new install crashes on loading

I've just built a pc for my son and it meets the minimum requirements for Second Life, but when I try to play, it says it is starting and then crashes to desktop. It never reaches the login screen. I have it installed and working fine on my pc which has an older video card than his. Thanks for any help you can give me.

System Specs:

P4 2800+
512mb ram
ati radeon x1650pro 512mb pci card
onboard sound

Ok, that 512mb ram is going to give your son a very very poor SL experience. He won't be able to handle malls, or areas with more than several avatars or any place that is heavy in textures without his viewer grinding to a halt and ticking along.

You should also GOOGLE up a few other viewers for SL. Maybe someone else can post the links to Kirstens Viewer, Nicholaz Viewer and the Cool Viewer. All of those have less memory requirements than the main viewer and may allow your son to get to SL on that PC.

1Gig ram will help a lot. 2 gigs will really make a difference and he should have little problem running with several key things set to minimum, including if he goes to Malls, heavy traffic places, clubs, etc..

Also, what OS are you running.

Yep.
I would still up the RAM.I had 512 when I started and LL viewer's were almost useless. Switching to Nicholaz helped, but there was definitely a big difference when I put in 2 more GB of RAM. Turning off all unneeded background processes helps as well. I turn of as many things as possible, including Windows Explorer when running SL.

Thank you for your help . I am running windows xp homeupdated to service pack 3.I thought the ram may have caused the problem.Just was not sure.thank you.

The low memory should not lead to a crash at startup. Most likely again a problem with ATI graphics here. What driver do you use? Avoid Catalyst 9.4, disable VBO in the graphic preferences of SL and disable Catalyst A.I. in your windows graphics control panel.

Any luck, Hawk?

i had a vivid flashback of conan standing on your back porch.

The same thing keeps happening to me, I've tried everything in the wiki and forum. It worked fine when i had vista but i put xp back on because vista broke all the time, now sl is broke.

Things tried
every ati driver from 8.11
reinstalling sl
release candidate
cool viewer
disabling catalyst ai


The detecting hardware box comes up then poof nada
Same video card as the other guy x1650, i think that is the problem as the old drivers give me a message "sl can not start because your card is old yada yada yada" but the with the new drivers just SL just farts out

update:

I tried the omega driver and it loaded, but everything look terrible, like it was made of dots, so it is a driver issue, now i just have to find a driver/viewer combo that works. Or wait the week till my new computer gets here see what you did sl, forced me into a new system (with a nvidia card this time)

You are not the only one. Welcome to the club!

Very good suggestions, this worked for me..... Disabled VBO in SL graphic preferences and DISABLE Catalist A.I.


Thanks!

a note for ati users, you can install the driver without the ai control panel. then you can reclaim the control panel's functionality x10 if you install the third-party 'ATI Tray Tools'.