Lots of problems

Hello, I just installed SL and Im having a lot of problems. First off heres my rig:

Windowns XP 32bits
Pentium 4 2.0ghz
Geforce 4 64mb ti4200
sound blaster live sound card
512mb of DDR Ram
Cable Modem

And yes EVERYTHING IN my computer is upto date.

Now onto the problems

#1 For some strange and unbenounced reason to me WHENEVER Im playing SL my computer sometimes RESTARTS on me. And theres no reason why, it happens at different times every time. I run SL at 800x600 if that means anything.

#2 I can`t set my home to where my group is located. My group is WWIIOLERS and their land is "Jessie". Even though my name says WWIIOL Member GodTom Kiesler. And whenever I try to set Jessie as my home it says "I have to be on land that me or my group owns". But thats the problem my Group dose own this land!!


Geez I just started playing this game, and all these problems not looking good...

This type of issue is either due to...
1. Bad hardware, usually bad RAM
2. Driver bugs, usually video drivers

SL is very intensive on hardware, and tends to give it a good workout. Consequently, if there are even small problems with the hardware, then they show up with such an intensive workout.

It isn`t my comp because all my other games work(yes other mmos everquest, wwiiol, planetside ect.). And all my drivers are up to date.

The only reason your computer can be rebooting without your permission is due to buggy drivers.

Unfortunately, even the most up-to-date drivers can contain bugs.

But it ONLY happens with SL so it cant be the drivers!

Yes it can.

So what should I do reinstall the drivers even though they only affect SL? LOL I can`t believer I even bought this game.

Claiming that "it works for every other game, so, it should work with SL!" is really quite silly. Different programs use drivers in different ways. SL works your graphics card to the fullest, and usually exposes lots of nasty driver bugs. Linden Lab is working with nVidia and ATI (The two leading graphics card manufacturers) to work out the driver bugs.

Whoa, snippy much, people? Let's try to focus on actually offering constructive advice.

GodTom, if you can't set Home to a location where there's group land, are you sure your active group under Edit > Groups is set to WWIIOLers? If not, report it to the Lindens using Help > Report Bugs.

As for your crashing issues, try Memtest86 to rule out your memory as the culprit. If it turns out your RAM's bad, and it's still under warranty, get it replaced.

Another possibility is your computer's PSU. If you have a cheap one (heh, I do!) you may have some trouble with stability.

Reinstalling your video drivers couldn't hurt either, but it's far more likely that you won't see any difference. As snarky as a couple of the replies to your question were, it's true that even if SL is the only application that's affected, it may still be someone else's fault. Incredible but true. Why not try the SL Preview server to see if the problems you're having are resolved there? If they are, just wait until 1.3 is released. I think most of us are expecting it on Tuesday.

You didn't buy this game; you pay for an account. The client is free.

Ah ha, there's the cause of all your problems right there.

This is my one and only flame post ever. I'll now go back to being nice.

BUMP for an answer!

Reread Catherines post above. She GAve you some answers to start with. One other thing, make sure you are actually using your group title when you try to make the WWIIOler land your home. If you are in other groups, and using one of those it might not work.

The problems can not be my computer. I have and still am playing VERY INTENSIVE games such as Far Cry, HL2 Beta ect... So the only problem I can think now is its the game...

None of those games use the hardware in the same way SL does. SL is a very dynamic game that uses unusual methods to achieve the dynamic streaming 3-d content. It is extremely intensive on the memory and loads/unloads far more textures than probably any game currently on the market (or in beta). A single bit error in memory can go unnoticed in most games, and suddenly become a problem in SL. Same concept with the video card. Though it may very well be SL's fault, if you're not willing to try any of Catherine's suggestions then no one is really going to be able to help you.

I have the same video card GeForce4 ti 4200.

A machine rebooting during use is caused by one of the following:

1. Driver malfunction.
2. Hardware malfunction.

If you are using the most up to date drivers as you stated, (which I am as well) then that narrows it down to a hardware malfunction. (Or driver conflict, but lets ignore that for now)

So.. Hardware malfunctions that could reboot a machine:

1. not enough power
2. too much power
3. overheat
4. bad chip (ram/vram)

Is the power supply rated high enough? Do you have a stable power source? Is your video card fan / processor fan cooling properly? Do you have adequate ventilation? Have you performed a memtest on the ram?

*I may have missed some, and I expect to be corrected if Im wrong. *

Michael

one thing you may want to do is go into the system properties page (right click my computer, pick the 'advanced' tab and click 'startup and recovery' to open the startup and recovery dialog. There's a checkbox in there called 'automatically reboot'

Uncheck it and the next time there is a problem, your computer won't automatically reboot but will instead show you a blue screen of death, explaining *SOMETHING* about the crash.

Its often inscrutable but there are a few semi-well known things that can pop up... if the error is shown as IRQ_DRIVER_LESS_THAN_EQUAL or something to that effect it is often a bit error and due to a powersupply hiccup or memory bit error problem.

If it shows a file name that caused the crash, often if its a nvidia card/driver issue it will look somethin like nv<something>.dll or nv<something>.sys

its not 100% but it could give you somewhere to start from in diagnosing the problem.

You might also want to look at heat related issues... because second life is so overall stressfull to the system (unlike many other games which stress say the video card, but the processor and main memory are relatively unencumbered, or vice versa) heat can build up while playing SL much more rapidly than with other games.

You might want to look into using a program like motherboard monitor to keep a log of voltages and temperatures in your case that you can go back and inspect after a crash.... if the cpu or motherboard temperatures spiked, or the voltages dropped right beforehand... that can often explain some of the more arcane problems you're having.

GodTom, a couple of things to try:

Try turning off AGP in the Edit/Preferences/Options panel. If that helps with stability, that probably means that you may need to update your motherboard drivers, or your BIOS. It is VERY important when running Second Life that your motherboard drivers are up to date - Second Life generates a LOT of AGP bus traffic, and old AGP drivers for motherboards often have lots of problems with this. Do you happen to know the exact model of the motherboard that you're using?

I'd also try running in windowed mode - often, if you run in windowed mode, it may not restart your computer when it crashes.

In our experience, Second Life is usually VERY stable on configurations such as yours unless there is a hardware or driver issue involved. My top bets for hardware problems are usually power supply issues or cooling issues.

- Doug

Do you guys think a hacker could of been restarting my comp? Because I just put on my fire wall and it just magically stopped restarting.

Hacker intervention is VERY unlikely. What kind of firewall did you set up? Did you make any other changes besides the firewall?

Well I think its a hacker cause my computer started restarting even out of game. I just use xp firewall.

And heres a pic of the error I get when I restart my comp

That error is lacking the actual error info (if i'm reading it right, it's been a while). That's just the error reporting dialog, letting you know a minidump was generated. However, due to the fact you got a minidump, you know the system didn't just "reboot", as Windows had time to trap the error and generate the dump.

However, this still doesn't narrow it down much for you. It could still be caused by either drivers or a hardware problem.

I would lean towards heat/power myself.