Crash to desktop on Initializing Multimedia

As per the request of a friend, I got SL, and I can't get the blasted thing to run.

In the beginning it wouldn't run at all, and after some finagling I got it to get up to the point where it loads the splash screen, and lets me log in. While logging in, it crashes at the point where it's "Initializing Multimedia".

I've tried this on two of my systems, one is:

CPU: AMD (Unknown model) (2210 MHz)
Memory: 3071 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
OpenGL Version: 2.1.8494 Release

The other is a laptop, Fujitsu N6460 Lifebook
CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1795 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Series
OpenGL Version: 2.1.8494 Release

Graphics drivers tried on both were 9.1 from January, and 9.2 released on the 20th of this month. 9.1 seemed to not work at all, 9.2 seemed to work a small amount better. I've tried uninstalling both Quicktime, and K-Lite, having one or the other installed, and having both installed to no avail. I've tried all of the compatibility modes. I've set the video settings to the absolute minimum, and the maximum, tried voice chat being enabled and disabled, used the CLI flags consisting of various combinations of noaudio, nosound, noquicktime, noprobe, nopreload, purge, and safe. I've updated drivers for my keyboard, my chipset, I've searched through Microsoft's KB. I'm quite literally out of ideas. Does anyone have one I haven't tried?

Thanks!

Multimedia... does that mean QT? Update QT? Try turning off things like voice and streaming before you log in? I'm guessing.

You could try turning off Aeroglass.

I've already updated Quicktime to the latest version, voice and audio/music streaming is disabled.




Turned off Aero within a few minutes of installing Vista. Turned off the UAC too. I'm a software dev, and those kind of things just get in the way.

What kind of internet service do you have?

Can you get someone else to bring a computer over and see if it works at your location connected the same way?

Do you have another video card of any sort that will run in the desktop, that should run SL, to try instead, or does your desktop have an onboard GPU that you could use by physically removing the 4800 from the box? It wouldn't need to run SL very well, this would just be for fault isolation.

If you haven't used a driver cleaner when installing video drivers, you could try that.

Search the forums for"crash initializing multimedia" and such; there have been some threads about that message in the last week.

Have you checked Jira.secondlife , search for your video card, your error message, etc?

What brand is the 4800 sold as?

You could try uninstalling Silverlight, if it is installed.

If you haven't tried alternate viewers, try the latest Release Candidate, Cool Viewer, and Imprudence.

What settings do you have your Catalyst set at? Do you have Catalyst A.I. turned on or off?

I'm remembering now something about a thread where the solution was to change the Catalyst settings to all "Allow the program to decide" or whatever the precise wording of that choice is.

If you haven't tried deleting your settings.ini you could try that.

You can try restoring your sound drivers to the previous one, or to the one that came with the box. I've had to do that before.

I've got cable, 15 mbps, down 2 up.

I have... five computers and three servers in my house, I've tested on two, and I'll do a third tomorrow.

I don't have any spare PCI-E graphics cards at the moment, and my desktop's motherboard is a performance model, so no integrated GPU.

I typically use DriverCleaner.net when removing drivers and installing new ones, just to make sure all of the old stuff gets cleaned out.

I searched the forums before I posted, looked through some of those posts, most of it related to hardware I don't have, or was simply never solved.

Silverlight's not installed, I've yet to find a use for it.

I've tried the release candidate, but I'll try the other two viewers you suggested, hopefully I'll have some luck with them.

Currently my Cat settings are all at the average defaults, as I just updated the drivers. The Cat AI is set at advanced, I'll disable that and see if that gets it working before I try those other viewers.

I'll try deleting settings.ini and seeing if I can't scrounge up some older sound card drivers as well.

If any of the suggestions work, I'll be sure to post which one did it!

You could try joining the SLUniverse forums and posting your problem there. There's folks that read that forum that don't pay much attention to these. Same goes for any blog or website you have, post your trouble there and someone might see it and have an answer for you.

You could also take a look at your secondlife.log file. It's not often that this produces an answer, but it can't hurt. If you do that, it's probably best not to post the whole thing here in the forums, people don't like the giant block of incomprehensible looking text. Also, you could check your Windows event log, again not likely to be immediately useful, but it's easy to do and doesn't take long.

You might try some older video drivers. The latest drivers don't always work best with SL.

I had some free time, and gave it another go, disabling the Cat AI let it work. It may not be the best fix, but it is a fix! I appreciate the help, I don't think I would have ever thought of that.

I have had the same problem with the latest and previous v9.x ATI Catalsyt drivers, the only way to get SL viewer to run for me is to use v8.12 with my Radeon 4800


Oooops.......also forgot these tips, in SL viewer go into 'Prefences -> Graphics -> Hardware Options' ...and change these settings:

1) Disable the setting 'Antialiasing' , if you dont disable this your viewer may crash trying to login, use the antialiasing option in the Catalyst control panel instead if you need it

2) Try enabling the setting 'Enable VBO: Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects' .....it will help to improve speed


Aimeelou

I can confirm the above:

Vista SP1 and new ATI drivers "9-2_vista32_dd_75976" crash SL reproducible (at least my ATI Radeion 4670). Symptom: SL crashes on startup or during login process or while you start typing your password. No graphic setting (VBO, Antialising etc) really produced a stable state.

It took me a bunch of time for finally figure it out.
Reverting to the older drivers of 12/2008 (8-12_vista32_dd_72275) fixes the issue.

PS: Importet Issue into JIRA: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-12147

Glad you got it going.

I had a similar problem with an ATI Radeon 4870 after installing the latest version 9.2 drivers (OS Vista Ultimate 64 bit).

I may have found this work-around : In Catalyst Control Center, turn all 3D settings to default (click the default button). This got SL working (not crashing on loading) but with a horridly slow 5 fps frame rate !

Go back and tick "Open GL Settings, Triple buffering. This restored a reasonable frame rate, but not as good as the previous drivers I had.

I also noticed that the splash screen image loads badly with a horizontal bar effect when version 9.2 drivers are installed.

I did roll back to my earlier ATI drivers, and SL was fine again with a good frame rate.

read this article for detail:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=5528

Thanks,
Neon Lemon.