New User Huge Problems (Crashing, Lagging, Program Hangs)

Well Im a brend new user, I just signed up last night installed the hardware and found that I cant play the game at all. Ok for a list of the problems so far. Game interface takes a very long time to load, all buttons are slow to respond this includes the login information, preferences tab (and all of the optinos and catagories in it), and the connection button. when I try to quit the game it crashes. When I try to log in to the game it will load some of it and then it simply hangs. I cannot move, turn, access any of the ingame options nothing at all, and again when I try to exit the game crashes. I have all of the enhancements in the game turned all the way down or turned off. I have tried uninstalling the game and the drivers and reinstalling them but to not avail. Also the game uses between 90 and 99 percent cpu and that cant be right.
System specs are as follows

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ running at 2.2 ghz
1.5 gigs of ram running at 333mhz
Gigabyte 7S748 motherboard
Gigabyte Geforce FX 5700 256 DDR with the 84.21 forceware drivers

I hope someone could help me out a little bit. Thanks in advanced

SL uses easy 100% cpu this renders on spot and is very heavy, also slow to cache first times, since some places can be anywhere from 50 - 500mb+ download depending.

Things we kinda need to know
isp connection kind/speed, wireless?
firewall?

Sounds like your ports not open, or internet to slow.

Actually, most of those symptoms (an inability to turn in particular) indicates that it's a problem locally, on the client computer. We should run fine on that machine. The most common causes might be running in a window on a dual-monitor setup; having another graphics card (such as an onboard graphics chip) installed (though that mobo seems to lack one); or a security software program interfering with Second Life.

Definatly sounds like many of your problems are local to your PC.

Do you have any firewalls or similar security software setup? Things like setting up preferences is done 100% locally and your PC will handle them just fine.

90%+ processor useage is normal for any Game of this type. If anything the last patch actually reduced it slightly as more of the graphics is handled by the cards now.

Hrm... just a curousity, whats your maintance record like? Spyware removal, antivirus scans, defragmentation, etc. Also what other programs are you running at the same time as SL?

The crashing has to do with an object, hud, clothing whatever your avatar is wearing.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR CLIENT! Repeat: NOTHING WRONG!

I have been crashing for 3 weeks, done everything what is suggested, yes, Lee, i installed SP2 and gosh, it didnt do shit, same crashing about every 5 min. Then Steve Linden writes here an answer to someone that they are aware of a bug with huds, attachments.

I take off my Zhao Animation Overrider and hooray, no more crashes. Still people keep posting here about drivers this and drivers there.
I installed the new patch, tried my ao on and crash and crash and crash... and i take my ao off and no crashes anymore... So this is not really fixed right?

I start building (because thats what i get payed for in sl) and oh! prims still go invisible, and textures stay behind, its exactly the same as before the patch. And my inventory fetching... nods, exactly, the same as before: laggy and terribly slow. I am a mother and my patience is almost endless but this is really getting on my nerves.
For almost 2 years i have kept my promises to every customer, now im not able to do so because Second Life doesnt allow me to.

Yes, its those days and yes, im in a terrible mood.

Hrm.. I fail to see your logic. Let me explain... If you read his post you would see the following:

1. he is a first time user, a noob and probly doesn't know what a hud attachment is
2. he just installed the client for the first time re-enforcing 1.
3. SL is extremely slow and unresponsive BEFORE logging into SL

Sure he has problems in game wich might be caused by a hud, but his problems start before getting into SL so I fail to see how an ingame object can affect SL before logging in. Also seeing how I have 3 hud attachments and have none of these problems I doubt everyone's crash related issues are caused by huds.

Well thanks for all the feedback. Im going to try and address everything people have said so far. My connection speed is 8mbs down and 768 up at max. I only have a single monitor setup so that wouldnt be the problem. I have no onboard video. I hadent thought of the firewall, I opened up the required ports and it did help a little bit, but for some reason the program still lags really bad before I even try to loggin. Im always on top of my maintance, the tower gets defraged everytime it gets above 3% fragmented (I use Diskeeper pro) I scan for spyware and viruses 2 times a week. I also have tried shutting down all non required programs made no difference. My avatar has no clothing or any items yet, I still havent had a chance to check out the first island. well I can see a little of the game now. but the lag is still terrible. it looks like im getting like 2 or 3 frames a minute. mouse clicks and movement comands take about 3 minutes to respond. I will let it run for the night and see if its better tomarrow. in the meantime if there are any other suggestions i would be more then happy to look into them.

Read what Steve Linden wrote, Ron. It's not only me, we are with lots having this problem

I was talking about Jay's post wich is the topic of this discussion. If you wish to lash out at lindens when we're trying to help a noob please do not derail this topic with your personal issues and make your own thread.

well I tried to just let it run all night in the hopes that it would cash the data of orentation island. To a very small extent it worked, I could see most everything but the program crashed as soon as I tried to move (which I still cant do at all not even an inch, all movement comands or turning comands seem to be completely ignored) But I can finally get in game and see it a little. but Im still really confused why the program would lag before I ever try to loggin...

