Game Freezing/Computer Locking

This is a very odd occurance which just started yesterday. I've been playing the game for over a month now, havent changed any hardware or software. Now as of last night, SL will randomly freeze, no mouse movement, sound will keep playing but eventually stop, and then my entire computer locks up, causing me to turn off the power and reboot.

My computer sits next to my desk, has multiple fans to keep it from overheating. I will say that when SL does lock up, i hear a 'clicking' sound coming from my computer before it completely locks up. Its been sometime but I've heard this noise way in the past and wonder if its my video card?

AMDXP 2400+
ATI Radeon 9600 256mb
Maxtor 250gig HD
1.5 gig of ram

Getting ready to run 3D mark to test my video card to see if it locks up then. It may be just my video card is starting to die but it happened so unexpectedly. If anyone has any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.

Does your disk light flicker in time with the clicking? A near-to-death disk drive can sometimes freeze up the whole machine.

No, the light doesnt flicker or anything. I just ran 3D Mark and nothing wrong happened there. It better not be my HD because its a brand new one i bought less then 4 months ago because my previous one died on me. I'm starting to wonder if its SL itself? I have another MMORPG I play, EQ2, and i'm gonna jump on that and move around with it and see if it happens. If nothing does happen then i'm tempted to uninstall SL and reinstall to see if that helps.

I am having the same troubles, mine started Saturday. I am running an AMD 3000, 1G ram, and a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro with 128 onboard.

I've tried:
Cleaning the drivers using Driver Cleaner 3, and reinstalling.
Drivers I tried thus far:
Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.87 (those are the ones I was using when I started SL, because I needed them for EQ2)
ATI Radeon 5.12
and the ones from Windows Update (think they said they were version 6.something).

I've tried reinstalling SL as well, still locks up, sometimes a complete system lock up, sometimes the video in game freezes but I have sound. Each time I have to do a hard shut down, and most of the times I am able to send a crash report. I can't try logging onto EQ2 cause my subscription has run out.

Update: Did a system restore to last Monday (19 Dec), but when I tried to run SL I got a "Crash Report", sent it but the program did not run. Tried again, same thing. Undid system restore. *sighs deeply* I called tech, left my name and number, waiting for them to call me back. Is there a crash log on my hd that I can view?

My computer is freezing up TOTALLY since last week, and I am trying EVERYTHING including massive cleaning of my shoe inventory to help LOL

I have a NVidia 5200 video card, have been playing SL 2.5 years and never had a problem before...

Santa Linden, do your stuff

Well, i played EQ2 with absolutely no problem whatsoever. I got on SL earlier and it ran fine for like 2hrs. Went out and i just got on now. I was zoomin in on some people and i heard the clicking noise and the game froze..but i didnt do anything and 5 seconds later it came back..i moved the view again and it clicked and froze, i let it be and it came back...i reset my camera view and moved around and it didnt click/freeze...this is just weird. It has to be something with the game itself because i've had HD failures before and its not centered around one program. Usually then my whole computer locks no matter if i'm gaming or looking on the web or just looking at files. Its just a pain. I've also noticed that lately rezzin takes FOREVER!

Hmmm.....i just wish i knew what was up.

Well I tried another system restore, then uninstalled and reinstalled SL. Still locking up, monitor is resetting, I hear a click from the monitor, monitor goes black for a few seconds and comes back, then blacks out OR freezes up. Sometimes ctrl+q works sometimes it doesn't) I am begining to wonder if maybe my card is putzing out.

If you have switched ripple water on it may be boiling your PC..

First thing to try is turning every option off (or down to a minimum) and turning them back on one by one..

Overheating may be causing lock-ups or automatic restarts.. If your computer is close to a wall or in a confined space, try moving it out into the open if you can and seeing if it helps.

If its only just locked up or restarted leave it off for a little while before attempting to play again with it out in the open..

Its been about a month since this has started. I am thinking that it maybe SL itself. Exact same problems as you.

I find it very likely its SL itself. I ran SL fine at full settings before 1.7 came trotting along. Now even with massivly reduced graphical options I get graphical glitches, Random crashes and forget trying to alt-tab.

I played SL a year or so ago and decided to re-join the game. I just installed the game today and have exactly the same problems everyone has discussed. I play EQ2 and other games and keep my hardware up to date and my system very clean. There is no doubt the problem is from SL, and I'm certainly not going to reconfigure/troubleshoot my system when it is obviously a SL issue. I hope they get this fixed.... would be a shame to cut my return to the game short due to unacceptable glitches.

In your situation I might try opening the case to see that all the fans are working properly. I had one video card that had a grill over the fan, the grill got clogged with dust, the computer did all sorts of weird stuff for a while, then the video card burnt out completely. In another machine the computer would lock up while playing SL but not otherwise. The power supply fan was in the process of dieing and not running at full speed. Other programs didn't strain the cooling system enough to make a noticeable difference but SL made it get too hot and caused the computer to lock up.

Having the same problem here. Ill log in and about 5 minutes go by then computer locks up. Seems to be when Im using any of the UI menus. I have played SL for awhile and this just started happening in the past week.