan 2003
Posts: 1,500
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12-11-2003 21:14
Hey Morse. ATI's drivers do have some issues with Second Life, however, it might be your motherboard drivers. Try to upgrade your motherboard drivers, that should hopefully fix it. If not, please contact Linden Lab at their (800) number tommorow! 
_____________________
George W. Bush hates America.
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Morse Dillon
Lifetime Member
Join date: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 142
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Update: Crashing on Startup
12-11-2003 21:23
Well, in addition to what I detailed in the original post, I've also taken the following measures - to no avail  - Updated Motherboard (Shuttle FB61) BIOS - Updated to latest Intel chipset drivers - Made every conceivable adjustment to my Display Settings (with particular attention to the special ATI Catalyst settings such as SMARTGART) - Updated all other drivers, such as sound and network I'm really hoping to get this fixed soon! -Morse Dillon
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Morse Dillon
Lifetime Member
Join date: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 142
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Update 2: Crashing on Startup
12-11-2003 21:26
Also - I tried completely uninstalling and then reinstalling Second Life.
Still no joy.
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Garoad Kuroda
Prophet of Muppetry
Join date: 5 Sep 2003
Posts: 2,989
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12-11-2003 21:27
Does it instantly crash at startup or does the startup screen work? If it does can you mess with preference settings?
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Morse Dillon
Lifetime Member
Join date: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 142
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12-11-2003 21:32
What happens is, I click on SL icon...the little "Loading SecondLife" box comes up. Then the screen goes black and changes resolution to 1024x768. Then, flops back to the desktop where I get a dialog saying that "Second Life has encountered and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." Then the screen resolution goes back to 1280X1024 and the crash logger is there.
I never get to the opening screen or anything...
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Darwin Appleby
I Was Beaten With Satan
Join date: 14 Mar 2003
Posts: 2,779
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12-11-2003 21:43
Have you tried downgrading your video card drivers?
_____________________
Touche.
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LePoseur Skidoo
Depressed Optimist
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 37
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12-11-2003 22:38
Morse, not that this will help you, but you are not alone. I've had the same thing going for almost two months now and I'm dying to get back in.
Plus, it's happened before. About six months ago when I was running on Win2K it started and I couldn't get it worked out, then I made an clean reinstal of XP and things were sweet again until it came back. This time though I haven't had time to backup and reinstall yet (maybe before Xmas)
I'm convinced it's a conflict between another installed program and SL as a fresh reinstall has me working again, but any other tricks, like upgrading/downgrading drivers (for both ATI and Nvidia) drivers for soundcards (Live or Audigy) Motherboard drivers (AGP, Network, etc) clean reinstalling of SL, manually deleting the cache, running virus/trojan scans with current updates and even the classic swinging of dead cats around at mightnight on a full moon saying spunkwater, spunkwater ALL have no effect.
I just wish I knew what program it was....
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Jericho Powers
Hero Without A Cause
Join date: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 166
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12-12-2003 06:24
Something else you can look at is if you have your OS on its own partition, cus SL puts its swap file there. I had that problem when I accidently increased my cache to 1 gb and filled my OS parition, the thing did something very similar to what you discribe.
_____________________
Gibson, thereabouts.
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Morse Dillon
Lifetime Member
Join date: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 142
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Fixed: Crashing on Startup
12-12-2003 06:31
Well, I had tried to downgrade to Catalyst 3.1 earlier last night, but the installer wouldn't work because it was too old to recognize my Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800.
After trying everything else, I decided to revisit the driver downgrade. With a little effort, I was able to con Windows XP into accepting Catalyst 3.1 by pretending my card was a 9700 instead.
It would appear that things are finally working! However, I'm not happy with having to downgrade so far, and will be trying out 3.8 later tonight when I get home.
Could a Linden explain (technical terms are ok - I'm a 3D programmer) why their software is "exposing" so many problems in the Radeon implementation?
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LePoseur Skidoo
Depressed Optimist
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 37
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12-12-2003 08:58
Morse, you are the man! I'm back in. I had tried downgrading back into the older ATI drivers but never as far as 3.1. But, low and behold, with 3.1 I can bring up the log in screen again. Cool. Thanks a bunch. 
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Bit Phaeton
Senior Member
Join date: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 82
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12-12-2003 10:09
I've had better success with intermediate versions of the catalyst drivers....
Mind you, my radeon 9800 pro works pretty well in SL with the Cat 3.9s.....Just I get fewer crash-to-desktops with 3.7/3.6
I also find that a fresh install of windows XP helps a lot....
I can't figure out why, though.....Something gets really fudged up when/if SL kills the OS (I mean go straight from playing OS to hard reboot).
If you want to try the 3.8+ series again, turn off VPU recover. SL does weird things that seem to trip it 'accidently'.
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