Dual monitor crash-reboot screwup when starting SL.

I used to have a "working" dual monitor setup that was fine with SL. Yay.

Brief summary:

-Had to move secondary video card to a different PCI slot (kvm-related wire length problem) 90% sure this is what caused this SL problem.

-Had to uninstall/reinstall drivers (wow, shocking)

-Starting SL now causes the entire system to lag BADLY (mouse even freezes for a few seconds, every few seconds), after which the system kindly reboots itself.

-Disabling the second monitor in windoze (unchecking "extend my windows desktop onto this monitor" allows SL to startup fine. After it's running, I can enable the 2nd window and it doesn't crash.

-The crash seems to coincide with the "detecting hardware" phase of startup. (Even though I have "detect hardware at next startup" in SL unchecked.) The SL window usually gets as far as displaying a login window, but never lets me get past that. I think the other night I was seeing this I occassionally saw a SECOND SL window try to startup.

-Have tried uninstalling SL (completely, no files left behind) and reinstalling, twice, same problem.

-Have also tried un/re-installing drivers. (newest of course)

-Both cards are Nvidia (256mb primary vs. 128mb)

-Happens in fullscreen startup too

-Is pissing me off

-This problem sucks.

Boo.

Anyone else had an issue like this before? waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *cry*

Did you move it to the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot on your motherboard? I have seen some boards where these are setup in 'one or the other mode'

Since you had to reinstall the drivers, did you reinstall DirectX too? Can you run all the DxDiag tests?

I would suggest wiping the drivers and starting over. Completley remove all the video drivers, remove the secondary card and set up the primary. Get it working as it should then install the secondary card and its drivers. This can cure a lot of problems whan dealing with secondary video cards. You may also try reinstalling the Second Life client if detecting hardware on start up has no effect. As mentioned before, try switching slots if the above doesn't help.

I run dual-monitor at home and have no issue with Second Life; however, I'm using one video card (the GeForce 5950). I have the mouse-skipping issue you describe with World of Warcraft in windowed mode, because WoW starts up with the window just BARELY hanging over onto the second monitor (Windows seems to hate doing 3D across two monitors). Configuring WoW to always start up maximized in one window seemed to fix that part...

It sounds like the entire thing may be related to taking the PCI card out of the first slot; the dual-card setups I've seen have always been exceptionally picky as to where things have to be.

Bleh, really I was hoping to avoid the "move stupid card again" answer which always seems to be the best thing to try. I think I *did* move it to the slot next to the AGP card. Maybe moving it down one more would help... but if I'm gonna go and open the thing up again I might as well "start from scratch" with drivers and all of course.

Blehhh..not looking forward to this fun.

Well, that was fun.

I didn't try moving the card, but I tried taking it out, (after uninstalling drivers), reinstalling the main card, and putting the second card back in. Same problem.

I didn't try moving it because due to wire-length issues* the only other slot I can move it to is where my sound card is.

*My KVM switch's wires need to go from the PCI card to the mouse/keyboard ports and the wires are too short to reach from the "old" slot the PCI card used to be in. Anyone know if you can get really really short "PC-mouse + PC-keyboard" (not USB) extension wires?

Yipee.

So even if I move it and get it working in that slot, I still have to worry about moving the soundcard to another slot. Winblows hates playing musical PCI cards of course. I'm not sure it's even worth it now, maybe I'll just disable the 2nd monitor when I start SL and then re-enable it.

I should have mentioned: both cards Nvidia, but the main one is AGP and the other is a PCI. (PCI wasn't actually in the slot next to the AGP btw....lol the AGP card is way too big to fit ANYTHING into that slot. (Has a fan on it for crying out loud.) Gotta love these motherboard/card designs...)

So since the second card is Nvidia as well, I didn't actually install any drivers for the 2nd card, I just plugged it back in and it worked.

But this still sucks.

After reading this...I only have one thought.

If cable length problems are your problem, try moving your PC vs blaming your OS.

*just a thought.

I had a similar problem when I recently moved my setup. I have a geforce 5950 running 2 monitors and a pci geforce 3 or something along those lines running a third. I accidentally plugged the two monitors that were hooked into the 5950 backwards and SL said I don't have the right hardware. So I switched them back, and it ran without problems.

