SL stops working in 10 seconds

Just bought a new computer, and I'm having problems getting SL to work. It's pretty important I get it to work ASAP because I have internship assignments in SL.

The problem: 10 seconds after logging in I can't do anything but turn. The character will continue moving in the direction he was last moving in when the problem took over. Contact with the game ceases, and any input from other players is not received. I tried detaching everything and this did not fix it. I've ran the account on other computers and it works normally.

OS: Windows Vista 32-bit
GFX: Geforce 8800 GT

Graphics card driver is up to date. I've turned on and off the windows firewall, enabled permissions for SL. The computer runs everything else fine, including Age of Conan without disconnecting.

Any help would be appreciated.

Sounds like a network problem... The sorta-standard answer is to power off ALL your networking bits (router, modem, etc) for a few minutes then plug it back in.

If the problem still happens, it can get difficult to track down. Stuff like ping -t and tracert are good places to start.

Unplugging didn't work. What's the next step exactly?

When you log in, do Help -> About Second Life and get the ip address of the sim you're on.

From there, you can do a tracert on the sim address and look at how far you are from it, network-wise, and if it looks like there's anything really sucky between you and the sim. You can also do a ping -t to the address, which tells ping to run forever, and watch what happens to the stats when SL starts going all pear-shaped on you.

edit: and if all that looks happy, I'm probably full of it and it's not a network problem.

It's the classic connection issue you have discribed. Are you using a wireless network or wired. SL and wireless is quirky..........try a wired network if you are using wireless.

Unfortunately I don't know how to do any of the things you described, Meade.

My connection is wired, although it's connected to a wireless router. It seems odd to be a network problem, when I've had no problems with any other programs. Plus my old computer ran SL perfectly hooked up to the same router.

check to make sure your network connection is not trying to connect wirelessly. I guess you are using Windows. Run the network wizzard again.

Routers and modems get all clobbered up with junk over time (data junk). The rebooting clears all that out and refresses your IP to connect. I try to remember to reboot mine about once a week............if I forget, SL usually reminds about a week later. The reason the problem shows up on SL more than other programs is that SL is constantly sending data to your computer...........never a let up even if you are just standing still in the dark. Over online games don't send near as much.

It could also be your firewall blocking SL too.........though I doubt it. Try connecting with the firewall turned off. That will either confirm of illiminate it as a cause.

Tracert (Trace Route) shows the path along the internet from your computer to somewhere else.

When you do Help->About Second Life, the top of the window will show something like this...


Find the bit that's at the same spot as what I highlighted above (the sim IP address) and copy it down.

From a command prompt (Start->Run then enter cmd.exe) type tracert then the numbers you copied down, exactly as SL showed them and press enter. This may take a minute or so to run - be patient.

Copy/paste the results of the tracert here so we can see what your stats look like. Note that the first few lines may have info about your ISP on them. If you're worried about us seeing that, it's a little bit of personal-disclosure, edit that part out. Only the first 4 columns are interesting for those. Don't edit out everything, though - just stuff past the first 4 columns that look familar to you.

edit: for example, my tracert to some random sim looks like this after I edit out the ISP bits..


The ping command tells you (sorta) how long it takes to get from your PC to somewhere else on the internet. If you give it a -t when you run it, it'll keep going forever. This is useful when things are a little weird sometimes - you start it running then look back at it when things are weird, to see if your ping has changed.

Again from a command prompt, do "ping -t " (note the space after the -t and don't type the "s) and enter that number you copied down again. Watch this run for a minute or so and take note of the time value, in particular if it's jumping around a lot.

Once you get bored with that, go back to SL and forget about the ping until SL acts up on you. When it does, go back to the ping window and check the time value again. Let us know what it looks like...



If he can get into SL at all and move around, even for a minute, I'd recommend against turning off the firewall.

Hello Samwise,

What do you mean by enabled permissions for SL? Have you tried running SL as an administrator by right clicking and selecting the option? Have you tried reinstalling SL?

Thanks for your in depth help.

There was no change in the ms when the bug occurs. It stays between 45 and 50 ms, with bytes and TTL remaining constant.

