Black Screen When Logging In

I just downloaded Second Life, and when I double clicked it to start, all I get is a black screen, with three white bars in the lower left corner. I assumed these were login bars, and put in my info and hit enter (not being able to see any buttons). Then a single grey box appears in the middle of the screen. I am assuming that there is text or something in it, but I am unable to read it. All I see is the grey box. No images or text can be seen.

I meet and in most cases exceed the minimum requirements, and I have an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX integrated GPU for a video card. I checked to make sure the driver was updated, and it was. Are there any fixes for this problem? Or does anyone even know what my problem is? Thanks!

And you were able to log in that way? Maybe it's just be a temporary glitch at the SL servers.

That sounds similar to the effect I get after my Graphics Card (also an Nvidia) crashes when using SL (although I just see black, no white boxes). The only solution I have found is to restart the PC.

Alternatively, sometimes the SL login screen takes a while to download (how fast is your Broadband?) so try leaving it for a few minutes?

A Geforce4MX is not really going to be playable, but really ought to be able to draw the login screen! How much RAM on the vid card??? If it's a really old 8MB or such that could be bad.

The 3 boxes most likely are first-name, last-name, password. The grey box afterward was prolly the password incorrect check your caps-lock error box. It likes to throw that one when it can't figure out a better excuse. How wide was the grey box relative to overall screen size? The error box is maybe 30-40% of the screen width. The Loading please wait... grey box is more like 75-80% screen width.

Are you running it fullscreen or in a window? Try the opposite. Course if it can't draw the home screen I guess you can't get to prefs can you, silly me. Do you see the menu bar at the top of the black screen???

How fast is your internet connection? You aren't running a bit-torrent in the background are you? Or multiple IM clients? Close out any unnecessary other programs before launching SL.

Edit: I just realized you said "integrated". Check in BIOS to see how much ram is assigned to video. How much total system ram do you have? The amount you assign to video is taken away from available memory, so in theory you need MORE than a GB of RAM. Using integrated RAM in this manner also really slows things down too. Any chance you can install a "real" video card?

That is also most likely what the grey box you see after trying to log in. It will popup an error saying your system does not meet requirements if you have less than 1GB of *available* ram. If you have 1GB *total*, then the video ram has been subtracted from that and you technically have less than 1GB left. It's supposed to have continue/quit buttons.