ATTN: Check your drivers!!

LOL your the one relying to this I have ZERO problems with my system. A good user know the ins and outs of thir sytem. Even the drivers sites have the rule of uninstalling old drivers. If your going to buy,BTO, EOM ( spending 1000.00(s) a system YOU better know these tricks with drivers Otherwise your going to have a nighmare. People needs to reinstll their OS every so offen to have their sysem run at OP reformanc. Hence DILS, Installers, ect, ARE removed. If you don`t follow a reg.... defrag etc on your syste your asking for problems. Thse are basic ABCs of computer learning.

bump

A HEADS-UP TO DELL (PORTABLE) USERS:

GO TO DELL.COM FOR UPDATED DRIVERS FIRST!

i have a dell inspiron notebook with ati raedeon video and the driver updates are on dell.com and not the ati website. took several trips to the ati site and a couple phone calls to LL to find this out several updates ago.

Hi
Just for info. Tried all the cleaning steps etc.. precisely but I still cannot update the driver. The culprit is clearly on the HP side because I know this laptop has been rolled out under time pressure. There was a long waiting list and its release has been postposed a number of times. The only graphics drivers that get installed are from HP. I will just hang in there hoping for some developments. For now, sticking to what i have. At least I can log in and do pretty much what i used to do in SL.
MG

Sansarya you didnt say if you had xp or w2k, a laptop, or what card you have? As far as checking Dell for drivers, they had a driver listed from 2003 as the one I was supposed to download. I wnt instead to the Nvidea site and got one from March and it works beautifully. Look at the beautiful water ripples!

Heres one for you.. my friend's been having big problems with framerate/rendering lag since the patch. She's on a laptop (Latitude D800) with a Geforce Go FX5200 card installed - because it's Dell we're limited on official drivers. The Dell drivers offered no increase in performance at all (I think the latest driver was in the 7 series range).

I got her to try the latest Nvidia Forceware drivers (84.21) with a modified INF file which supposedly allows the later versions of Forceware to work on the Go series of Nvidia cards. This just caused general system instability and we had to remove them in Safe Mode as Windows started doing odd things.

Now one thing we've noticed is that usually when she logs in, everything is fine for about 2 or 3 minutes - at least in the quiet residential area that her home location is set to. After those 2 or 3 minutes her framerate starts to spiral ever lower and at the same time this seems to increase her ping by tenfold.. Initially it jumps from about 100ms (when she isn't having framerate problems) to about 1000ms.. and eventually it gets as high as 20000+ if she bothers to stay logged in that long.

Now is the graphics card having issues that are causing the rest of the system to lag.. including the IP layer? I can't think of any other reason why she should get high pings even with a crappy framerate.

It _is_ possible to replace the graphics card unit in the Latitude D800 but only (officially) to a 128mb Geforce Go FX5650. This upgrade seems to be insanely expensive (probably due to low numbers being sold/manufactured) - I've seen prices ranging from $200-530 USD, or £200 in the UK.

My friend is getting more and more frustrated by the problem, she was quite upset last night as she was unable to make a pre-natal exam (in SL!) as she just couldn't move properly

Anyone have any ideas? We've tried setting EVERYTHING in preferences to the lowest settings and this makes no difference whatsoever.

Another for the horror stories of branded set packages.

Maybe my "luck" in having few problems with just about any game is the fact that my system is not branded but just put together from some good components.

I do hope a solution can be found.

unfortunately, i've experienced similar difficulties with my dell xps (gen 1). after quite a bit of frustration at the fact that neither linden support nor dell has been able to identify/resolve the cause of the problem, i started searching the user forums at dell.com. what i found is that my problem might be due to the processor running at a higher than normal temperature. while i'm still in the process of investigating this as a potential root cause and cannot say definitively that it is, in fact, what is causing my problem, the symptoms described by the forum users are nearly identical to what i'm experiencing. having said that, try a search in the dell support forum on something like, "Latitude D800 Geforce Go FX5200".

once again, the user base has been much more informed and informative of the real issues/solutions *rolls eyes*...i hope that this little bit of what i've learned can help your friend.

Checked mine....

http://www.saccatours.com/images/chauffeur.jpg

After all the stupid back and forth with drivers installing reinstalling and what not more i found out today FINALY, all this crashing has NOTHING to do with drivers or your system.
It's the HUD's we are wearing, some of them became corrupted, yes, it's a bug, i took off my ao hud and indeed, hoorah, no more crashes all day!
I'm one happy puppy!
Thank you, Lindens, for all the MISINFO! This stupid thing could have saved me two weeks of logging in and out every 10 min!

