Lost 15,000 in inventory today

Has anyone else had a problem? I just logged on and found I have less than 4,000 items in my inventory. All of my hard work and money are all gone (two years of work). Seems like nothing has changed in SL. Instead of focusing on making it a stable place, they focus on creating problems. The SL web page is abominable and if that isn't bad enough, now this. All of the money spend on scripts, pose balls, sculpties, all gone. I am so upset right now I just want to cry.

have you tried a cache clear, then log into a different sim (Lime is my fav for loading my inventory)

Annabela, this sort of thing happens not infrequently to me, as well. In fact, on occasion, I've lost literally my entire inventory, and have been left with just the stuff I'm wearing.

Fortunately, it's nothing to panic about: if you clear your network cache (and maybe the browser one too), your items will usually reappear pretty quickly, sometimes the next time you log in. The longest I've had to wait is, I think, maybe a week, but that was exceptional.

You can also, apparently, file a ticket for the lost items, but I've never done that myself.

I had this happen recently, but it didn't change with clearing and relogging. I finally ended up switching which viewer I was using. It was slow to reload but everything came back. (Tried the official viewer and snowglobe. Finally ended up using the GreenLife Emerald viewer).

(There is also a cache in the advanced menu, I usually clear all 3).

For those who think their inventory "disappeared", relax for a minute and I will explain what is going on.

When you start the SL viewer program, the inventory list you see is a local copy on your PC which lists your items. It's stored in the data cache along with the other things that you have seen in SL (object shapes, textures, animations, sound clips, etc.). Linden Labs uses easily corrupted communications methods all through SL, so the cache can get corrupted and not represent what is stored in their databases.

So "lost inventory" is in the same category as cloudy avatars, failed teleports, and group chat breaking. They are all data communication problems. The fix is to reload your copy of the inventory data.

First, click recent items, and look at the top line, and see if the number of items reads like (2,345 items...). The "..." means its still loading. Wait for a while and see if it gets back to where you expected.

If not, go and clear cache, which empties out ALL your saved data, and forces a re-load. If you have a large inventory, the counter will start from 0 and may take a half hour to hour to refill. As a previous poster, an empty sim is the best place to do this, since the server will only be talking to you, and not 40 other avatars. It will load faster, and have less chance of getting corrupted again.

Sometimes even that does not work, because the internal network at Linden Labs is overloaded or broken, or the asset databases that store the original list of what you own is offline. In that case, you just have to wait until it's fixed.

Despite how we feel sometimes, the Lindens are not completely incompetent. The data is rarely lost for good, its usually a case of you cant get it right now.

Just want to say thank you to everyone for your help. I downloaded the Snowglobe viewer and my inventory is back. Now I can sleep peacefully tonite.

I've found that 'forcing' it to load can hasten things. Open inventory and type in A. Everything that contains an A in the name will load, then type B etc etc. It can be slow, but it can work

The reason that worked is snowglobe sets up it's own cache folders. So when you installed it, it downloaded your inventory list fresh from the servers.

Another thing to do when this happens (though not in this case) is to make sure you haven't forgotten to clear your inventory filters. Or an inventory search.

Why is this, anyway? Is there so great a cost savings to them that they feel the trade-off in bad customer relations is worth it?