Freeze followed by crash to desktop - no error message.

These are my system specifications:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002, SP3

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.40 GHz,

Memory: 1.0 GB of RAM.

Graphics Card: nNvidia 6600

Now I've submitted a support ticket, but haven't recieved a reply.

Background Info: I noticed that about a month ago, I started seeing a strange graphical glitch in Second Life. The game window - and the frame - would freeze momentarily, and the right half of it would turn pure black. Two to five seconds later, the anomaly would disappear and gameplay would continue as normal. A friend of mine suggested it might be because I hadn't updated my drivers, so I went to the nVidia website. Sure enough, there was a new driver update out. I downloaded and installed it yesterday. Now I can't run Second Life at all.

I log in, and my avatar and textures load as normal. Then a very short time later, anywhere from five seconds after I've logged in, the sound jars, the frame freezes, and thirty seconds later, I've crashed to the desktop. I'd never encountered a problem like this in the past, and it started only after I installed the new drivers yesterday.

A very interesting observation I made is that if I don't move my avatar or camera at all, I can sometimes stay logged in for longer periods of time. However, when I hit a movement key or use the altcam feature to look around, I've got between five to ten seconds before the game freezes and crashes again. This suggests that the problem may have something t do with memory, but that seems strange, as memory was never a problem before. I've checked my display settings in the control panel after I installed the new drivers, and found them unchanged.

In an attempt to solve the problem, I dropped my draw distance and visual settings to the bare minimum. It didn't make any difference at all. Any help from the community would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Fisk Zinnemann

Here's what I think is going on. I don't think you are going to like it either. First, it appears that you are experiencing heat problems. Either your CPU, graphics card or both. A good and thorough case cleaning might help that problem.........it's certainly worth a try. But, second (and what I think is really going on) is that your video card is dying. An nVidia 6600 card was a great card a few years ago....it's ancient now. SL, with all the features, bells and whistles requires your graphics card to calculations, computations, and rendering that were basically unheard of when nVidia developed that card. My bet is that your card has been running way too hot for a very long time.........and that heat is finally taking it's toll. Cleaning the computer case inside might give the card a few more weeks or even months (though that is optimistic) but I'm afraid it's time to get a new one........one that is 2 to 4 years (newer is better) years old when produced (take a look at the 8600 GT or the 9500 GT......both are great cards and still handle everything SL can throw at it). If you go much above that you'll probably need a better CPU and motherboard........which is one of those cases where a new computer is probably the most economical way to go.

On the driver issue. I would say go back to the nVidia site and download that driver again......save you your computer (don't run the installer from the website). Then uninstsll your present driver. Then install the new driver. If any driver files have been corrupted or damaged due to crashing so often (or overheating) should be removed before you install over them. That's the reason for uninstalling old drivers before installing new ones. There are 3rd party "driver cleaner" available if you want to go that route.