Crashes randomly every 1-30 minutes.

SL crashes every 1-30 minutes, with the majority coming around the 3-5 minute mark. I can find no specific trigger event. Sometimes I crash while I'm flying, sometimes walking, sometimes standing around, and sometimes while I'm camping. As you might imagine, it is mind-blowingly frustrating. My activities in SL are severely curtailed by the threat of imminent crash hanging over my every step. When it does crash, the system freezes in place and stops responding, with no error message-- just a hard lock-up of the system. The only way to recover at this point is to physically reset the machine.

I've tested for bad RAM, and have encountered crashes with either memory stick (or both) installed, and software RAM testers report no errors with my memory.

My drivers are current.

Win XP Pro SP2
Chaintech MPM800-3 motherboard
Intel 1.8 GHz P4
1 GB RAM (2 pcs 512MB PC3200 DDRAM)
40 GB WD hard drive
ATI Radeon 9600 video

Help!

Have you got the latest drivers for your hardware? Are you sure your machine isn't overheating? What are you preferences set to in world, and what happens if you turn them down (Ctrl + P in world).

Thank you for your reply.

As I'd said in the TP, my drivers are current.

I believe that my machine is adequately cooled. The ambient temperature in the case is usually around 32C, and under heavy load my CPU runs at about 40C. The ATI 9600 is passively cooled, but it has a large heatsink. (stock configuration) I may add a fan to that to see if it helps, but I'm not optimistic. I have spares laying around.

Changing the settings appears to have no effect on crash frequency. The crashes come randomly, even on stationary screens. (While I'm standing idle and facing a wall, for example.)

My settings are:

Max Bandwidth:1000
Disk Cache Size: 1000MB
Shiny Objects: on
Avatar Rendering: Bump map & cloth
Terrain detail: some
Resolution: 1024x768 fullscreen

Texture cache size: large
Object detail: max
Tree detail: min
Avatar detail: max
Avatar vertex program: yes

Draw distance: 96
Fog Distance: 2.0
Drop Draw Distance: 0
Bumpiness draw distance: 8
Max particle count: 4096
Outfit composite limit: 4

Streaming audio and video: off

Tried the Omega drivers?

uninstall run this after to sure you got it all > www.driverheaven.net/cleaner
restart pc
download/install drivers on this page > http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Just to let you know its not just you, this happens to me too. Although its not consistently 1-30 mins. I get a hard complete system lockup randomly, can be 10 mins can be 2 hours.

This is also true in my case, but it's extremely rare for SL to stay up for 2 hours for me.

I sent in 12 crash reports yesterday before I got tired of it and found something else to do. :/

To Nova,

It's happened to me on a couple occasions. Though no real explanations. Some have mentioned that depending on where you are at. . that area may simply have too much to deal with. . .therefore it starts to randomly boot people off to keep itself from overloading. . .unfortunately even then it doesn't help. Not much of a comp techie to help either. . .Sorry!!!. . You may want to cut down on the details i.e. the bump mapping and decrease details. . It may help.

Nova, based on your description and your system specs, your problem sounds like mine: what I found out was that the 200 watt power supply unit I have in my computer isn't powerfull enough to stable-ly run my hefty new video card (GForce 5700LE). If you know enough about the sinside of your computer to know what your motherboard brand is, can I assume that you know how to peek in and check the watage of your PSU? Just say so if not.

Thanks for your suggestion.

It's a 350 watt PSU. I don't run silly case lights or anything, so it ought to suffice.

I just turned in my first crash report for today, but the day is still young. . .

In four attempts to log in to SL and do things today, I spent a total of two minutes in-game. I've sent my four crash reports. I'm going to go do something else for a while.

Same thing happening to me, but more like about 1-2 minutes uptime. I'm on a Dell Latitude with factory everything so I don't think I've got power or hardware problems.

350 is the bare minimum requirement for my video card, and if it's a cheeper power supplies, even if it's actualy running at 350 watts, it may not have enough current on the 12 volt rail that the GPU would rely on (modern power supplies deliver three strenghts of direct current, 3.5v, 5v and 12v, which are used by different parts of the computer.) You may still want to look into something a little beefier.