According to Leyla, all problems are the same. Lets just ignore all the people who updated there drivers and fixed the crashing problems they had.

According to Leyla, all problems are the same and just ignore all the people who updated there drivers and fixed the crashing problems they had, they were all HUD problems. Drivers from 2003 and 2004 are up to date apparently, no need at all to update them because SL didn't add any new lighting or any reason for them to be.

I almost forgot, last night I upgraded to 1.10.2.2 but that has had no effect.

Jay, what are you using for a firewall? I am still having issues with my Norton firewall working correctly with SL. I have set permissions for SL but it still does not like it...I need to play around with that more.

What I do to play now is to right click my firewall and disable it while I play SL. It seems to help a lot. I still get freezing after about an hour, but I believe it's from something else.

One thing I am noticing though by having my firewall down while playing. I appear to pick up the abwhiz virus!
Could the SL servers be infected with this virus? Don't know...but I have had to remove it twice now since this past weekend. (removal requires going into safe mode and running special Nortin abwhiz virus removal tool)

I currently have a hardware firewall in my Linksys Router (which I have now opened the required ports), I also use McAfee which I have also configured to qork with SL. It is possible that it is somehow affecting the game but I know it dosent affect anyother program I have used through it. Such as Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, and Everquest. I know that all of the other games I listed are completely different than SL in both play and in the way the client works with the server. As for the virus this is a field that I work in all the time, It is possible that their servers are infected BUT I have a really hard time believing that they would have not found it. Servers become very unstable when infected with most viruses, not to mention Im very confident that they would regullary scan the system with updated software for all unwanted software. Are you by anychance running ANY other program while online? Viruses can get in by all sorts of means. What fiels are infected by the virus? Back to the main subject, I have tried nearly everything I can think of, I will try to disable the firewall and see what happens. So far it took 25 minutes to be able to read the signs in the orientation island. I have loaded up the stats and Im getting 0.1 fps, 7 to 12 kbps (on an 8mbs down, no other software running), I have adjusted the settings to alow 1000kbps bandwidth with no change. I get a 1000kbps ping. im getting 20.1 agent updates a second. I have adjusted the cash size from the lowest to the highest and everything inbetween with no change. I have run the game in a window and full screen in 800x600 and at 1200x768. and I have even set the memory to 128 instead of 256. All have done barley anything. Is there any specific hardware like soundbaster or any specific software that would cause this game to become unstable? Excluding things listed on the unsupported page.

Hi Jay,

Have you tried going to the task manager, right clicking on secondlife.exe and change its priority to high, does it make any changes? Please post back your results. Also are you getting any packet loss when you are in world, 2 ways to check it are going to about then secondlife or looking at the red bar on the top right of the screen, next to the green.

I havent tried changing the priority yet Ill do that after this post. I did shut down my firewall and that made no difference. The red bar dosent change at all nor does the other one next to it. In the stats window it says that I have lost no packets but I find that very hard to believe at this point.

One suggestion I made appears to have slipped through the cracks.

Do you happen to be running a dual-monitor setup?

Actually I did mention that in the second or third post I made. I am not running dual monitors, but my vid card does support it, I turned off that option with the update. I did try to up the priority and that did boost my bandwidth to about 50kbps but did nothing for the framerate of 0.1 and its a far cry from 8mbps or even 1000kbps. Is it possible that Orientation Island is for some reason just not likeing my computer? Also would a sys admin mind watching the through-put between the server and my client while im logging in? I know its a bit much to ask but it might help diagnose where exactly the problem is. Is it also possible that with my processor being pushed to 99% that its not leaving any room to process whats being transfered from the server? Im running out of ideas. Somethings have helped a little but I still cant move, framerate is still way to low and 50kbps is much improved from 7 but thats not all that great eather. I commenly download at about 1300kbps. Thankyou all who have replied.

I was also hoping that someone on the inside might be able to find a crash report from me and let me know what actually caused the error. I know I have sent 2 or 3, but even that part has crashed a few times while sending.

Well Im still hoping to get this game running. I turned off all visual enhancements in windows and still have not been able to get this game running stable or above 1 frame a second. Im preaty close to giving up. So unless anyone has any ideas that might work Im going to thank all who have replyed and tried.

Ok well I finally fixed it. In case this happens to someone else here is what I had to do. First I had to get into the advanced bios options which on my mobo was I had to hit ctrl and F1 at the same time. Then I had to force AGP 8x the auto setting defaults to 2x I found out. Also I had to set the agp apature setting manually to 256 The auto setting defaults to 64 for some reason. So in a Giga-byte GA-7S748 motherboard using F9 bios it always defaults to a much slower setting on auto. Then I had to uncap my tcp/ip settings in windows, Clean the nvidia drivers and reinstall a fresh copy of them currently 84.21. Force windows to clear the page file on shutdown in the registery. and Boom now I finally get to see SL. Well thank you for all your help.