No login screen (How to reset SL data?)

I am having a technical problem caused by my idiotic behaviour. I had been using RC client once upon a time until I made a minor mistake. I minimized my window to approximately 300x300 px and left SL running in the background, I forgot all about it and logged off later on. When I re-logged the other day, SL opened in the same small window, however there was no log in screen, since I minimized it so. I tried editing shortcut's command line to force it to open in a bigger window, however it failed along with the reinstalation.

After all this I left the RC client alone and installed normal SL client, and guess what - I did the same mistake subconsciously again. Knowing that all of the above doesn't work I moved on to the Nicholaz viewer, to which I, of course, did the same. Then came the new 1.20 client and yes, I also killed them. I am currently using the OnRez client which is obviously without Windlight and I hate the UI.

My question is - how to reset the client data, or to delete it permanently, so it forgets my window settings? I searched high and low, played with the commands, registry and whatnot. I mostly ventured here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER and found nothing. Could anyone tell me if there is something that I am missing?

Search your system for a folder that is named "mirrabella_schumann". (Your avatar name, in lower case, with an underscore between first and last names.)

On a Windows XP system, the default location is

C:\Documents and Settings\login_name\Application Data\SecondLife

where login_name is your log in account on that PC.

Delete that avatar-named folder, and delete the other folders in the "SecondLife" folder that you find your avatar folder is in. There will be one folder for each account you have logged in as, (including any typos you failed with on login attempts), plus folders named "user_settings", "browser_profile", "cache" and "logs". They can all go.

Those are the persistent preference settings for Second Life, and they are kept seperate from client applications. So updating to the Release Candidate or any other Client based on the standard LL client will reference those files.

Deleting them forces them to be recreated with default values the next time you use Second Life. This takes you back to "newbie" status in the client. You'll get all the first use one-time pop-ups like "You have just teleported..." when you do things for the first time. Annoying, but it does eliminate any glitches that seem to persist from one client update to the next. (You can go to Preferences and toggle off most of these pop-up messages manually, but there are a couple, like the warning about age verification, that if you toggle the message off, that will make all the messages reappear next login.)

This works for both Mac and Windows, by the way. The two OS versions store these Second Life preference files on different paths, but in both, the location can be found as stated above.

Thank you very much for your detailed reply - this solution worked fine, even though I left my user folder (there were chat logs there). I apologise for not replying soon enough, but my network card died.

Ceera, I'm having the same problem, reduced the size of my window to reduce lag, and logged off with it so small the login box may be off screen. Now, attempting to login, I get the small window entirely black, but when I enlarge the window, a black space the size of the small window persists in the upper left corner, the rest is white and the client stops responding.

I looked for the folder you indicated, but found the only folder with my avatar name is the chat log. I did not find a folder named "Application Data" in my login_name directory in Documents and Settings. I searched for "Application Data" and for "SecondLife" in my entire hard drive.

The only "SecondLife" folder was in in C:\Program Files\SecondLife. Within it there is a folder called "Cache" and six files ... four database files, one cookies file and one "prefs" JScript file.

I have Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002.

start > run: and run this: "%appdata%" (without the quotes) there's a secondlife folder in there, I guarantee it.

I'm not going to test it, but I bet this is because you're not displaying "hidden" files. In the Control Panel (Settings), choose "Folder Options" and go to the "View" tab. You'll see a checkbox under the "Hidden files and folders" to show them ... check that and try looking for Application Data.

Good luck!
.

%appdata% leads to the user logged in's application data folder %systemroot% leads to C:\windows\system32

(general information to ALL, if I find more, I'll be sure to post them)

Saiki, that did it! I'm back in the game, and will buy you a drink in one of the cafes in the Kingdom of Sand in SL.

~ Frank ~

np and yw.