Your knowledge of power supplies is indisputable. However, if my PSU were inadequate to this task, I believe it would also fail when running other taxing apps such as Half-Life 2 or Phantasy Star Online (which is a real resource pig). However, these apps run quite steadily on my PC.

I've checked my PSU under load, and the 12V rail holds up reasonably well. I don't think the fault lies here.

PROBABLY SOLVED!

I've done some research on the Chaintech MPM800-3 motherboard's AC97 audio support, and it turns out that the audio driver is not Windows XP SP2 compliant, and no such compliant driver exists. The incompatible driver is hanging my system.

I will disable onboard audio and use one of my precious PCI slots* for a sound card.




(* I have three total. It's a microATX mobo. I'm a sucker for small things.)

You might also uninstall/reinstall... there's a few crash log references to a bad animation file.

Hey, someone at LL really does read the crash logs! Awesome. I'll install/reinstall right away. Thanks.

Edit: Okay, I've reinstalled. The most recent crash issue-- crash to desktop upon interacting with scripted objects-- seems to be fixed. Some file must have gotten corrupted in all the prior hard system lockups. I have not yet tested SL long enough to see if the original issue is fixed. (*crosses fingers*)

Mine is also crashing big time...and I have a Radeon 9250
Nothing I do seems to fix it

This is absolutely driving me mad....Constantly crashing...I can't do a darn thing...

And the stupid login scream says I need to update my drivers...but they are the latest they have....it doesn't make sense why this is happening.....

Might be onto something with that ac97 driver. I'm using the AC97 onboard audio on my winXP SP2 installed machine and am getting crashes. Although they seem to be random coming at various lengths of time inworld. when I get a chance I'll put my SB card in and see if things change.

Okay, I've disabled the system's motherboard audio in the BIOS, removed all the onboard audio drivers, installed a Sound Blaster card and its drivers, told Windows to use the Sound Blaster for all audio, plugged speakers into the Sound Blaster card, deleted and re-installed SL.

Let's see if this fixes the crashes. *fingers crossed*

Of course, I run ATI video, so I'm probably screwed anyway. :|

The crashes are still with me.

My new sound system sure sounds nice though. *sigh*

The 3 Computers I have installed and run SL on have had absolutely no crash problems whatsoever... so maybe people could list what hardware NEVER crashes SL instead of listing what does?

Might be best to get a new system if the problem can never be solved with your original one.

I am having a very similar issue, with very similar system specs.

My vid card is Radeon 9800, and my mother board is AMD.

My power supply is a 450 watt.

I am using the latest Omega drivers.

Two things some of the responders don't seem to get, which leads me to believe it is not our systems are-

1) This happens with no other 3D intensive video game

2) This never happened with SL before the latest patch

I have sent so many logs my eyes are bleding.

In my case this is definitely a graphics issue because not only does the system freeze up, but when I do a reset the display sometiems comes back hoarked.

Anything that can be pulled from my logs would be appreciated.

-Peace

I have an ATI 9600 pro atlantis and the thing was a cheap piece of junk. I had insane problems with the card dying a horrible death on 3d applications until I underclocked the ram to 250mhz.

The same sort of thing might work in your situation, get ATItool and drop your clocks down half way, your game will be slower but play around to see if it's still crashing, and if it doesn't then slowly step the sliders back up again until you find a good crash-free zone.

Of course, SL itself has gone a bit crash prone on me recently in ways that have nothing to do with the video card (if it's a video card death, everything dies. if it's a sl death, sl dies), especially when I zoom in on some people's attachments or go really high up.

I am just so happy to hear I'm not the only one with issues.

I have been crashing ALOT lately - as a matte rof fact yes since last update I think.

My system specs should also be good enough.

We've reinstalled TCP/IP, viruscanner, ran loads of anti-spyware programs, reinstalled firewall, tried another firewall, messed with settings - and I have to add that my husband is IT proff. so he knows what he's doing!

Nothing solves this... thing.

I sure hope this has got to do with SL and not just my comp. Cause then I'm busted. There will be no fix other than reinstalling the whole dam thing - and I do NOT want that right now. Bleh...

Keep us updated Lindens!! Pleaaase!