It was just weird.

Yes, there are screwey things with dual monitors. Usually with Windows XP you *shouldn't*have to worry about playing musical PCI cards. The Plug and Pray uh Play OS should detect a hardware change and use the currently installed drivers to operate the card.

However Microsoft doesn't have that concept down yet.


Me, when I last trashed my HD to start from scratch I had both my 17" LCD screen and 15" CRT monitor plugged into the card (GeForce 4 TI 4200 VI/VO) the system got confused and used the CRT as the primary monitor. Took 4 hours of swapping the primary/secondary monitor assignments before XP got the idea I wanted the LCD as the primary display.

Hmm...

Pete: I wish it were that simple...if I could just move it believe me I would have. But I'll explain that problem better...

I use a KVM switch that lets me share a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and sound with other computers. It goes from every port (4 each system) to the kvm, and from the kvm to the monitor, keyboard, etc. The problem is that it's a single connected wire, going to each computer, up right until it splits into four parts: keyboard, mouse, sound, monitor. Well...I can't plug the keyboard/mouse in and still have it reach the OLD slot I had my video card in (which worked fine). The mini-wires which are supposed to be long enough to reach everything they need to reach on your system (hah) are a few inches too short.

Of course if I had two tiny little non-USB style keyboard and mouse "extensions" I'd be able to use that. But I doubt such a thing exists. So I'm stuck moving the video card so I can connect everything to the KVM.

It sucks really...

Although, I did discover something new tonight. I have another (I think it's OpenGL) game that is doing the same thing...but it starts up fine if I disable the second monitor. Hmm. So it's not just SL.

Ahh yeah. That makes alot more sense. While I've never seen them less then 6ft, it would be very easy to snag a couple of PS/2 extension cables. Should only set you back about 3 bucks each.

Ahhh! PS/2 that was the term I was looking for, not "PC".

Hmm, well other than adding to my already completely idiotic mess of wires here (you really don't want to know how bad it is), maybe that is a solution. They really have those huh? I'll take a look!

Eheh... bleh. I guess that won't help.

I tried moving the card back to the old slot, and I'm still having the same issue. So now I'm not sure it was moving the card that caused this, maybe it was driver related, even. (But then why is nobody else seeing this problem?) I did reinstall/update the drivers when I moved the card, obviously.

I think I'm getting a better idea of the problem though. This only appears to happen with OPENGL games.. (SL is opengl right?)

And maybe something to do with hardware acceleration as well?
So:

-Doesn't happen if I disable the second monitor and then re-enable it after SL is started
-Doesn't seem to happen with non-openGL stuff
-A "smaller" opengl app takes longer to cause a reboot than SL ("huge" app) does, I think.
-It's not just SL causing reboot scewups

Situation:
1 Nvidia AGP card, 256mb
1 Nvidia PCI card, 128mb
WinXP Home SP2
Owner is pissed

Problem:
Entire system freezes up for a few seconds upon starting up opengl apps, after which it runs normally for about a second (mouse responds, etc.), and then stops responding for a few more seconds. Repeats until system reboot. (Unless by some miracle I manage to "end task" on the opengl app--kind of hard with freezing mouse) Seems to repeat more times for the "small" opengl app I ran, but eventually it still reboots.

I have noticed something a little odd messing with my config settings, but it may be "normal" for me. Should my main card be saying it's running in "single-display mode" as opposed to multi-display performance mode? MAYBE it should be like this, since I'm not using the screwy non-VGA out port of my main card but rather a PCI card, but I'm not sure. Based on what the help screen is saying for this setting, it sounds like I should be in muti-display performance mode.

Anyone with a similar setup know which "mode" their card is running in? See screenshot attached--it even mentions OpenGL specifically!

Now, I WOULD try just changing this setting to something other than single display mode, BUT it's not giving me that option! This sucks!

Wait....nevermind... stupid Nvidia released newer drivers I guess a few days after I grabbed the ones I was using... and it works now!!! What the heck??? Ever hear of testing Nvidia???

It's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed it's fixed !