Frustration

Although we have only been here a few weeks, we are reaching the max in frustrations.

If we are lucky we can play the program for about 5 minutes. after 5 minutes we must reboot and restart any projects we were working on.

Tonight was one crash right after another. Yes, I made a couple of crash reports but then I maxxed out doing those.

The program is no longer in Beta...it should be running as advertised.

I would appreciate an estimate telling us when we may expect to have a program that permits us toplay and relax.

We have four properties so the monthly charge is reaching out.

Well Ray, it could be any number of problems, more than likely client side (your side) if you are crashing like this. Could be outdated video drivers, or perhaps your connection. While us lowly players may not be able to figure out what wrong, the Lindens should be able to help you out, and figure out what could be causing your crashes. Just send an e-mail to [EMAIL=support@secondlife.com]support@secondlife.com[/EMAIL] and they should be able to analyze your system, with your help, and figure out what's causing your crashes.

It crashes for me about twice a week.

Drivers are up to date. The hardware configuration exceeds the recommended one.

It is not only us, we have visitors to our land that get frozzen or kicked out at an alrming rate for a system that has been in place for a year.

Tonight we were forced to constantly reboot...most were because of system reports that we were being disconnected.

I don't think it is us.

We are running two Dells, i gig memory, and the proper video card.

I'm going out on a limb here, but it may be caused due to over-customizing your video options in-game. I know that for ATi cards, you HAVE to have AGP un-checked in order to run a good, smooth game without crashes. This is the sort of thing that a regular player who is new to Second Life might see and say "Hey, I want AGP enabled" (I know that if I were new, I would do that).

My suggestion to you would be re-installing Second Life and not touching the video settings (except view distance). Or, if you notice that you aren't crashing with default settings and you want the best possible settings, use them one at a time and watch for the crashes. Otherwise, turning more options off (one at a time) may show you specifically what default options may be messing up your system.

Just a thought from someone who knows what you're going through and has been able to fix it.

Don't sweat it Ray

When I first started playing SL I crashed every 5 mins or less too, but after playing with coinfigurations and that I got it working, just have a fiddle with them

** deleted **

You said you are running 2 comps? Do you have 2 IP addresses? When I first joined sl, a friend and I tried to run 2 copies of sl over 1 IP and had problems that sound similar to yours.

Here is what I recommend for those with a lot of lag or who are having frequent crashes:

For those who own an nVidia brand video card:

Under Preferences / Display tab:
- All checkboxes listed next to "Performance Options" are UNchecked.
- Avatar Rendering is "Normal"
- Terrain Detail to "None"

Under Preferences / Options tab:
- Check ON AGP Graphics Acceleration
- Texture Cache Size is set appropriately
- Set your video card memory size. (Some people have remarked that setting it one notch lower than your actual video card memory size can improve performance)
- Object, Tree, and Avatar Detail sliders are all the way to the left
- Checked ON Avatar Vertex Program
- Draw Distance to 64
- Bumpiness Draw Distance to 0 (10 is default)
- Max Particle Count to 256 (the default is 4096, you can also disable particles with < Alt-Shift-Equals >
- Outfit Composite Limit to 5 (no idea what this does, I think 5 is the default)


For those who own an ATI brand video card, I recommend the following differences from the nVidia owners:

Under Preferences / Options tab:
- UN check AGP Graphics Acceleration (always do this for stability)
- Set your Video Card Memory to 32MB (but only if you're getting corrupted/strange/black textures)
- UN check Avatar Vertext Program (if your avatar is folded up in strange ways)

Note: Some ATI bugs will be fixed in 1.3, so after 1.3 is released, any or all of this could change.

Hey, Ray -

If you're sharing a network connection with someone else at the same time who's also running SL, you may be having some issues with your router - some older routers, or poorly designed routers will cause problems with Second Life. Could you see if running Second Life with just one person on is more stable than with two people on?

Another possibility is that your network bandwidth settings are too high - I would try turning them down to a lower level, to see if that helps improve things.

Please make sure to send in crash reports - these provide a great deal of information that we can use to help you when you're running Second Life. Without them, we can pretty much only guess at why you're crashing.

- Doug

It has been a frustrating thing, this setting up everrything to run SL.

My HP would not run it so I had to get a new computer. I waited 2 weekd for it to arrive. THen I went thru the problems...what a mess.

Saturday I had the network checked an re-installed. Still had problems.

Then after writing to SL for help...we found the solution...the router, although it was only about 28 months old, just couldn't handle SL.

We replaced it this afternoon and all seems to be working.

I do thank all of you for your efforts.....

I am running a GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB video RAM with 56.64 driver, running SL set at 64 instead of 128, and have every video option turned down and turned my bandwidth down to 100 kbps... yet the game crashes as soon as I enter.

I am a Lifetime member, and didn't used to have these problems before... but this is getting ridiculous. I am getting to the point that I am thinking about giving up on SL... and that is pretty sad since I have been inworld for over a year since Beta.

We are doing better...however SL is still having a lot of problems. Last night at a fashion show the entire SIM crashed. Today a class crashed...the instructor was booted and couldn't get back in...his demo's wouldn't rezz...so there are definitely problems yet to be resolved.

I do hope they take an active interest and work to make it better. I kinda like the program now.

I was inworld for a whole 30 seconds before I crashed to a full reboot... something is seriously wrong here.

This is annoying me a lot

I keep hearing rumors about a later version on the doorstep...that it is in Beta and is being run alongside of the current program, thus the crashes and weird happenings. I can't vouch for their authenticity but it could be....

Whatever it is...it needs fixing.

Very odd. Are either of you using a router?

I personally am not running through a router, so that is not the problem. It's strange... I was inworld most of the time for the Walk Across the World 2, and since then, I cannot stay inworld for more than 30 seconds (and more recently, much less... like it crashes as soon as I enter the world).

I just hope that my attempts at entering the world register with Linden Labs... I'd hate to lose all of the land that I own because of this stupid situation.

I too am getting very frustrated. SL ran perfectly for me for my first month, but since the update, the game crashes on average about once every 20 minutes. I've sent numerous crash reports, but I have changed nothing on my computer(settings) prior to this onslaught of crashes. Nothing on my end of things changed, therefore it's evident to me that this is an SL problem. I would love to see the previous state of game re-instated, as it worked fine w/no problems, at least until they get these problems worked out.

Hey, Stormy -

I took a look at your crash reports, and it looks like you're using one of the AMD AGP controllers (AMD-761) that's known to have some bugs which cause problems - in particular, it seems that if you use newer nVidia drivers in combination with the chipset (and older GeForce cards), you'll tend to crash with run time errors.

See the following page - the 1.3 hardware detect code will actuallly warn you and send you here:

http://secondlife.com/drivers/amdagp.php

Ignore the fact that it says VIA - that's a bug in the web page which we'll fix. Try upgrading the AGP drivers first. If that doesn't work, I'm pretty sure that downgrading your nVidia drivers to 44.03 should work fine.

If you REALLY want to know what's going on, you can take a look at the errata for that particular AGP chip.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/23613.pdf

By the way, you should make sure to contact [email]support@secondlife.com[/email] if you have problems - while we read the forums, unless you've got a support ticket in with us, it's a crap shoot as to whether one of us gets around to looking at your problem.

- Doug

Rather than post complaints here (where I doubt if anyone from the Linden group reads the notes) why not send a few bug reports from 2d life? I think the chances of someone reading the reports would be greatly improved.