Either "loading clothing" or reverting to a default (female) avi

Ever since the latest update, I have had nothing but problems. Sims disappearing before my eyes (in mid-teleport), avatar being invisible, and inventory mis-loading/not loading. On Sunday alone, I uninstalled and reinstalled FOUR times. Nothing has helped.

I ran the packet loss test and discovered about 30% dropping from Level3 in Atlanta right down to LL (none actually dropping at LL). I reported the results and was "advised" to disable my firewall (? - not sure how MY firewall affects Level3's service). NOTHING has changed on my system other than the version of SL.

Tonight I log in, and am once again invisible ("your clothing is still downloading" so I log-out and back on. This time, my avatar has reverted to (I am assuming the default) a woman. I tried wearing my saved skins, but cannot.

My system - Dell 9200, 2.1GHZ pentium M, ATI 9700/128M (latest drivers), 512M RAM, plenty of hard drive, XP Pro (SP2). Bellsouth DSL Xtreme. D-Link Wireless G Router.

Any suggestions, other than a 30% packet loss that LL says is caused by my firewall (hey, if I had that much influence SL would have every feature imaginable!).


Thanks to all in advance.


PeteWyrm

My primary two suggestions would be to disable ALL other software before starting SL, and to use a wired connection, not wireless. It's not that we change something when we do a new release; it's that software on a residents' computer will see SL's executable change and block network traffic. It sounds silly, but I see a lot of complaints about this, and overwhelmingly there's some other software involved.

If you do a traceroute, the first server or router that reports problems is the cause. All servers after that point usually go through the problematic machine, thus their results aren't as accurate. (If a Level3 is dropping half its data, and you have to go through that level3 to reach Linden, Linden's going to look like it's dropping half its data as well.)

[Edited to provide more information]

Thanks Lee!

The problems I am experiencing have only cropped-up since the latest release - I have been using wireless for a couple of years now. I am quite aware of firewalls blocking executables, especially changed ones - this is not the case here (newview.exe IS allowed full access through my firewall). Also, since I am having problems at work, I am safely going to say firewall has nothing to do with the problems. My avatar has been invisible on computers, wired and wireless, both at home (a wired desktop and a wireless laptop), and at work (I have offices in 2 cities, both with wired desktops). My avatar experienced its "sex change" at home on the wireless laptop.

From what I understand, my inventory is served from your computers (how else could I maintain identical inventories on 4 computers). If something changed in my inventory (my avatar's shape) I have to believe that the corruption originated on the LL Network - packet loss, or data corruption on a server. To quote the wiki "If the problem is after a "Level3.net" host, then it is a problem with the Linden Lab Network (or the Second Life servers)." - the packet loss starts with L3 in Atlanta, so according to the wiki, it is a LL issue. The packet loss may have corrupted the data on its way to my computer, or it may have been corrupted before it even left LL - either way, it needs to be addressed, because playability is way too "iffy" at this point.

Thanks for your suggestions!

I've had this happen to me, and so far this is the easiest solution.


If you find yourself transformed in the "default" girl. Right click on yourself and go to "appearance"... you see that the save button is now active, simply hit "close" and DON'T SAVE and you will return to your normal (or abnormal) self.

-BlueMan

You might try the steps at this link:

http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Cannot+see+own+avatar

To clarify, if the FIRST failed link is AFTER all of the Level3.net links, then it's likely ours. This specifically refers to pnap.net, internap.net, and lindenlab.com servers. As you describe it, the Atlanta Level3 router is having issues. Since all connections after that router likely go through it, it is likely they will show the same problems (because the Atlanta router is dropping their data).