Viewver problem, support doesn't seem to care...

My viewer crashes while it's "initializing media" what should i do? I tured off sl voice too, but nothing seems to be working. I have the latest gfx griver and made a complete reinstall as written on a sl support page. And the most irritating thing, that I downloaded the latest version when it came out, sent the ticket on that very day and still no answer after 1,5-2 weeks or so... I can't belive there's this much problems of residents' to solve.... PLEASE HELP!

System specs? Just saying "the latest driver" isn't particularly helpful. What exactly is your hardware, what OS, and what specific driver versions are you using?

In any case, since Initializing Media appears to be the step your machine can't handle, have you tried turning off streaming media, so you can skip that step? To do that, click Edit -> Preferences -> Audio & Video, and then uncheck the two boxes for Play Streaming Music and Play Streaming Media. Do this BEFORE you log in.

None of them are turned on because I don't like if they slow my loading down (1mbit)

Second Life 1.23.4 (12390 Jun 11 2009 15:16:56 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

Built with MSVC version 1400

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1869 MHz)
Memory: 3072 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Szervizcsomag 3 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ASUS X1600 Series (My hardware info says and as i checked twic I have 8.592.0.0 (the latest version) not the onw below...)
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6925
OpenGL Version: 2.1.8543 Release

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.18.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3
J2C Decoder Version: KDU
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.740000
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.25160 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.21_0000000000)

And could it have anything to do with quicktime being too old? But an upgrade didn't solve anything and uninstall just doesn't want to work...

If you've uninstalled Quicktime, and you've disabled streaming media, then I suspect Intitializing Media is not actually the problem. It's likely that some other feature happens start up at the same time, and it's that other feature that is the real issue.

My first guess would be it's something graphics related. When you updated your driver, did you first clean out all traces of your previous one? It's very common for remnants of older drivers to cause problems when installing newer ones. For this reason, I highly recommend the use of DriverCleaner. It's really the only way to guarantee a totally clean installation of new drivers.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the x1600 is a pretty old video card. According to the SL sysreqs page, it should work, but that page has long been out of date. It's entirely possible that it might fail when confronted with more modern features, like Windlight shaders and such. I'd suggest you disable as many graphics options as you can, and see if you can log in. If that works, then systematically re-enable all options, one at a time, until you find the culpret.

Also, in case you didn't already know this, you should keep vertex buffer objects disabled at all times (Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Options). ATI cards don't implement VBO's properly, so having them enabled will cause headaches. Usually it doesn't cause a crash, though. The most common symptom is the appearance of giant triangles all over the screen.

Additionally, I seem to remember some talk that older ATI drivers might work better with SL than newer ones, but I didn't pay much attention to it, since I never use ATI hardware, myself. Maybe an ATI user could offer some better info, but if I remember correctly, 7 series catalyst drivers were recommended over 8 series.

Graphcs is just one possible trouble spot, though. You should also make sure you've got the latest (cleanly installed) drivers for your motherboard, network card, and sound card, and that you've got the latest version of DirectX.

A more remote, but still valid, possibility is that the problem is just a simple networking hiccup. Try power-cycling everything (restart router, modem, and computer, all at once). If you're on a wireless network, try plugging in.

If none of that solves it, then I'm not sure what to tell you, beyond general PC maintenance stuff like defrag your hard drivers, clean your registry, sweep your system for malware, run memtest to make sure all your RAM is working properly, etc.

Good luck.

When I tried to run sl today it quitted after detecting hardware sign. I reinstalled quick time and it still freezes at initializing multimedia. So i tried a bit of what you said, but that didn't solve my problem either... I didn't do the rest of the maintence stuff because I did it before you told me... My graphics card is 3 years old and though it's a quite "oldish" it runs second life with 20 fps in high graphs with athmospheric shaders on in 1280x1024. And as I saw you think my card is ati radeon... It's Asus Eax 1600 Pro, and has nothing to do with ati, only the chipset... Well never mind... I'll use my laptop then in less then 10 fps on 800x600 xD Thanks for trying to help me though...

ASUS is the physical manufacturer, but ATI is the designer. This is how the graphics card business works. ATI and nVidia come up with the design architecture, and then manufacturing partners like ASUS and others mass produce the cards. Different manufacturers will add certain bells and whistles at their own discretion, but under the hood, it is what it is. Your particular card is a Radeon x1600PRO, which just like all other Radeon cards, is an ATI design. It just happens to have been physically manufactured by ASUS is all.

lol that's not what i said precisely... but i was just a little bit wrong... never mind... i'm angry all day, have too much irritating people around me... sorry...

It seems we r lot of people whith the same problem. Did something chenge in the SL soft? because it use working on my computer and now it doesnt works. There is an issue that Bezilon pointed and chosen didnt mention. is about quiqk-fucking-time. i try to uninstall it und just bofore the end, it gives me a "can't uninstall"message and it "rolls back" so quiqtime remains there but without working. I reinstalled it (last version i could find -QT7) and seems to be installed , but then it doesnt works, and still the same issue remains for uninstalling. I have a Toshiba Satelite A75, whith windows XP home edition SP3, 512MB RAM and the graphic card is ATI Mobility Raedeon 9000 IGP. Driver Version 6.14.10.644. Can't find the DirectX and Open GL Specifications but anyway it SL used to work here! It seems that card is discontinued and i cant find new drivers to try if this is the problem. Some poeple say in other forum, to deactivate somthing called AI in the Cristalititi control center but i cant find it in my ATI control center.

Bez, i think i have it!

in my case, QT was the problem. Uninstalling wasn't working so i googled for "can't uninstall Quictime" and i found how to do it manually.


Now, it seems it works fine without QT or any other alternative.
I am using the open viewer SnowGlobe).

Because this involves deleting register entrys, i recomend people to google for it ( i dont want to screw anyone computer for a mistake giving you the steps).

Good luck, see you inworld!

So? how was it?

In my case it results that i pass the initializing multimedia part, but cant loggin (now it says something about conections). I didn't have the chance to try logging from a different internet conection so i dont know if this really solved the problem or not.

what about you?