Crash 60 secs into game - consistantly..

I recently downloaded the beta and have been trying to get into the game. However, within 60 seconds of connecting, the client locks and crashes.

I can still move my mouse pointer, but the game and computer have stopped responding, requiring a reset. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I can close the menus and run around quickly, or stay and listen to the audio introduction - either way approx. 60 secs in it's over...

Once, I let the machine sit for a while after it locked, and eventually got a BSOD with a "infinite loop" in "nv4_disp".

I've tried changing resolution, network settings, view distances, etc.. to no avail. I haven't had this problem in any other games or programs, incl. AOM, Ghost Recon, Morrowind, GTAIII - though now that I think about it, the Splinter Cell demo is doing a very similar thing...

My machine:

Athlon 1.4
Abit KG7
256megs memory
Geforce 3 Ti200 (not overclocked)
Detonator 41.09
Windows Xp Pro.
Direct X 8.1


Any ideas? I'd really like to try the game...

Never mind. I finally figured out the problem.

After noticing that almost every game I had crashed, I opened up my case to find the fan on my Geforce had died. After a quick switch with an old cpu fan I had lying around, my crashing issues disappeared.

Interesting point: A geforce 3 with no fan will run windows, word, practically every non-3d application just fine - but boot up a 3d game and you've got about 30 seconds to live...

ouch that hurts...I had that trouble on my last g3 and after replacing the fan the card was weakened so much but not noticably after i put a new fan on it, that my card totally died(with replacement fan) in a few months.

Sorry for givin bad news but just a headsup from my bad experience in the same situation.

I once bought a GF3 Ti-200 and built a totally custom solid copper heatsink for it. When I pulled the old aluminum ones I noticed that the amount of white heat-sink compound on the GPU was woefully inadequate. The footprint of the greasy connection was only a fraction of what it could have been.

The droids who assemble the video cards probably don't really care about proper thermal connectivity.

My new heatsink had no fan and I had bought a flexible AGP adapter so I could bend the card down parallel to the motherboard so that the heatsink was mostly upside-down and sandwiched between the motherboard and the card (part of it bent around to the new "top" side). I would run with the case wide open, but could run 3D games all day.

Since then, I've moved that card to a regular case and haven't had problems there either.

Also, Doug Linden has a GF3 Ti-200 in his home computer that has no fan... he hasn't complained about overheating.

I recommend reseating the GPU heatsink on any GF if possible.

MY COMPUTER DOES THE EXACT SAME THING!
30 seconds into a game my computer hard locks and restarts itself. i have played with every toggle and nothing has worked. It still crashes 30 seconds into a game. I really want to experience this game.

My specs:
Windows XP Professional
Athlon XP 2000+
Soyo Dragon Ultra MB
512 mb Crucial pc2700 DDR
Radeon 8500DV
Creative Audigy Platinum

i havent had a chance to play more than 30 seconds EVER without it crashing.

i just flashed my motherboard and reinstalled the newest drivers for my video card. It still crashes around 30 seconds into the game. I really don't know what else to do. I REALLY want to get into this game.

Drew,

A couple of questions: Have you had similar problems with other 3D games? If so, it might be a heat related issue. If not, it's probably a software issue.

You might try going into the Preferences dialog from the start screen and turning off "AGP graphics acceleration". This will make the game run about 25% slower, but might enable you to stay logged on.

Also, have you had a chance to send in a crash report? I've seen a few reports of crashes in the ATI OpenGL drivers, but I never got a username on them.

Thanks,

James

since i updated everything it is no longer randomly crashing. although it is still crashing when i go to change my appearance. every time i go to change my appearance it crashes from right away to a few seconds after im at the appearance menu. im almost positive it isnt a heat issue, some sort of software issue most likely, or hardware conflict of some sort. with agp graphics selected off, it still crashes at the appearance menu. ill send in a crash report.

ok its crashing randomly again. this is really annoying. im pretty sure its a hardware issue.

Me and my sister built our computers at the same time and they are IDENTICAL, except she runs windows 2000 pro, and i run windows xp pro.

I installed second life on her computer and it crashes randomly about 20-30 seconds in game.

so frustrating!

Drew,
If you have access to a GeForce 2 or later nVidia based card, I would be really interested in knowing whether swapping video cards helped the problem. We are currently more stable on nVidia than on ATI (although since I'm now running a Radeon 9700 I can assure you that that will change !)
Cory

Hmm... Looking at their website, the Soyo Dragon Ultra is a VIA-chipset based motherboard. Have you installed the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers? The VIA 4-in-1 drivers in general greatly improve the stability and performance of Second Life.

For the Soyo Dragon Ultra, the link for downloads is:
http://www.soyousa.com/downloads/selectresults.php?language=&col1=Proc_AMD+Athlon+XP%2C+T-Bird%2C+Duron&col2=185&col3=Driver

You'll want to verify that this link is correct, though...

We have done some testing on ATI 8500's, and they seem to work OK, although we haven't tested with your particular combination of hardware...

- Doug

downloaded the drivers from dec 30th but still no help.
this is really frustrating

Hmm...

At this point I'm at a bit of a loss... Have you been using the crash reporter to send crash reports? That's probably the best way to send us information so we can see what's going on.

Also, in the next release, we should have a much better crash reporter, so hopefully we'll have a better idea of what's going on...

Hang in there...

- Doug

Just a quick pointer Doug, when SL crashes on my system it takes out my entire system.(windows freezes) Just thought I'd mention this cus Im not a programmer or anything close, but I dont think a crash reporter will be able to do anything to report at that point. Maybe have something write a game state log or something that reports how the program/windows is doing periodicly during gameplay. Maybe then It will report program status just b4 a massive crash. So that these types of crashes are zoned in on.

Hmm... That's no good. What's your OS and hardware configuration? Also, if you could find your SecondLife.log file (currently being written to c:\SecondLife.log) and e-mail it to us, mentioning that your whole system crashed, that would be great!

- Doug

yea when second life crashes on my system i have never been able to get back to windows. i have to restart my system manually.

you can view my log file HERE

Yea I'm going to ttrim my log file today then go from there if/when I crash. After this post and talking to Aaron I will do such. Hopefully we can narrow this all down so the crashing experience isn't just part of the SL experience It's bad enough that windows is the host OS.

I'm having a similar problem, only I reboot when it happens.
I'll fetch my total systems specs in a bit.

Based on the debugging that I've done with Logan (thanks!) and other users, I've written up a document that's in the knowledge base that will hopefully allow you to debug serious crash problems and performance issues without Linden intervention.

The link to the knowledge base document is below.

https://secondlife.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/secondlife.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=HN8EW1Ag&p_lva=&p_faqid=66&p_created=1043256286&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTgmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT0zJnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9NCZwX3NvcnRfYnk9ZGZsdCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=cF91c2VyaWQ9XyZwX3Bhc3N3ZD0mcF9lbWFpbD0mcF9maXJzdF9uYW1lPSZwX2xhc3RfbmFtZT0*

If you still have serious crash problems after following instructions in the document, please let us know!