Major, Major Problems!!! Please Help!!!

I was using SL successfully for over a month without any real problems. Everything seemed to be working fine, except for some normal lag problems here and there. I purchased a skin/shape called Levi and that was fine too for at least a couple of weeks.

Then one day my entire skin went pitch black, except for my head. It looked like I had been bathing in tar. But I didn't notice any other problems. I switched to a different version of this same skin (with a bald head) and the problem went away for a while. This problem seemed to come and go, but was usually fine with this bald skin.

Then one day I put on a different shirt and all hell broke loose. SL started acting totally screwy, freezing, the world looked all full of static, full of rainbow colors, and lots of other problems. SL started crashing repeatedly and then my entire computer started crashing repeatedly.

Now I think I have tried just about everything to solve this problem, including:
Reinstalling SecondLife about five times, including making every attempt to delete all related files first (prefs, Application Support, etc.), but I have not found a way to do an uninstall first.

Now I have even created two more avatars, but they are having similar problems. With the first replacement avatar, I did transfer a couple of things (but not that skin which I thought was the problem at first) from my original avatar (Holden). When similar problems started showing up, I figured maybe those items were somehow corrupted. So I created a third avatar and I have not transferred anything. I also tried to do a complete delete and reinstall of SecondLife before logging this new avatar in.

But I am still having major problems even with this third avatar. I cannot figure out what the problem might be.

Please help!!!!


I am using a Macintosh G5 Dual 2.3 GHz with 4GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 6600 video card.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-771 maybe?

/me quotes one comment..

There are several threads in the forum with symptoms of the bug Meade pointed out, the "all black avatar" issue. The most common cause by far seems to be using dual monitors.

If you are not using two monitors (or a second screen for a laptop), let us know. If you are, then fall back to one and configure SL to use it in full-screen mode (don't run SL in a window). Completely delete your Application Data/caches (wherever they are on a Mac), no need to reinstall. Login and rebake. All *should* be well.

p.s. oh, and welcome to teh forumz!

It could be a symptom of your video card going bad. The fact you are getting crashes would make me lean that way.

Nika and others,

Thank you so much for your quick responses!!

I have been using dual monitors. And I think I was moving my SL window around a lot too (from one monitor to the other, etc). It sounds like this is likely the cause of my problems. I will try what you suggested. I'm not sure how to configure SL to use it in full-screen mode or how to rebake (newbie here), but I will probably figure it out. If this is hard to figure out, I would appreciate any tips.

Thanks again everyone! I will let you know how it goes.

Also make sure you run SL only on the "primary" monitor.

Thanks for the tip. I took these suggestions and so far so good. Thanks again for the help!!

I have a question about running SL in full-screen mode on the primary monitor (on a Mac). I can now see this is the best way, except for one thing. How do I access all of the rest of my apps, etc? Is there a way to minimize SL (or some equivalent) when running in full-screen mode? Or does anyone have any other suggestions for us Mac users?

Don't know poo about Macs, but if you hit the apple key while SL is running, doesn't it automatically minimize SL? Then you can choose whatever app you want?

Note: if SL is left minimized for over 30 minutes, you will be logged out. If you don't have AFK (away-from-keyboard) turned off, you may be logged out before that.

To turn off AFK, go to your Client menu, Character, Tests (or something like that), and then uncheck the test relating to AFK.