System Paralyzed

On my iMac the official LL viewer often freezes so hard it paralyzes my entire computer. The menu bar freezes, the dock freezes, all other apps freeze, and even force-quit won't work. A typical episode lasts a couple of minutes, with little blips about every 20 seconds where a few CPU cycles manage to execute. (With careful use of these, it's possible to force-quit the viewer. Otherwise I have to wait it out.)

Today I downloaded Cool SL Viewer 1.21.6 and found it does exactly the same thing. No joy.

OnRez does *not* paralyze my computer in this manner. It sometimes freezes -- pretty often actually -- but the freezes are much shorter and they don't cripple the rest of my OS and apps outside of SL.

Does anybody have an answer for what's causing this, and is there any work-around?

I've been having the same problem. I'm on a brand new MacBook Pro. I got it shortly after 1.20 was released, so I haven't been certain if the problem was due to the computer or the viewer. It's even worse using 1.21, though.

The freezes and crashes seem to be worse in some parts of SL than others (one of the worst is in my own house but not inside the club and ballroom in the same sim). The differences don't seem to relate to anything predictable, though. Many of the locations that took the longest to rez and caused the most lag on my old Powerbook G4 run fine and don't freeze me.

Just tonight a friend called my attention to a recall notice on certain graphics cards in new MacBook Pros: http://gizmodo.com/5061605/apple-confirms-failing-nvidia-graphics-cards-in-macbook-pros-offers-free-repairs-and-refunds . I've discovered I have this recalled graphics card. I'll be visiting the Apple Store as soon as I'm able, and hopefully this fix will cover the issue, even though I haven't yet found articles on the recalled item that describe the problem we're having.

If that doesn't work, then I'll try OnRez, since it seems to be more tolerable from your (Zobeid's) description.

your only cure would be to download a patched version of 1.19. I have a macbook pro 2.5, with 4gb ram, and the controversal GeForce 8600M GT graphics card with 512mb. Yet SL is not build to work well on my system.

http://hyangreflections.blogspot.com/

try some of the patched viewers on there. I use Cool viewer when i need to to film pretty movies in SL, but i tend to get a lot of system Freezes that either go after 10 to 20 seconds, or locks down my entire computer needing a hard restart.

I use 1.19 when doing important roleplaying or dj'ing when i NEED things to move instantly with no freezing.

Its a complicated Secondlife full of long workarounds and setting changes, and thats why only hardcore users stay.....

my fiancee has the same problems with her MBP and SL...
she's fed up enough to start thinking of "ok let's ebay that POS off, get me a decent laptop that runs windows or linux, and never touch a mac again... and go on vacation from the remaining money.". 'nuff said.

I haven't noticed any freezing on the Macs I've run it on, so there must be a solution.

What kind of network are you running? Wired or wireless? Do you get the freezes on different networks?

What version of the MacOS are you running?

It's possible SL is fighting with another application for the CPU. Sometimes Spotlight will go bananas and try to monopolize the CPU. Try running the Activity Monitor (in the utilities folder) to see if that might be the case, and to get a closer look at what's going on when SL freezes.

I have a MacBook Pro and since upgrading, I am freezing and locking up all the time. At least once a day, I have an entire system lock up when I can't even force quit! I love walking, freezing then ending up half way across a sim. Grrrrrr.

same problem here (MBP C2D 2.4ghz)
In the past SL used to freeze/crash a lot, but MacOSX always went on working perfectly. However, as of the last update (1.21.6) the whole system freezes for a few seconds.
Things seem to be going from bad to worse

Just be careful the pc laptop you get doesn't have a 8600m GT as that's what's causing the problems.

Why is this card a problem? I got this computer because I was TOLD I needed the Mac Pro to have SL work! I'm ticked. SL should be able to do something about this!

Hello Zobeid,

This is a know issue. Please vote for this Jira issue:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7779

Also have a look at the workarounds specified at the wiki:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/1.21

Workaround #3 (adding a yield time) did wonders for me. I occasionally have some freezes and lock-ups, but far less. At least SL is now useable.

(quote)
Known Issues in version 1.21:

VWR-7779[c]: Mac viewer suffers from cyclic pauses/freezes/fatal hangs

This issue, originally observed from version 1.20, has been improved in version 1.21 for Macs with an 8600M graphics card. However on some Macs, there continue to be reports of periodic and cyclic freezing of the computer when running this viewer, similar to version 1.20. The following workarounds may help; please try them individually and sequentially:

WORKAROUND #1:
One workaround that may help is to reduce the Draw Distance below 128m in Preferences > Graphics tab > Custom > Draw Distance (slider).
Also, if you have Disabled Camera Constraints from the Advanced menu, behavior is improved if you do not Disable Camera Constraints.

WORKAROUND #2:
Turn OFF Avatar Impostors, which utilizes "readbacks" from the Frame Buffer. This is disabled from Preferences > Graphics > Custom > Avatar Impostors.
Also, turn OFF Occlusion calling (this is normally on by default), which is another important utilization of Frame Buffer readbacks. This is disabled from Advanced menu > Rendering > Object-Object Occlusion (make sure it has no 'X')

WORKAROUND #3:
Another workaround that may help is to use an additional argument when running Second Life, "--set YieldTime 20" in the Arguments.txt:
To set this argument, right-click (or control-click) the Second Life application and choose "Show package contents".
In the resulting Finder window, open Resources and in there should be a file named "arguments.txt". Open in Text Edit, add the argument --set YieldTime 20 to the end of the line in there and Save.
Close the text edit and run the Second Life application.
This causes the viewer to sleep for 20 milliseconds every frame. It will slow the frame rate down a little, but may help with freezing.

I have just a few comments to add to this sad state of affairs:

I have an iMac with the 8800GS in it, and a MacBook Pro with the 8600GT in it. Both of them experience the cyclic freezing when using the Linden's release candidates or the most recent 1.21.6 update. The only bright spot in this is that the machines seem to have stopped locking up, so I can eventually TP home or quit the viewer.

Using Hyang's 1.19.x viewer, the cyclic freezing issue seems to be solved, but beware! That viewer doesn't render scuplties correctly , and it managed to hang my iMac so hard I had to press and hold the power button. In addition, it seems to suffer from performance decay.

Please vote for issue #7779! Let the Linden's know that you want a solution to this problem before they push out another bad release for the Mac.

This card is a problem because Nvidia messed up making it. Just google it and you'll find dozens of articles about how Nvidia first tried to cover it up, then down play it, then finally gave in and started an exchange program that's cost them over $20M US now.

very true, they really should.
But they just don't...


I've been using my Mac successfully with a lot of graphic-intensive software, and was wondering why SL is the only application that suffers Nvidia's hypothetical problems.

After two years, I am afraid that LL doesn't really care about our 'votes'.

very true, they really should...

I've been using my Mac successfully with a lot of graphic-intensive software, and was wondering why SL is the only application that suffers Nvidia's hypothetical problems.

After two years, I am afraid that Linden Lab doesn't really care about our 'votes'.

alas, after two years I am afraid that Linden Lab doesn't really care about our 'votes'...

its not just the 8600s. I have a Radeon X1600 and ever since 1.21 its been having these little freeze and go period all the time and its super annoying. Since i can use Voice now on my Linux box with the testing OpenAL viewer i havent used my Mac much though... but i hope they fix it cuz if Apple releases a new mac mini sometime with the same specs as the current macbook, I'll be wanting one.