Constant crashing-- is the grid having Issues again?

I hope someone can help me with this. I've never had this problem before, and it's driving me bonkers. I don't know what to do anymore. Lately I'm crashing constantly, I can't even log in now.

I'm using Windows XP, installed more memory recently, have a pretty good graphics card (NVidia GeForce 6200, upgraded earlier this year) and haven't had any serious technical problems before. SL has been working fine for me, until now.

Recently, like within the last week, I've had a couple of episodes where I crashed within a few minutes, no matter what sim I was in. Relogging and clearing cache helped briefly, but eventually I'd crash again. This didn't happen every time I was online, just a couple of times.

Then, this morning, it started happening again. Relogged and cleared cache again, and it started crashing instantly, before the login window even appeared. (Also got an error message about a bad/missing/etc. file at one point.) I uninstalled SL totally and reinstalled; now I'm crashing while waiting to log in.

Is this another grid problem that I'm just going to have to put up with until it's 'fixed?' I've run virus scans on my computer recently with no problems appearing, and I haven't installed anything new (unless Steam counts) that could interfere. I have had a couple of instances of my computer going to a blue screen because of some sort of device driver problem; could that also be doing this?

Any ideas what else could be causing this? It only started happening this week, that's what's so odd. I can't afford to upgrade again at the moment; is this happening to others, and if so, is there a solution? Thanks!

No idea... I have crashed for random reasons today on what is otherwise a stable computer system

You may want to try to update your graphics card's drivers. The Second Life website has links to the driver download pages of ATI and Nvidia. Here is a link to the downloads page on SL; you should bookmark it as I have.

http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php

At the bottom you will see a link that says Drivers and Utilities; click that.



Then you will see brands of graphics cards you can click on. Click on Nvidia.



You will sent to the Nvidia drivers page where you must enter in what kind of graphics card you have and operating system. If I read what you said before correctly, you have a GeForce series 6 card running on an XP operating system. Type in the following information and press search.



You will be taken to this page...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_163.75.html

This is a 42MB driver (Release Date: November 6, 2007) which is compatible with the following 6200 series cards:



I hope this helps; sorry if I missed it where you said you updated your drivers already, lol.

You say you installed more RAM recently. Are you sure that isn't the cause of the problems?

How exactly are you crashing?

Is your av frozen or does the client actually go down?

If its the 'frozen' kind of crash, it could be your ISP. In my case it is a network issue that I can't track down.

The only thing that makes my client actually die is the Gfx Card Driver (It happens rarely when I move my camera fast).

.d

Well, it wasn't *real* recently, it was when I installed the newer graphics card, which was earlier this year sometime. Don't recall exactly when. I haven't had problems until now.

Earlier this week, I would be going about my business in some random sim, and suddenly get logged out. This morning, first the crash notification window would appear before the login window had even come up; then later, I would be logging in, waiting for the status bar to completely fill up, and halfway through the window would close and the 'crash' notice would come up.

Wow, extremely detailed directions with pictures! Just what I need, thanks! I'll try that. The last time I updated the drivers was several months ago when I installed the new graphics card, so maybe that's the problem.

Sorry, I appear to be in the wrong thread again. Seems to happen to me a lot these days. I blame Conan.

Well, I followed the directions above, downloaded the drivers it gave me, and I'm still crashing during login. Tried at my home location, tried other sims, still crash before I login. Sigh... I really hoped the drivers were the problem! Any other suggestions?

Well, you could buy a 4-year-old computer like mine, with a graphics card that doesn't support SL, lousy memory, a keyboard that sticks because it's full of dried up fruit juice and get intoi SL no problem at all.

I think it's called 'hope and a prayer' access. And hey, it works!

LOL... /me lights candles all around her computer and begs the gods to be allowed access...

Seriously though, just to make things more interesting, I downloaded the WindLight viewer update just now and logged in via WindLight First Look with no problem whatsoever. How crazy is that? This makes me doubt it's a graphics driver problem...

Edit: okay, I spoke too soon, I just crashed again. But I did get in for a couple of minutes!

You might want to run Scandisk to rule out hard disk failure. (Right click the hard disk in My Computer > Tools > Error Checking > Check Now.)

If your RAM upgrade was recent, you might want to remove and reinsert it (very carefully) just in case it's not seated properly.

You could also download Memtest86 and have it do an error check on your RAM. (Prepare to be without your computer for a few hours.)

Tried this, it didn't find anything. I've filed a support ticket; don't know what else to do, this just started so suddenly. I've never had problems accessing SL with this system until now. I guess all I can do is wait.

You're not crashing to bluescreen, you're just crashing out of SL, right? Two thoughts:

-- When you re-installed, did you delete the entire application data folder? It still sounds like something is corrupt on your computer. Delete:
C:\Documents and Settings\<your userid>\Application Data\SecondLife
Also delete everything you can from your Temp directory. Then reinstall again, reset your preferences (you'll lose them when you delete the directory), and try it.

-- Did you change or greatly upgrade your virus checker, spyware, or any other similar computer monitoring program? One might have upgraded itself in the background in such a way that it now mucks with SL's cache.

Meanwhile, a little ditty for you:

Even through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here around my sim

Constant crashing
Has always been

Maybe a great magnet pulls
All avatars to ruth
Or maybe it is life itself
That feeds textures
To its youth

Constant crashing
Has always been

Crashing
Ah haa-aaa
Constant crashing
Has always been

Has allllllwayss been ....

(with apologies to K.D. Lang)

Maybe try defragmenting your hard drive in Windows.

Start Button > Left Click My Computer > find the C: icon > Right Click it > Select Properties > Tools Tab > Defragment Now

Have you turned your modem and router off and back on?

Cautiously optimistic-- got a reply to my support ticket pretty quickly. Deleted everything I could from my temp folder, deleted the cache contents from the SL application folder, uninstalled and reinstalled again-- and so far, so good! Logged in okay, seems fine so far, knock on wood. So, thanks to Jake Linden in support, and thanks for all the good advice here as well!

Hiya, I've heard of attachments getting corrupted too, like AO's and whatnot. Try detaching any stuff that you normally carry around with you, maybe? Like strip down to Ruth and see what happens then...