As for the tracert:


(first 4 columns deleted)
2 10 ms 5 ms 5 ms 73.200.32.1
3 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms ge-1-25-ur01.indiana.pa.pitt.comcast.net [68.86.
146.177]
4 9 ms 8 ms * te-9-1-ur01.punxy.pa.pitt.comcast.net [68.86.146
.30]
5 12 ms * 11 ms te-6-4-ar01.pittsburgh.pa.pitt.comcast.net [68.8
6.100.182]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 25 ms 24 ms 25 ms pos-0-10-0-0-cr01.chicago.il.ibone.comcast.net [
68.86.85.54]
8 24 ms 25 ms 25 ms 68.86.88.246
9 46 ms 52 ms 61 ms hagg-03-ge-0-0-0-460.dlfw.twtelecom.net [64.129.
234.4]
10 50 ms 47 ms 47 ms 63.164.96.databank.com [63.164.96.58]
11 46 ms 46 ms 46 ms sim2859.agni.lindenlab.com [216.82.19.102]

Trace complete.

Those are really good looking numbers.. It looks like duck and tastes like duck but it's making moo sounds. Maybe it's not a network problem. When the problem happens, check Help->About SL and look for the packet loss. You can also see packet loss in the stats bar (ctrl-shift-1).

If that's at 0.0, this is not a network problem. Not sure where you'd go from there...

If it's not at least close to 0.0, it might still be a network problem. Given those very nice ping numbers, I'm also not sure what your next step would be for tracking it down...

Sorry.

edit: /me notices who your ISP is.. Hm..

Good ol' Comcast...

I have _NO_ idea if they work but you might want to look at http://www.wireshark.org/ or http://www.nnsquad.org/agent , especially the part that looks for RST packets. There are probably other tools that do similar things but I haven't used any of them and I don't know enough about the tech to say if it will detect an ISP doing sleazy things to SL.

<rant>
The deal is that ISPs like Comcast, despite their carpet bombing advertising about how super fast and wonderful they are, don't want you to actually make use of that speed for any length of time.

Comcast has been caught using 'network management' products which inspect the traffic going to & from your PC then inserting something called an RST packet into the stream if it thinks you're doing something they don't want you to do (like using that super fast connection you pay them for).

The EFF has an article on this, which is a slightly dated but good (yet long) write up on what Comcast is doing: http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair .


</rant>

It could well be that your problems are not the result of Comcast shenanigans. It certainly does sound like a network problem though and your tracert/ping numbers look far better that most people probably get.

While it can't hurt to get Wireshark and watch your traffic for RST packets, SL traffic doesn't look like Bittorrent seed traffic, which is what Comcast interferes with.

Nor does Comcast interfere when downloading large amounts of data over the Internet. That EFF quote you posted tells what their RST packets do, but it doesn't explain when they're transmitted, which, as I said, is generally when you're seeding a torrent.

Comcast user here, never had any issues (not even with Bittorrent, but I'm not much of a seeder. You may proceed to hate me).

That they started by messing with torrent seeds does not mean that they have limited it to that.


As I said above, I don't know that Comcast is the problem. I certainly would not put it beyond them though.

So I'm basically screwed at this point?

Dunno.

If it _is_ a network issue I'd be very suspicious of Comcast deliberately messing with your connection.

I guess it could be something else, though. Have you tried logging into other regions? Do you maybe have an old computer that you can try SL on from the same connection?

I have recently started having somewhat similar problems. Everything fine for a variable period, then sudden onset of catastrophic packet loss (>50%, going up to 300% reported by staistics window - how can it be > 100%???). This makes SL completely unusable. Connection remians fine (low error rate report from modem etc). I was beginning to suspect isp interference or contention issues. My ping is stable 130ms from OS. Onset can be anything from 5 minutes to 2 hours (5 -20 minutes mostly). Invariably ok again after relogging....which sounds like a memory leak, but that would affect all using the same client. Any ideas welcome!

They've really limited it to that so far.

Why do you say this? Because you work for Comcast? Because they've denied it? Because you use them for an ISP and don't have problems? Something else?

Because I pay attention to news on the issue. What Comcast says or doesn't say is irrelevant, as they've been known to stretch the truth.

I don't have another computer to test the connection with.

What I'm seeing is the best solution is to destroy Comcast...

You could try using some of the third party SL viewers.. Onrez, RealXtend or Nicholaz come to mind.

-whyroc

Have you tried those programs to see if you're getting hit with RST packets? It would be very interesting to know if that's happening to you. And if it turns up nothing, at least you know that there's something else going on.


Maybe this is the news, right here in this thread.

Also, they've already been busted, as is mentioned in the EFF article, messing with more than just torrents - they also do bad things to Gnutella.

I tried Onrez and experienced the exact same problem. Just installed Wireshark and tried it out, but frankly I have no idea how to interpret Wireshark's data.

It's theoretically possible, although it's not news so much as "Hey, it might be Comcast" with no real evidence to back up the claim.

Yeah, Gnutella as well as other P2P has been affected. Lucky for us SL traffic doesn't look like P2P traffic.