Ridiculous Number of Problems

Just started playing SL within the last couple of days. I am having a ridiculous number of problems; every possible problem you can imagine probably has occured.

So first of all, FPS is unbearable, anywhere from 1-3 FPS at any given time. The game crashes literally every 30 seconds - 3 minutes. I have YET to last longer then 3 minutes ingame. Controls are sloppy and slugish, I dont think this is a game design issue, more of a omfg-the-lag issue. When the game crashes it locks down my computer, the only way to reboot it is to physically pull the damn power-cord out of the wall. Also, because of the lag I am unable to edit my avatar AT ALL, so far I was aiming to make a tall male character with brown hair, blue jeans and a white t-shirt (like myself) but I have come out with a short black woman wearing a purple shirt and no texture for arms or legs...

So, I turned down to graphics to be as minimal as possible, I opened up all the neccassary ports on my firewall, I turn off EVERY program practically except explorer.exe and some other basic system programs. I changed my video card to meet the exact game requirments. Including AGP drivers. My basic hardware is almost triple the basic req's to run the game. I'm running on a Cable internet connection, speed shouldnt be the problem. OS is Windows XP.

I have done EVERYTHING I can to make the game run smooth, and NOTHING has changed. Fabulous. Not only are the controls slugish, but when I am moving around/flying I randomly just get stuck and cant move. After about 30 seconds of this the game will do its usual crash.

So what have I missed? I see other people running around in the newbie area getting on new clothes and leaving the zone, meanwhile I cant figure out how to take off this damn purple shirt and walk for 30 seconds without getting stuck. Anyone else have a similar problem like this? Where the game just runs like a giant pile of shit?

You need to remember that you are constantly loading the world around you in SL. That in itself causes SL to run slower than most online games. Have you tried tuning your settings down? Maybe turn off lights and bump? Have you lowered your draw distance? Also remember that places with lots of people, like the welcome area, tend to lag more. Places with very object/script/texture intense builds will cause lag. Often the lag only lasts until you load the world around you so you need to be patient.

Maybe it is a hardware problem. What processor are you running? What are your specs? Did you contact LL?

Try turning off AGP accel? If you come from a first person shooter background SL is very different and takes some gettin used too.

Like I said, I turned down ALL of the graphics settings, including draw distance, and yes, I turned off lighting. The welcome area didnt seem to crowded to me, at most I saw 2 people at once. Everyone left pretty quickly though.

Specs:
2.4G P4
512 DDR 400
Radeon 9550 128MG
MSI 865PE Neo2 Mother board


I will never know if the game is fully loaded properly, because it crashes anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, never lasting longer then 3 minutes.


Excuse my n00bness, but who is LL?

Yes, turned it off.

I mostly play MMORPG's, recently coming from SWG and AO.

LL is Linden Lab. You need to send [email]support@lindenlab.com[/email] an email.

Have you updated your motherboard and bios stuff?

BTW, contacting LL will be the best bet, because your crash logs will be available to them, and generally they can pinpoint your problem rather easily.

Zeus Vogel,

I do not see any crash reports from you on the hardware you mention in this thread. The 2 crash reports I do have are for an unsuported video card.

If you are still crashing with the system you mention in this thread make sure:
- You have crash reporting turned on, or opt to send a crash report when it asks.
- Make sure you are using the latest video drivers from www.ati.com (the latest should be 4.8 Catalyst drivers)
- Make sure you have the latest AGP drivers from www.intel.com for the Intel® 865PE Chipset
- Make sure you have the latest motherboard drivers and bios from www.msi.com
- Make sure you have the latest sound drivers (or optionally try with sound muted in the preferences from the log in screen).

I actually tried to play on my laptop (a lesser system) first, but it lagged incredibly bad so I switched over to my Desktop, I dont know if my desktop is sending bug reports or not... I'll check tonight when I can log on

Something is wrong. With those hardware specs, and draw distance all the way down, you should be getting 10+fps, up to 60+ in areas like the vehicle sims.

I don't know if you thought of this yet, but if you are running bittorent or any other file sharing software, turn it off or cap the upstream at 1/3 of your total upstream. Same thing goes if you are on a LAN and other people are running sharing progs.

Also, please run this command in a DOS box and paste the results:

tracert sim1.agni.lindenlab.com

Other than that, as others have said, update your drivers. You should be doing fine on a system like that.

And have you scanned your machine for viruses, adware, and updated windows? I know within three minutes of my installing WinXP, I was infected with a virus that seriously slowed down my computer and connection, because WinXP wasn't updated. Most people don't know to update their machines.