GL Rendering Context

Every time I try to start the game, an error pops up saying it can't "Create GL rendering context". What in the world is a GL rendering Context and how do I fix the problem?

That's a video error. SL is failing when attempting to draw its screen. This can happen when SL attempts to draw its screen in a resolution that your monitor does not support. You can try to start SL in "safe" mode, at the default resolution, by adding a -safe parameter to the SL shortcut, like this "c:\program files\secondlife\secondlife.exe" -safe.

You can read about secondlife.exe parameters, here:
http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=newview

You may also edit the settings file, settings.ini, located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings\.

(substitute your Windows username for username, of course)

In settings.ini, change FULLSCREEN to FALSE and restart SL.

If these don't work, a reinstall of SL should fix the problem. A reinstall is annoying, but no data will be lost, since all critical SL data is stored on the SL server, not the client.