So sick of SL crashing my whole computer every 5 min

please some one help. i have been on SL for almost a year and about 3 months ago i start crashing constantly. i crash once every 5-20 min and its driving me nuts. i just have no idea what to do...if i minimize sl it will run without crashing but when i open the window it will soon crash. also its not a regular crash, not just SL but my whole computer crashes. my system meets the recormended system requirerments so why am i crashing? SL is the only program running on my computer and still it crashes me. can any one please help me out? any assistance to resolving this problem will be greatly apreceated.

~Xzaria~

hm..
I mean true is that SL become more and more Instable over the past Months and extremly in the last few weeks.

But if you write your COM. get down.. than the Problem will be here.
This can happen for many reason, and its hart so say without knowing something about your COM.. I mean the Data inside.

Just to give to a Idea:
Your Motherboard maybe come to the end of his "Livetime"
Your G-Card have a Problem and need to replace
Your Ram Memory can have a Problem or the connection from G-Card to Ram
Your PC need a better Cooling System.

This are all Problem what can bring your PC to crash when you try to run a Online Game.

Try to play a other one.. don't have to be Online... some High G. Game.
If your PC run stable over a Hour... and only Crash when you run SL as Game... hm.

If your PC crash even with other Games... than your PC (a part of it) is the problem.

Bunchoo

no it dont crash with any other game i have, it only crases with SL. i play other games all the time and SL is the only one that gives me problems. as i said b4 my computer has the recormended system requierments but it still crashes.

Make sure ALL your fans are working, and get some dust off and get rid of all that dust on the fans and grills.

see if that helps - it wont do any harm......


Sl really works a system to its limits thing might be running hot enough to cause a shutdown

Yes... If other Games still running I think you have a heat problem.

You say 5 - 20 min runtime.. than its shut down... "Blackscreen" reboot...?
The PC is trying to protect them self for a damage.
In case the Software you use has a problem you will get normaly get a Blue Screen (BSOD)
In case the PC become simply to hot... he shut down.

Clean up all Fan's like the poster befor already wrote.
(Best use compressed Air for any electronic Part of your Com.)
Maybe renew the cooling paste from your processor as well.

Try to find a Freeware Program like *everest* who can read the temperature from your PC. Use this program after the crash and post the result here.+ add 10% to the Temp. you see, simple becorse its take some time to reboot.. in this time the PC is cooling down already.

as sample:
Processor 49
G-Card 55
HDD 50
This are "normal temp." If you see something with 65 + C than you found your Problem.

You say even ... in the past 3 Months.... I don't now where you live. It is Summer now, is the Room Temp. higher than normal. 10 C can make a lot of diff. from running stable to crash a PC. Its all not so simple sometimes to find a error.

In Case the Clean up PC option do's not help... than the still the possibility that one part of your PC need to be replace. Find out which Part is a other Story.

If it is any consolation Xzaria I have been having the same problem, from about the same time as you.

My machine is not old, just a few weeks. I bought the best gaming machine available from my games store, with Dual Core, 3.5GHz, 4Gb RAM, dual GeForce 8800s, etc, etc.

All the games bought with it (the most graphics intense), and all other on-line games, including WoW and Entropia, all play flawlessly.

However, whenever SL kicks up, it slows the entire PC to a crawl, the internal fans start working overtime (you can really hear them spin to keep up), and the Task Manager tells me that I am running at or near 100% CPU and most of the memory too.

So, it is NOT your PC, it is NOT dust, it is NOT your motherboard failing, it IS SL!

Rock

You might want to try the Nicholaz SL client*.

I haven't had problems with the standard SL client, but after reading about the profound fixes that Nicholaz made to the client memory leaks, I was tempted to try it. I'm not noticing any difference (except for less memory use) but am continuing to run it as a vote of confidence in Nicholaz and to be able to send bug reports (that will not be ignored) should find any.

*http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/

My rig is a single core AMD Sempron 3400+ 2.4GHz with 2GB ram and an old Radeon 9800Pro 128MB graphics card, I have my settings so SL looks good and is 95 to 99% stable. I usually only crash when my TV Tuner software is recording and even that is rare.

