new laptop, out of memory errors after a few hours in SL

Hi, technical newbie here, so be kind. I just got a new laptop, specifics below. So far it works great with SL and I'm able to have graphics options on that I've never had on before.

But..... after a few hours, I get a pop-up window that says I am out of memory and that I should free up memory. The window has three options: Retry, Ignore, Cancel. Retry does nothing. Cancel does nothing. If I Ignore, usually the same pop-up will return within seconds. Sometimes the pop-up doesn't return, but nearly all the textures in-world disappear and everything becomes grey.

As I said, this is a new computer, a laptop. In the task manager, at times when this pop-up has arrived, the memory number next to SL will be over a million. On my previous computer, which has less memory and a worse graphic card, SL would go up to around 600,000.

A friend thought maybe this was an overheating problem. I thought it made sense at first, but then I considered that to solve this problem, I've been simply closing SL and immediately restarting it... and experiencing no issues again for several additional hours. If it were a heating issue, I would expect an almost immediate return of the problem.

Alright, here are specs...hoping there is just some setting in-world that I can change to make everything good. *smiles*

HP Pavilion HDX9300 Notebook
Intel Core2 Duo CPU T8100@2.1GHz
4 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS, 512 MB, driver version "7.15.11.6753"
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit OS

My previous computer is a desktop with only 2GB rams and GeForce 8600 and Windows XP.

Please advise how to avoid this "out-of-memory" problem. Thank you all very much for your kind assistance.

It just occurred to me that there is another change to my system that I'd forgotten. Previously I was running the Nicholas viewer. Now I am running the official viewer. Maybe this is a result of all the leaks he fixed being reintroduced to my SL experience? Is the official viewer really that bad? *cringes*

Sweet this is the same specs I have and the same problem using the Nicholaz rocks!
also setting the affinity is great in the task manager I just choose one cpu instead of both it makes a great improvement. You will have to set the affinity every time thou. good luck

I'm told SL has memory leak..........non geek, I don't really understand that. But was told to log off and back on, problem solved, works for me

That has been my experience. I have 4 GB of RAM and the official viewer as of 1.19 gives me the out of memory error, I am totally dependent upon Nicholaz now....

Setting "affinity" is unfamiliar and therefore scary, hehe, but I did try doing so for Second Life last night. The out-of-memory issue did not go away. The pop-up window says "Smartheap" in the heading, if that is helpful.

In order to return to Nicholas, I think I need first to get a version of the official SL client which is older. If that turns out to fix the problem, then all I can say is shame on Lindens. Truly... shame. His leak fixes have been public knowledge well over a year. The official client should be the leanest, most pristine, most stable of them all.

I am at work now but I swear I am using the current SL Viewer for Nicholaz.
I will look it up. in the mean time I dont know where you can get the old viewer maybe on Nicholaz's site it will tell you?

Yep same thing just happened to me, just had to turn a few things off in Task Manager.

What did you turn off, out of curiosity? I'm deathly afraid of task manager.... I'm always sure I will break something if I turn the wrong thing off. *laughs*

I went back to the 1.19 viewer, which I found in a link from Nicholas' blog. That is the viewer on which his "Eye Candy" version runs (has windlight and voice). He doesn't have a version which will work with the 1.2 viewer.

I also noticed that Eye Candy defaulted to windowed mode rather than full screen. Would that simple change alone account for the difference in memory usage over the course of several hours? I was surprised to see how much more quickly I can toggle back and forth from SL to the desktop using windowed mode.

Anyway, I'll update this later tonight after the 1.19/Eye Candy have had a chance to run a few hours straight. *crosses her fingers, closes her eyes, taps her heels three times, and whispers an Emily Dickinson poem to the dead cicadas on the backporch*

You just turn off things which has your user name, just don't turn off the things with the name system, but if you do turn off something which you weren't meant to all you have to do is restart your computer and they'll all come back on.

We had good success in avoiding this by minimizing the viewer for some time (so you are marked (away) from SL. - This frees the memory which can be looked at at the task manager.

Just give it a try.

Wolwaner

I switched to 1.19 and reverted to Nicholas "EyeCandy" viewer. Happily the "smartheap" out of memory errors have ceased. I'm glad to see the issue is neither my new laptop, nor my move to Vista..... but I am sad that I must use an alternate viewer to avoid such drastic issues. How can Lindens tolerate such an embarrasing state of affairs?

LL's tolerance of embarrassment must be far beyond infinite.