environment problem!

I see the SL environment like this:

Please help!

Oopps!!! What all the time? Did it it ever work correctly?I notice this is your first post so is your vid card up to it?

It never works correctly. I took that picture when I entered the first time and it doesn't work till now.

It looks like no textures are filling at all, which could mean (as suggested) that the graphics card is really out of its league, or possibly that its drivers are really out of date... or even (unlikely) a very specialized network problem.

But I also notice the "Not Responding)" in the taskbar. Is SL just freezing like that?

I think it may be helpful to see some of the system specs. These are available even before login from Help / About Second Life.

Hi Angella, that looks really weird. I think it would be helpful to know more about your system. Can you log on, select "About Second Life" from the Help menu and copy the lines from "CPU:" to "Packets lost:" and paste them here?

Hi, Dylan
Here's the information that SL gave me:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Northwood (2400 MHz)
Memory: 512 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: RADEON 7000 DDR x86/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 1.3.1072 WinXP Release
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.17955 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.13_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 0/448 (0.0%)

According to the requirements page, the minimum for ATI card needed is Radeon 8500, 9250 or better.

http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php

http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php

I would say that your graphics card is unable to handle the load placed on it by Second Life. Also your system barely meets the minimum requirements. Even with a new graphics card you will probablky need to keep your graphics settings at the lowest level to be able to use SL at all.

Well your system is not really up to the job here.
512mb of main memory is not near enough, a minimum of 1 gig will be needed, and 2 gig for any real performance.

But it is your graphics card that is the real bottleneck here.. The Radeon 7000 is a 5 year old card with generally only 32mb of ram.. It has a pixel shader so SL will think it will work, but it just won't handle the textures.
The pent 4 will be ok, SL is not all that CPU intensive, but it is very GPU intensive.. More main ram, and a better video card and you should be ok.

Thank you all
I'll back when I improve my PC and see ya 'round

Hey Qie, I get "Not Responding)" a few times a day with no interruption of play.. I've sort of started to think of it as an annoying glitch that doesn't really mean anything. I suppose it could be my new Comcast connection but I've not noticed a decrease in performance along with it. *shrug* What's it really supposed to mean?

(Not Responding) is a message from the operating system. Windows itself is sending a message to to the SL application -- usually something like 'redraw" or "change focus" because the window SL is running in has moved, been covered by another window popup, the mouse left the window area and has returned, this sort of stuff. Anyway, if SL is super busy it does not have time to respond until it finishes what it's doing and can reply to an external request. In short, no big deal. Not Responding is just a warning from Windows that the program may be hung up.

Hey Angella,

Previous answers are correct in saying you need a bit more memory etc but one thing that stands out is your OpenGL version. It's way lower than current. OpenGL is one of the most important necessities when it comes to SL. Update your video drivers as best you can and good luck.

~B

Ahh, thanks. So, pardon my ignorance, but is this why I get this message most often when using Gimp? (Doesn't happen with other programs.) Perhaps because I keep switching windows back and forth?