As another point of interest I also run SL on my Compaq Evo N1000c P4m 1.8GHz laptop with 778MB ram and a 32MB dedicated graphics chip. I run it at bare minimum settings and only get max 7 frame per second when I am at my SL home alone, so it's more a glorified IM system at that point, but so far it has crashed once and I almost always run WinAmp in tandom with it.

The moral to this story is, maybe they added something to SL that is a little more than your system, or as other have pointed out it may be a hardware issue, either your system requires a good cleaning, or perhaps one or more components are nearing their end of life. I have run several motherboards and processors into the ground without overclocking, so it does happen.

The way I look at it everything wears out, barrings and servos obviously wear out eventually, the compound in compacitors eventually break down, infact anything that does any work at all will eventually fail, garanteed! It may take 10, 20, 30 or more, but eventually it WILL fail and need to be replaced.

I had this exact same problem. Had been on SL for months with no problems except the occasional "normal" crash. Then I started crashing like you....every 5 to 20 minutes, whole computer shuts down, black screen. Someone suggested my computer was getting too hot (I have a laptop) and I should look into getting a cooling fan. It's just about the size of my laptop, the laptop sits on top of it, plugs in and runs off the computer battery.....and no more crashes. It was like a miracle cure....and only cost $20. I couldn't believe something so simple would fix it. I kept being told I shouldn't need one of these fans, that there had to be something wrong with my computer...and maybe there is, but all I know is I can SL now without crashing. Good Luck

thank you all for your help....i will try all of your sugjestions and keep you updated on my progress...wish me luck

ok this is really frustrating...i tried just about everything....cleaning off my fans and keeping the cpu cool and even the new SL viewer....nothing seems to work. so does anyone else have anymore sugjestions on how we can resolve this problem?

This is happening all over. I came here with this same problem thinking maybe I could get some useful info on why I kept crashing but only in certain areas. Instead I was asked what kind of crashes were they.

Crashes are crashes are crashes. You're on-line then all of a sudden you're not, that's a crash. I can't see how you can have different crashes when the bottom like is you crashed and that's it.

That is not necessarily true. My PC is over a year and a half old, P4 dual core 3.0 gig CPU (not to be confused with the newer, better core 2 duo), on an Asus motherboard, 1.5 gigs DDR2 RAM, and geForce 8600GT graphics. My task manager shows just under 50% CPU usage with SL running (no afinity set to single core either) and right at 500 megs RAM. Of course those numbers fluctuate and can get quite high when I'm doing lots of looking around in a texture rich environment.

I could be the PC, it could be dust, and (sorry to inform you) it could be the motherboard failing. Though it's not likely to be a failing motherboard it very well could be the fault is in the PC itself. And, Vista is memory hog like SL.......that could be the problem too. But, the most likely cause would be old video drivers and/or system settings (background programs running) and game settings. Those would things to check for.

In you're advanced Graphics tab in SL Preferences. Uncheck Use VBO. Test. IN Your Windows operating system, try "Lowering" your Virtual memory to One half of your Total Ram when running SL. In the settings for your video card. Try setting the openGL to run in "Performance" instead of Quality. check that you're openGL meets at least the 1.5 standard. Update you're Video card Drivers. Or, If you are running an Nvidia card/sans mobo and you have recently updated the forceware. Try downgrading it to the 94.xx series of drivers. Hope at least one of these helps.

Xzaria: please post your system specs. You can get them from Help/About on SL's top menu screen, just copy them and paste into a message here ... in the few minutes you are up.

The two rigs I am running with almost no crashes at all, and apparently fewer with every iteration of SL Client.

Main Rig, Generic Home Build:

AMD Sempron 2.4GHz, 2GB DDR1 RAM, Radeon 9800Pro 128MB, 80GB SATA1 HDD, Windows XP Pro. Average frame rates between 15 and 20 with graphic set to about 40% to 50% on the sliders, and all additional options on.

