Lagging with completely freezing

Hello friends at SL,

I’m really really new to this world (SL), a bloody beginner, and just managed to connect to SL yesterday. But at the moment the SL-client connected to SL – after the bar went all the way to the right – I got a really bad lag-problem. Though I’m not sure if this is called a “lag” since my whole PC freezes for about one to four seconds then the motion on the screen continues a few seconds then the PC freezes again and so on. The thing is: It freezes! I neither can’t move the mouse, type keyboard shortcuts nor even switch to another task (SL is running in full screen mode). I’m not sure if this is a normal lag behavior since my definition of lag is that the in game motion stops but not halts the whole system. I also experienced four or five crashes of the SL-client in about 30 minutes (error-message and after that program close).

A few technical facts:

1. CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1300
   
2. Board-chipset: VIA KT-133A
   
3. RAM: 512 Mbyte SD-RAM
   
4. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 6200 128 MByte
   
5. Sound: no sound
   
6. System: Windows XP SP 1
   
7. Internet: ADSL 2 Mbit (german T-DSL 2000)
   

This machine works for about four years with – ok, mainly – no problem.

I’ve tried the following things in ‘Preferences’ with exactly no result:

1. reduce texture size
   
2. reduce view depth
   
3. switch off sound (no sound card installed tough)
   
4. increase/decrease cache size
   
5. increase/decrease connection speed
   

At this point I found out that my HD is constantly doing something. It sounds like it is writing and reading like hell. A performance monitor under Windows XP does not show any over the border usage of memory or swap space. I then tried the following:

1. swap space to another HD
   
2. exchange of the chipset driver (now the latest VIA 4in1 v4.43)
   
3. completely switched off the firewall
   

You guess it: No change of the problem.

Does anyone have ANY idea what this could be? The constantly working HD is a bit strange for me. And the crashes point to a problem with the RAM. Does anyone experience the same problems? Or is this lag- and HD-behavior – completely freeze for some seconds and constantly working – a normal one on SL?

Ideas are really appreciated!

Regards,
Inflater Izutsu

SL want ram alot of it, 512 will make it a grindfest alright, 1024-2048 is highly recommended, could be one of the reasons you get crashing , it caches alot streamed down to you then rendered.

Might want to add this to a SL shortcuit -nosound , so it doesnt look for one.

create a SL shortcuit and look for this in properties

target
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe"

just add -nosound at end.

"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -nosound


SL puts everything it caches on a wierd location -.-;
C:\Documents and Settings\**username**\Application Data\SecondLife\cache


The crashing started after you left the welcome islands?, they arent very detailed once you get on where everyone else is you can get a overload and crash client i guess lots of prims attched to people loot..sss, if you could run away to a place where there isnt so many people and see if you stop crashing it object mesh detail to high that could flip out client, if it still does it then i dont know n.n

Hey Thili,

thank you very much for your fast answer and the hints.

I’ve tested them and found out the following:

1. ‘-nosound’ option
I’ve added this to the shortcut which I use to start SL. No effect.

2. SL cache on system drive
This might be no problem on my system since my system drive has about 4 Gbyte of free space. I also transfered the swap partition of Windows XP to a completely different drive on a completely different IDE-chanel. No effect.

3. RAM usage
Today I added another 512 Mbyte of RAM which sums up to a total of 1 Gbyte RAM now in my system. No effect.

I found out that while standing on a shore and watching onto the sea so SL has not much to render, the ‘freezing lags’ are far lesser than before (I tried it on Borrowdale on one of the land fingers). On places with many objects/textures the lags instantly rises. I also found out that the system runs for about 5 minutes, then beeps on or two times, and after these five minutes it crashes. This sounds much like Al Peckham’s behavior in his

1. keeps crashing =(

thread. Though he does not report some lags.

My idea is that it is more a problem of a lag itself. Maybe the SL-server lags, maybe the connection from the US to Germany, where I live, lags or maybe my internet connection lags. In two weeks I will switch to another IS-provider, so maybe this could solve the last problem. But my question is:

It is normal that the whole PC freezes in SL when a lag occures?

‘Freezing’ means: no mouse action, no task switching possible, the PC is like frozen for some seconds. Does anyone have this behavior?

Regards,
Inflater Izutsu

Lag has been pretty bad lately. The funny thing is that there are people with better connections than mine, and nearer to California, that are lagging much much more than I do. I am about as far from LL as you are but in the other direction.

One more tip is to maximize the bandwidth allocated to SL (network preferences).

What I do is brace for extreme slowdown when there are a lot of avatars in the area. I keep to low population sims if I can. When I'm in crowded areas like the Ahern Welcome Area, I limit my movement.

Next thing is when you notice the avatar moving funny (moving straight when you want to turn, or sinking into the ground) let go of all the controls and wait until his position stabilizes. It will "rubber band" to the correct position after a while.

to clarify my post Inflater, i do experience some lagging aswell, but this wasn't the main issue bothering me as i expected it with only a 1mb broadband internet connection. I'm upgrading to 16mb soon though so this should stop lagging but i doubt it will help the game crashing. I don't have a clue what to do!

Just for information, I’m running the

1. SL-client version 1.11.3.1
   

that should be the freshest one as of this posting.

There are several notes on the web that indicates that something’s bad going on inside SL and not inside the computers of the users. Have a look at this article from the „Second Life Insider“ (third paragraph):

1. Second Life Insider: Update 1.11.2 issues

The bad thing is for me, that before version 1.11.0 everything seemed to be fine. Here is the corresponding post at this forum:

1. SL Forums: I know not all regions are busy

Everything points to a problem with the SL software and/or the servers and not with the configuration of the client PCs. I hope there will soon be version 1.11.4.0 or better 1.12.0.0 since so far I can’t use SL at all.

@Aodhan:
Thank you for your hints. Bandwith is at maximum in my preferences. And just to say it clear: I’m not experiencing slowdowns but repeating ‘freezings’ for about five to ten seconds. During the ‘freeze’ I can’t do anything, even task switching to the desktop is not able. After the ‘freeze’ the client continues for a few seconds and then everything repeats. Sometimes the problem vanishes after some freezes. But more often my PC beeps one or two times and then SL crashes. The ‘freeze’ is more often in places with much buildings and/or textures. Sometimes it get’s so bad that after connecting I can’t do anything but look at the picture – that sometimes vanishes or get’s clear of textures – and wait, wait, wait ... and then after five minutes the client crashes.

Empty places do lesser freeze. The best thing is to directly looking onto a wall ... but that’s not what I call a ‘game experience’.

@Al:
Thanks again for posting. The first thing I do after starting SL is to put up the “status screen” into view. It tells me that I am mainly into the range of about 40 kbit/s which is far from my maximum of 2000 kbit/s which should give my ADSL connection. So it should not be a problem of the bandwidth.

@everyone:
Could someone please give me hint if the ‘freezing’ I experience is normal lag-behavior on SL? That would be a great help because I do not know this behavior on other games.

Regards,
The Inflater

Inflater,

I don't know what default prefs the SL client comes with, but I'd recommend turning off "Ripple water" and setting "Local lighting" to "Sun & moon only" (Preferences -> Graphic detail) in case your graphic card can't handle it - this could help with the "freezing" lag.