Crashing at login

Hi! I ran a clean install of SL today on my 2.5 month old laptop, because I wanted to get back into it after a long 2-year absence. However, every time I start the program, it crashes on logging in. I tried clearing the cache and lowering my performance settings, but to no luck. Please help!

Have you updated the drivers from the manufacturer's site?

What kind of GPU does it have?

What brand and model of laptop is it?

What's a GPU, and how do I check the model number and driver info? I know it's a Gateway.

There might be a printed label on the outside of the machine, or stamped into it, that would tell you the model number of the laptop. If you provided what model of laptop you have, a person could look up things about itfor you, or you could even look them up yourself.

You could probably go to the gateway site and find some information on your computer.

You might try the site http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest . It can tell you some info about your computer.
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You might want to read some sites on computer basics if you have no idea how to find what version of video drivers you have. It helps to have a bit of practical knowledge about the machines you use, whether it's a car or computer or whatnot.

If you want to know what an term like GPU means you can type it into the search field at Google, possibly along with the word "acronym", and find out what they mean.

There's also a Help function built into most operating systems. In Windows XP, for example, you can find out some information by doing Start, Help, and then typing "system", or "video" or such. There's an option in my Windows Help on the right that includes the word "Tools", click that and there's a list on the left with items for basic system info and advanced system info.

You can probably find out about your video card and the drivers it is using by right clicking your desktop and selecting the appropriate item.

If you are in Windows Explorer, on WinXP, and right click My Computer and select properties, you can get to a bunch of information about your computer.

Another path to display information on WinXP is Start, Settings, Control Panel, Display.

A GPU is a Graphics Processing Unit. If I refer to a video card, that leaves out video circuitry built into the motherboard, also called onboard graphics. GPU covers both cards that fit in a slot and onboard video chips.

Checked that testing site, everything went fine. I checked my graphics drivers and they are all up to date. However, SL still isn't working.

"Up to date" is not always what you want. You need a driver that supports SL's requirements for rendering graphics with OpenGL.........that is NOT always the most recent (or "up to date" driver.

GPU manufacturers are constantly developing drivers to meet the requirements of new programs coming out almost every week. Most of those programs utilize DirectX for their rendering. So it's natural that the developers will concentrate heavily on that rendering engine......basically leaving OpenGL out in the cold. Since SL uses OpenGL it sometimes requires some experimenting around with different drivers to find one that works. Unfortunate for us but that's about the only solution since Linden Lab chose OpenGL over DirectX (with good cause, by the way).

What that requires is that you know what GPU you have and go to the site that has the drivers available for that device and download some drivers starting with the most recent and going back a few versions (maybe from 1 month to 6 months back) and saving to your HD. Then, one at a time, installing them til you find one that works for you. And to toss complication into it all, you should uninstall the driver you are replacing each time before a new one is installed. Tedious, yes.........but it's really about the only way to get the problem resolved.

The information you got about your system doesn't help people solve your problem unless you let them know what it is.

What model is the computer?

What operating system? What service pack or upgrade level? 32bit or 64bit.

What processor?

How much ram?

What GPU?

How much video ram?

None of my drivers have changed since I loaded SL successfully once the week after I got my computer, to pull my last $ out that was sitting with my character.

Specifically, it crashes on the part of the loading where it says "Initializing Multimedia." I went to preferences and turned off the streaming media but that didn't help.

Best of luck with your problem.

My graphics driver is a Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family. I read on the forums that this has to do with the reason SL doesn't work. However, I absolutely need to get in for a class- my professor uses SL as a teaching aid. Is there a cheap way to upgrade my laptop's video card, and if not, is there a workaround I could use?