Laptop, Compaq Evo N1000c:

Intel P4 Mobile 1.8GHz, 768MB DDR1 Ram, Integrated Mobility Radeon 9500 32MB Dedicated, 60GB IDE HDD, Windows 2000 Pro. Average frame rates between 2 and 7 with graphic set to 0% on the sliders and all additional options off.

If I am unlucky SL will crash on my tower once a week, maybe one in 10 times my tower will go into a black screen crash. I have only managed to crash my laptop once and at that point is was entirely my fault for having it do too much at once.

Cooling is critical with SL, it uses a lot of CPU time and it's not running a NOOP loop. I have an extra set of fans in my case, I keep the side of the case off, and when it gets into the 90s (Fahrenheit, 30+C) I turn on a desk fan that blows extra air into the case. Most problems I experience with SL (besides the memory leaks) are when I forget to turn the extra fans on (they are on a separate power supply). Also the HDDs overheat if I forget to turn on the extra fans (and I have a app that complains at me if they overheat). HDDs die sooner if they are run hot.

If you install an application like SpeedFan (it's free) it will tell you component temperatures. All modern CPUs, GPUs and most HDDs report temperatures.

I agree with everything that's been said regarding overheating - when I upgraded my video card to a 512 mb card w/onboard fan, once frequent crashes almost disappeared. One other thing to remember....over time, most pcs will slow down due to spyware and other types of processes running in the background. As these little beauties increase in number, they slowly rob your system of resources. Frequent use of Sbybot, Adaware SE, etc. will help, as will cleanup of unneeded processes in Task Manager.

July metrics for SL showed crashes were up significantly. August metrics were way higher yet. Are you really trying to pretend all the crashing is cause gridwide folks dont have enough fans blowing on their computers. SHEESH. /me holds nose and steps carefully away from the pile of ....

What you say is quite possibly true. However, there a lot of people experiencing problems with SL that ARE related to their computers and associated hardware. NOT ALL crashes on SL are problems with the LL servers or the LL provided client software. As the game (platform, whatever) is upgraded with each new update the demands on each of our machines gets greater.......and there is little we can do except try to keep up by keeping our computers in tip top shape.

Well, we could just stop using SL.........and one day that may happen. But, if we can help others with suggestions on how to overcome problems then we should try to do so. The other side of that coin is we can't pretend all the "crashes are LL's fault" either.

From what I observed is that 99.9% of crashes, be they SL only or Black Screen crashes is that they occur when my hardware is at extreme peak load. This means I am running Trillian and SL, and my TV Tuner software is recording a show, on top of usual overhead taken by my antivirus, active anti-spyware, firewall, UPS Managing software, ect. It is very rare that I see SL crash when my system, as dated as it is, is not at this level of load. This standard overhead takes up to 512MB free memory to give you an idea of what I am working with.

So do I think most "Crashes" that people complain about are user/hardware related? Yes, because my experiences have been that after throttled to a level that my hardware can reliably handle, SL is very stable though it may not be the most stable platform either. Yes I experienced a lot of these problems when I first started because I did not know how to throttle SL properly to my system, I actually quite once, Mortus Allen was not my first SL name, but once I was walked though proper throttling and continued tweaking I have had few if any problems.

Now are all crashes user/hardware related? No, I am sure there are still bugs in the clients otherwise they would not be releasing new versions between major features, I am also sure they are working on trimming the fat and removing less efficient and keeping increasing demands of new features in check.

I have a fairly high powered machine with plenty of memory and I hardly ever crash the client and never the machine itself (sign of overheating)

However, I have frequent client disconnects... three or four in a 5 hour session. When this happends the client seems to be running normally. However, I can't move, look at profiles, Open chat... basically I can't do anything that requires a connection to the server.

I suspect that shis is network related.. I see it more often if I am browsing the internet at the same time, and this might just be me being paranoid, I think I get dissconnected often when I meet new people... I get the feeling that they look up my profile and sometimes that zaps my connection to the server.

.d

P.S. - I am running Vista 64 and once in a great while I get a Gfx Card driver crash... I know because the OS tells me.. and we know Windows never lies.