Why Does SL Keep Crashing Me Every 5 minutes or So?

hey, I have a Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics support on my laptop and it's getting really irritating that I can't enjoy SL the way I once used to. I don't know what the problem is, but SL boots me off either in the middle of editing my avatar, or sometimes after summoning somwehre, or while I'm just browzing around and exploring. What Can I do to fix SL from crashing so often during game play? I always clean the SL cache, fix my settings to less lag, and I even wait a while after login for all the features to load completely. What else can I do to prevent this problem?

The first question should probably ask how can you fix your computer to stop crahing the SL viewer. If you are using the regular viewer client (1.19.4) it is a pretty stable client for the vast majority of users. If you are using the release candidate (1.20.11....it could be up to .12 by now) then that is a "beta" client and prone to problems for many people......but that's the purpose of releasing it so those problems can me identified and worked out before releasing it as the regular client.

The answer to the second question is there are many things you can do to possibly get your computer able to run SL in a satisfactory way. List your computer specs (including things like your CPU speed, graphics card and any video RAM it might have, the driver version of your graphics card, your operating system, etc...).

Off the top of my head I can tell you two things to check. Both are common problems that cause SL to crash on many computers. Heat.....check how hot things get inside your computer case (laptops have this issue more than desktops). And check for a more recent driver for your graphics card

NVidia website:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html

Is this a new problem, or something that has always been happening? The last client update slammed a tonne of people with a lot more than they could handle. And I am hearing about more to come. Myself I just ran out to max up my mobo to it's capacity from the new client. I was crashing about every 5-10 minutes as well. If you have less than 2 gigs of ram you really won't be able to stay logged in for long in my opinion. I just went up to 3 gigs myself. Of course you can't utilize that much directly, SL maxes about 2-2.5 gigs, but the more the better really. It isn't necessarily your video card that is in question. Mine is a total joke. I still can't get any extended shaders to work, the windlight isn't compatable, but at least now I have stability. From what I am hearing they are even working on adding shadows, the new client has the option, which I am hearing even the fastest commerical computers stagger over. I suppost it is just a matter of time before none of us can get a stable connection.

I've had exactly the same symptoms. For me it was my graphics card gone bad, probably due to overheating, because later I got processor probs. The main cause in the end was a cooler fan that somehow got loose from the motherboard. But symptom-wise, everything points at a broken graphics card.

hey, thanks for getting back at me so quickly with your input on my problem. I use both SL clients--the current sl client as well as the beta release version. I experience the same problem with both clients. I don't think my graphics card is broken because I also play other online games as well and it works perfectly fine.

As for the GB memory on my laptop, I have 60GB of memory on the hard drive. 1GB of RAM. I believe that's the issue right there. same case scenario as Atom. Do I have to purchase more RAM or is there a way I can free up RAM on my laptop?

To answer your question about RAM. Yes, if you want more RAM, you have to purchase additional RAM chips to install in your computer. You can also free up some RAM by shutting down unnecessary background programs and turning features off that you don't use..........but the gain will likely be little and not help at all. But 1 gig of RAM should be enough to run SL if you are using Windows XP........not great, but okay enough to play with only a few annoyances. Getting another gig would improve that noticably. However, if you are using Vista a gig is RAM is not nearly enough.....Vista takes almost that much just to run itself. Getting another gig would put you about where you should be now with the 1 gig and XP.......3 gigs is great.

Back to your crashing. Without knowing your processor speed and video RAM I'm assuming you are using a mid range laptop. Probably a single core CPU at about 3 gig speed. Your video card probably only has 64 megs onboard RAM. To tell you the truth (in my opinion) that is not enough for SL....though the game can be played. SL is unique in that it's more graphic intensive than most video editing software. Toss in the trememdous amout of processing involved in the real time environmental changes taking place with simple movement of your avatar or when someone else comes into view you are playing just about the most graphically and computational intensive program available to the general public. A mid range computer struggles with it in the best of conditions. SL works a computer like almost no other program out there. And that requires key components to be in good shape........current and clean drivers for the graphics card is a must.

And, as I said in my first post in this thread. Heat is always a potential for problems. All that work your computer is doing generates a lot of heat. More heat than playing a game like WoW. Laptops are more prone to heat problems than desktops because of the confined space for all those heat producing components. Please don't blow off checking for heat inside your computer........it only takes a little while at too high temperatures to cause severe damage to CPU's, graphics cards, hard drives, memory chips and many more things. And from your discription you are very likely experiencing heat problems.

Hi, having similar problems on my mac, the whole system crashes and requires a reboot. I've run sl for a couple years without problems (except for the memory leaking preview client that came out recently). Now however, all the preview versions and even the main client crash frequently, locking up my puter. My workaround has been to revert to an older sl build, using version 1.19.0.5 which works like a dream. its pretty ugly compared to the new windlight builds but at least it works without crashing. This has to be pretty bad code to crash a mac. Before second life, I ran it for two years WITHOUT EVER SHUTTING DOWN.