Game running extremely slow

Hello, I'm a fairly new user. I started three days ago and everything was running fine until recently. I started to notice long load spikes so I cleared my cache. Anyway, I restarted the game and I was ejected out of the sim I was in (apparantly it went down). So I was back as the Isabel shelter, and my video started stuttering, HORRIBLY.

However I also downloaded an update recently, so I figure that it is either the update or the clearing of the cache that's making me run slow.

I have visited the support section already, and I lowered my settings to the lowest possible for all categories and still it's running extremely slow. I'm considering reinstalling but before I do that I though I should ask for help here.

So, any idea what could be wrong?

EDIT:

I have reinstalled the software and it's still running extremely slowly. It appears that the newest update has made my graphics run extremely slowly.

Here is a screenshot of the frame console:


Here is my system info:
Processor Information:
Vendor: GenuineIntel
Speed: 3392 Mhz
2 logical processors
1 physical processors
HyperThreading: Supported
RDTSC: Supported
CMOV: Supported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE: Supported
SSE2: Supported
3DNOW: Unsupported

Network Information:
Network Speed:
IP Address: 192.168.1.XXX

Windows Version:
XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600) (32 bit)
NTFS: Supported

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce 6800
DirectX Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.10.8421
DirectX Driver Version: 6.14.10.8421
Driver Date: 9 Mar 2006
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 72 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0xc1
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Video Cards: 1
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 1024 x 768
Desktop Resolution: 1024 x 768
Primary Display Size: 13.62" x 10.24" (17.01" diag)
34.6cm x 26.0cm (43.2cm diag)
Primary Display Type: CRT
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary AGP GART Not Detected
Primary VRAM: 256 MB
Primary Monitor Vendor: Dell
Primary Monitor Model: Dell M993s
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x

Sound card:
Audio device: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [DCC0]

Memory:
RAM: 1534 Mb

Miscellaneous:
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 73327 Mb


EDIT:
I have downloaded new video drivers from nVidia. Still no change.

Not to be a nag here or anything, but does anyone know how to fix this? I'd like to jump in.

Sounds possibly something client side. Do you have any AV, Firewall etc. applications running?

No. Like I mentioned, Second Life started running slowly after I updated it.

Try one of these see if you can get any diffrence
'
Running this version now right?
ForceWare Release 80
Version: 84.21
Release Date: March 17, 2006

Set Cpu core affinity to either 1 or 2 (dualcores)
; Get some wierd AV studdering for me dunno why.

Adv.Graphics ; Enable Agp on/off
; this one kills my fps for some reason (pci-e)

I know it was mentioned, but I'll stress it. If you have any Norton, McAfee, or Zonealarm software, or anything similar, you MUST reconfigure it.
http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=TechConfigFirewall

This is the cause we run into most frequently for any problem described as "it worked fine until the update".

Fixed that for you.

This release is NOT that bad.. Jeez I feel sorry for the LL developers cos the shit you guys are giving them is way OTT... It's as if it's abnormal... IT GO'S WITH THE TERRITORY FOLKS!!!.. You CANNOT expect big updates like this to be trouble free and you CANNOT blame it on poor testing etc.

It' go's with the ongoing development of any online MMPOG and they all have instances of big patches which cause problems. It's NOT down to poor development or testing.. it's down to the impossibility of testing every permutation.

Don't get me wrong there have been areas LL can learn from BUT to call it untested.. and pre beta is the craziest thing I've seen.

Let's get off there backs and try to help them fix the problem rather than ranting and raving about problems that are on the same ( or smaller ) scale as happen with big updates in ALL games of this type.

WoW, EQ2, SWG, EnB, EvE have ALL had changes which have caused a part of the community a problem. In some cases ALL of the community ( which is far from the case in this case).

You are apparently new here.

Most MMOGs don't let showstopper bugs go unfixed for years. We've tried to help them. We've tried to give them data, we've tried to report bugs. We've even tested their "previews" for them and they quite literally throw the information away.

Have a nice day.

Erm all those are THIS MONTH... not sure I understand your point given none of these are more than about a week ago.. and given the amount of crash reports from unsupported hardware LL must be recieving bug fixing will take time.

As for new around here? Hardly, I'm just an ex analyst programmer who knows just what it's like to have to fix bugs under pressure. Problems like this which are, essentially, intermittent ( as they don't occur on ALL systems and in fact seem to be on a minority ) can be an utter PIG to fix.

Now if truly LL had had game breaking issues for years I'd agree with you but in the last 8 months where we have had problems they've done a pretty good job of fixing the biggys. Such as I seem to recall one patch leaving us with HORRENDOUS rezzing problems which where fixed in a week or so.

What we have currently is essentially a very good release which has two release related problems.

1) unsupported hardware is less supported than ever... given the unsupported hardware is hardware never intended for a gaming system this is a non-issue.
2) Crashing on some systems with compatable hardware. This IS a problem and one Linden Labs are clearely eager to fix. There problem is hampered by the intermittent nature as it seems to occur regularly for thos afflicted and thus understandably annoying HOWEVER for most people it's not an issue thus difficult to replicate = difficult to fix.

We also of course have the ongoing issues which I'm sure LL are working on but aren't so serious namely slow rezzing of textures, especially clothing, login issues (although I suspect most of these are related to firewall's or similar ) and crashing on hi rez screenshots. All issues from pre this release.

Ongoing showstopper bugs? Hardly.

Sorry, but the Antivirus program has nothing to do with it. I completely shut down my AV while I was trying to Run Second-Life and I have my firewall off at all times.

If this helps at all, my FPS drops only while connected to the network - whenever I am disconnected for any reason my FPS returns to 75 fps.

Thanks for proving my point.

The customer who has ceased to be one often stops complaining. Some SL players had so much invested that they still hang around the forums hoping that the game that they've not been able to play for years might actually be fixed.

Here's some perspective: the list of requests that show no sign of any work at all, a sustained wail from some of the longest playing builders about the continuingly worsening building problems, and no, I'm not going to dig further for you, but read around a bit. This is far from new, it is far from a vocal minority, it is far from a general release quality product.

Things that you've also missed are the bug reports get bulk closed with "we made a new release if this is still broken, resubmit it", "we let our developers work on the thing they find most fun", and other such professionalisms as those.

Wait, I mean, everything is hunky-dory and there are no scalability problems. Nevermind.

Addendum: Oops, I spoke too soon, how's this for stable code? Or this? I mean this one. It's so hard to keep up.

Jeff: Thanks for replying. It looks like there's two bits of information that are provoking my suspicion:

1) You do, in fact, have firewall software installed. Which one do you have? We do run into people who swear it's disabled, but their problems clear up quite a bit when the program is actually taken out of memory. I know McAfee in particular notes on its "Disable" button: "Acts as if it were disabled." Believe me, there's a big difference between that and "no longer interferes with other programs." Again, I wouldn't bring it up if it didn't actually work for a lot of people.

2) The note that the framerate is directly tied to network does seem to hint, again, that one of your security programs is scouring our network data so badly that it's hurting our performance.

The original post seems to show there's a lot of time spend in occlusion culling (unless I'm colorblind again). Have you tried turning occlusion culling off in the Debug menu? That's at least one thing we can troubleshoot.

Thank you, It was indeed the firewall software. I was considering uninstalling it (if it's even possible to sever it from the package) but for the time being I followed the instructions for re-adding Second-Life to the permissions list. This indeed worked and I've seen a return of my FPS. Thanks for the support.