Dell XPS/M170 Laptop, Windows XP, Intel Pentium M Processor 2.26 GHz, 1.71 GHz 2.00 GB RAM, Nvidia GE Force Go 7800 GTX 256 MB.

The thing I posted above happened when I uninstalled the drivers, then tried to install the forceware Stryker recommended earlier in the thread. Luckily i could do a system restore and get back the old drivers and settings, but still no ripple water. Ripple water worked fine before this update. Now nothing, even though everything else works beautifully other than a few crashes due to overheating in the case.Have not tried calling Dell support because how do you explain that you can't get ripple waterD?

Wow, this is the best set of driver links I've seen!

I've been wondering where I could get the beta drivers...thanks!

SL crashed on me this am, I FINALLY decided to update my driver, so I updated to 6.5 (windows xp). When I logged onto SL it said my current ATI driver was out of date and I should download the current 6.3 So I ignored the messaged cause in my math 5 comes after 3. I am very pleased with the update. 6.5 is working great. I should have done this weeks ago. Have a wonderful day!

KC
MUAH

I decided to update my graphics driver. The Catalyst 6.5. I installed everything it said, and while I was installing the "Display Driver" - it gave me the following message, and then closed down:

"Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup."

When I went to go play SL afterwards, it gave me a message saying my graphics driver is not supported. I didn't ever recieve this message prior to the attempt of the driver download. The reason why I was instigated to even update anything in the first place was because of the fact i'd crash constantly, sometimes crashing the moment I log in - and now, of course, I can't even login at all.

Would anyone be willing to help, please? I'd appreciate it more than you know. Also, before anyone asks me - YES, I did install the Driver Cleaner Pro & chose "ATI" from the drop-down-menu & cleared that off.

I had a hell lot of crashes when I had Nvidia card+drivers, and there´s a lot less now that I´m with ATI+Catalyst.

Always with lastest drivers, but Nvidia drivers seemed a lot more unstable

I'm sorry, Sebastian, but the Quadro FX card is not listed as a compatible card.

We are working on crash issues, and the constructive feedback and crash reports from people who have updated their drivers is helping immensely. It's been a bit rough filtering through the noise of incompatible cards and bad drivers, but enough people are updating that we should be able to make much better progress.

Hopefully today's client update provides the first of some essential fixes for this issue.

I'd also like to mention that inflammatory posts which detract from us working together to find solutions aren't allowed in the forums--just like it says in the forum Guidelines.

Please continue to share knowledge constructively so we can help each other. Thanx.

LEE: It worked before you broke it with the update. Thank you.

Torley: I understand . However, the other post you removed was a valid, non-threatening and honest expression of frustration. Are we not allowed to express opinions of the root issue? Incompetent testing is a real and fixable issue. Once you get over the hurt feelings and tears from someone speaking the truth.

If you took something personal in my other thread, well, I am sorry you took it that way. Unfortunately that only reconfirms my fears that there is truth to what I said.

Anyway, being fair and allowing freedom of thought, frustration and concern is not something I expected here. At least not with an issue that hit so close to home for the developers.

Perhaps next time I will post.

“Oh, gods of SL , please help our broken minds to understand how powerful you are. Please help us see why we are so flawed as mere feeble mortals that we can no longer run your perfect software”

Issue One-- I am mostly a Dell laptop user-- happily playing all sorts of demanding games on my lovely little Inspiron 8200 for the last several years.

I know, I know, that's an OLD system, but it has truthfully worked flawlessly for me, so much so that I even had to replace keys because I rubbed off all the lettering and I kept getting all wacky when I typed numbers...

I will need a new laptop someday since Dell used ATI Mobility video cards which can not be updated anymore (for some odd reason)....

I would love to know if anyone is using a newer Dell laptop that works with this latest bendy-primmy version in particular.

We can read so-called specs till we're blue in the face but I think sharing what works might eliminate angst. I just want to be able to play.

So I want to throw this query to you guys... What should I get for my next laptop? Anyone HAPPY with their Dell??


Issue Two-- Relating to my Dell XPS desktop video driver upgrade... even though this puppy is supposed to be upgradable, and I finally gave up trying to make sense of this dual video card driver (Nvidia) and drug my totally frozen desktop over to a guru here in town, because having TWO computers not working due to video card issues is more than I can handle in one week...

THEY (the 19 year old tech guy) said that often peripherals can cause problems when you try to upgrade video card drivers!!!! GO FIGURE!!! SO when it froze and gave me errors in the update (I follow standard procedures all virus off all firewall off, bypass router, old video driver deleted, etc etc etc) I just about pulled my hair out.

