Desperately need help :(((

I have searched pages in the forum and SL website and any help article I could find since 8 am this morning and it is now 7:12 pm. with no helpful success. I am just about in tears.

Yesterday logging into SL was fun...today I cannot log in....a box pops up telling me that SL crashed and asks if i want to send it in. I have done both. Have uninstalled and installed SL twice. My system is Intel Intel(R) Pentium(R) core 2 2.66 GHz
2030 meg of Ram
376MB used, 3036MB available
DirectX9.0c
Microsoft Windows XP home edition (5.1 build 2600)sp2
Radeon X1550 Series Secondary,
ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (DX715F) intrn(400mhz)
512.0 MB
Not getting any error messages when i try to log in, no weird sounds, no belching...it just does not start. Grumbles.
Will someone help me?
thank you
Cristinaa

You should turn off your computer, router, modem, etc. and let them sit a few minutes.

You should make sure you are starting without a corrupted SL cache by clearing your cache.

You should make sure you are starting without a corrupted settings.xml file. by deleting that file. For a default SL installation that would be C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings\setting.xml . One approach is to delete the folder C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings. Doing that will delete all the settings files used by normal variations of SL viewers such as the release candidate and firstlook.

Wow. Sounds dreadfully frustrating. Take a deep breath. You'll be asked all kinds of questions for which your answer will be: "Of course, dummy, that's the first thing I tried." Try to be gentle with us, in our foolishness.

I'll start:

[Okay, I won't: I was going to suggest exactly what Suezanne suggested as first steps, but she types too fast. So, let's see how those turn out.]

Thank you thank you thank you . I will do all you said...will let you know

Cristinaa

Another thing to do in this situation is try a different viewer. If you are failing to run the regular viewer, try the first look, or the release candidate. You might find this works well enough to just adopt the new viewer and ignore the problem till later. If not, and one viewer works and another doesn't, this at least gives you some information you didn't have before.

One thing to try on Windows XP machines when anything screws up is a system restore. Geeky sorts sometimes fail to try this or to suggest this, I think because it doesn't involve understanding anything about what the problem was and how to keep it from happening. Just pick the most recent restore date you have when you know that SL worked.

If you have alts, try your alts.

Try logging in at different places.

Provide system specs, you can get some from the Preferences on the Login screen, if you get that far. If not I think it's right click My Computer and select properties , or Start Programs Accesories System Tools System Info .

yeah as suggested try logging into a different location

if you are not sure how to do that... here are the basics

it is on the log in page, you type in the name of the place you want to log in)

I think the sim the lindens suggest is lime or something (someone will know for sure)
if you do not see that log in option, go to your preferences, it is in there somewhere

Did everything you said and it still didnt work. I do not get a log in screen. I click to start the game and wait for it to load. it doesnt. so i went into safe mode. sometimes that helps cause not so much loads at start....a box came up telling my my video card rivers are out of date or from unkown source...tried to roll them back....didnt work...tried to update drivers..and it wouldnt...saying i dont need them. well. Then i called SL and he said he could not help me. I sent in a ticket and he said they replied and i said no they didnt and that the forums say it will take 7 days to get an answer.
Ok..cannot get a log in screen...there has got to be another way to bypass that one. I am just at a loss.

Cristinaa

dont understand "releasing viewer" or trying another one.

Okay... from http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php there's the regular released viewer, but also "Test Software" which takes you to http://secondlife.com/community/downloads-optional.php. You really have two choices, the "Release Candidate" viewer: http://release-candidate-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/Second_Life_1-18-6-4_ReleaseCandidate_Setup.exe

or the Windlight "First Look" viewer:
http://firstlook-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/Second_Life_1-18-6-76886_WindLight_Setup.exe

Either of those just might work.

Should also mention that Suezanne's suggestion about rolling-back Windows XP to some restore point where SecondLife worked may be a good idea about now. Failing that, you may need to deal with uninstalling your graphics card drivers completely and reinstalling them from scratch. (That's not usually part of the SecondLife experience, but that warning while in Safe Mode sounds pretty peculiar to me.)

Thank you..i will try those things...

Cristinaa

Cristinaa.... i sincerely hope you can work this out, but it sounds like your video card is not up to par.

can you go to the local college and log in from there? or a friends house?

Try this go to
C:\Program Files\SecondLife or whichever directory you installed second life

rename the file

SecondLife.exe to something else like sl.exe, secondlife0.exe etc.. just a different name
create a shortcut of your new file on desktop and name it "Second Life0".

Start the secondlife via this new shortcut. Let me know if this work.

I would go as far as to say delete this entire directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\SecondLife

And let SL recreate it when you start up.

Failing all that, I'd be tempted to just start fresh. Uninstall the entire SL client software, download a new copy and install it. Just a thought.

I agree with Ty - I do that on rare occasions when all else fails.

We all have our lucky charms to get us out of problems we don't understand. I always try disk cleanup first, checking all the boxes, to get rid of the crud (it'll be in the control panel probably, depending which version you are using). Then system restore with a recent date, then with a more distant date.

I've had some success with playing with the maximum bandwidth and cache size values on the 'network' page of Preferences on the log in screen. It sometimes gives you a laggy access if the web connection or the graphics card or the memory are not quite up to it.

What bothers me about all this is that SL was running just fine before on this machine, per the first post. So how b0rked can it be now? Well... evidently, pretty b0rked, but nothing that shouldn't be fixable with the same hardware, and without anything as radical as an OS re-install. (Okay, it's Windoze, so even things that can't go wrong regularly do. Still.)

It also worries me that it seems the OP has left the building. I hope we haven't "fixed" her machine too much!

I have a feeling that there's an option not yet mentioned that might be worth trying, namely, get someone else to give it a try. Someone else that's really good with computers.

Umm, also try toggling the vertex shaders from what they are set at to what they aren't .