At the guru shop, they plugged the computer into their generic keyboard, mouse and monitor... and LO!! The unburdened XPS had NO trouble turning off, and the tech is already done with the update of the video driver to the latest Beta version.

It was just amazing not to have ever thought about possible interference with peripherals video driver upgrades.

Anything is worth trying when nothing is working... but with their help, I hope to have at least the XPS up and running 2L tomorrow.

If I don't, I will let yall know what we try next

Onward thru the (prim) fog....

Just a little heads up, in 1.10.2(2) the problem with the Forceware 91.xx series with the Avitar Vertex Program has been fixed so no more black bodies. :3

Also current Forceware beta is now 91.31 and works great with SL. It may not be a speed demon, but the FPS is smooth and constant with little fluctuation.

Just an update of my Dell XPS desktop issue with me not being able to get the new video driver to download and/or install for the nvida dual card... the whole computer would freeze up when I tried to turn it off, so it was a "no-go" reboot to install anything.

Turns out that my Windows XP User Profile had become corrupted from the game crashing me so often...

The geektech copied all my user profile info to a new user profile and then downloaded the nvida video driver and installed it...

SO FAR it works...

So if yall are having lots of crashing and freezing, don't forget the possibility of corruption... I reckon this weekend I will reinstall the XPS system and start over from scratch.

Second Life sure demands good computer hygiene

PS... Anyone have any favorite laptop that they are using for the game, I'd appreciate knowing what IS working out there...

Dell laptops seem to be incompatable with SL. I have one and the last time Dell released a driver update for it's custom Nvidia card was 2 years ago. My internet connection goes dead every couple of minutes when playing SL, and the Lindens' solution is to update my driver. I've tried forceware, but it just leads to system instability.

Hmmmm, so you think if I get another Dell "gamer" system, I will be just throwing away money because the game won't work well even with the nvidia card? And that this is because all Dell video cards are custom video cards and therefore UN-upgradable???

Perhaps THIS should be my life's calling... inventing the perfect, upgradable laptop that will meet all 2L specs... now and forevermore.

In the meantime, I guess I should amend my query to "Does anyone know of any sort of laptop that IS running the new & improved 2L?" PC or Mac?

Over the last few days there has been hundreds of posts about SL and it crashing, lagging etc. Linden doesn't this tell you something, SL does not work STOP. You have done it in with pathetic add-ins we dont need for one, The place is now starting to swarm with new members with the new registration, can ther linden server coe with this influx of now underage kids.

The problems we have has nothing to do with drivers being updated although it helps to have update drivers anyway.

AMD 2500+ 1.82 GHz
1536 meg of Ram
G-force 5500 with 256 meg of Ram
1 Meg ADSL Line runs on a speed test at about 800-900

I have the latest NVidia and I update it every Month, I read about updating VIA Chip Set drivers so updated then to the latest APRIL 2006, and guess what Ii lasted under 10 minutes and crash out I went yet again.

When I tried to log back in, it took 28 tries to get in with the stupid nag screen telling you that you cant log in until a certain time. When I eventually did get back in everything was grey and the old DOWNLOADING Clothing bar reared its ugly head again. That was once fixed.

On my sim you have to have your draw distance at 256 or more to see the whole of the circuit as you drive, I can get away sometimes with 512 and yet some of the sim still doesn't show.

Yesterday I asked Live help, although im banned from it, to tell me the URL for Lindens servers, I was questioned to the fact of why I wanted it. Simple I said to ping for Packet Loss, this live helper seemed very worried that I was about to attack the Grid or something. Little does he or she know that it can be found on the menu under HELP and ABOUT Second Life. I just forgot that is where the URL and IP address is shown. I am getting constantly told to send a report to Support@Second life because no-one can answer a question

My point is this, I have to agree with the last postings about incompetence, no one seems to know what their doing or know whats going on in SL. Why dont they employ people who are well trained in this technology, not school kids learning how to code and screwing the sytem up completely

So please no more about drivers, or Service providers being the problem, we've all checked our systems, with many people spending alot of money on new GFX cards. We have updated them and know our ADSL or cable is running fine. Its now become old news. SL. Its down to you now, the problem is what you have created. Its time to fix it and once again stop being vague and avoiding the issues, as well as blaming our systems, get it right once and for all.

You can see from the forums recently how well and trully people are now getting very annoyed at the attitude and problems that are continually persisting

Sam