System Lock up repeatedly...HELP!

Hey all,

I have read through the forums and the knowledge base and googled until I am blue in the face....er finger tips rather... I cannot find the help or explanation I need. I have found in game freezing, but that's about it.

I have double and triple checked that my system is capable of supporting SL and it seems that I have more than what it takes. I have an Alienware Laptop with Windows XP (media Center Edition...plays DVDs like a dream!) Intel Pentium M processor 1.60 GHz and 1GB ram I have the nvidia geforce 6800 vid card with updated drivers. Does that sound adequate? Maybe someone sees something there that is a problem.

Ah yes the problem...I can log in to SL no problem. It loads quickly and takes me to my last location....but it will randomly lock up my entire system...can't move anything, can't ctrl/alt/del...can't esc....NOTHING...I have to do a hard restart (? not sure if that is the proper term for poking the power button until the machine shuts down) When I say random, I mean that one time it will be that I am walking, another time I will be merely trying to update my profile and yet another time I was just sitting there waiting for everything to load. I have cleared my cache and that didn't make any difference whatsoever. I am not even in game for a minute and it will just completely lock up.

I am out of ideas and quite frustrated as you can well imagine. I am just a basic member at this point, but I have considered upgrading to premium. However it would make no sense to do that if the program won't run.

thank you for ANY help that anyone can give!!

HUGS Licks & nibbles!

Mommazon

things to look for

heat - is the computer running hotter than normal

drivers - yea i know you said the most current, but are these the most current from the hardware manufacture (best) the most current from ailenware (works but...) or most current from microsoft (waste of time)

directX - sometimes directX gets messed up have you tried reinstalling it

security - firewalls antispy & antivirus all play havoc on most any online game / application

other applications - you mentioned DVD's but thats a drop in a bucket for all moderen computers, i have a 350mhz laptop that plays DVD's like a dream try other intense 3d applications and see if it locks up, theres some tech demos on nvidia's website that will nail your computer http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_nvidia.html

hmmm ... Pentium M-class, not very powerful ... check the CPU utilization (you can just use task manager) next time you are in SL. If it is at 100%, then even tho you have a video card the laptop is prolly designed to force a lot of rendering to the CPU (bus issues). This would lead to overheating and lockups ... or just freezing. If your issue is overheating, usually a good cooling pad/stand will take care of it.

Personally, I have a profound distrust of Media Edition. When it first came out, it was loaded with all sorts of invasive auto-updating nonsense software, don't know whether you've cleaned that out ...

And yeah, Osgeld's right, antivirus in particular messes with the texture cache. Norton and McAfee are particularly evil - I had to just disable McAfee when I had it. At the very least, make your antivirus steer clear of SL's data if you can, that would be:
C:\Documents and Settings\<your userid>\Application Data\SecondLife

WOW! thank you lots of great suggestions...

1...as far as hot...this sucker has always run scorching hot...even first day out of the box...never did get a good solution from the company on that, but the under laptop cooler seems to alleviate the overheating...
2...I did as you suggested and went through the manufacturer....I could not get updated drivers from nvidia...I DLd the update and I lasted 10 minutes! YAY...sad, but YAY it was an improvement...but then I started walking and the scenery started blinking and it was over
3...directx I am not sure I follow what I need to do there
4...I have zonealarm and norton on here and I have SL as an allowed source...not sure if that is sufficient
5...ah yes, my limited computer knowledge shines through lol...

more to come I'm sure....again thank you for your suggestions!

the Pentium M was what was available when I ordered...I guess i assumed that it would be better than the previous ones.

yeow I did open the TM while I opened up SL! SL alone was taking up to 80% of the CPU usage....and the total was wavering between 96 & 100%. Do you have a suggestion for this problem? I shut down every other application I had running and they were all so minuscule that it didn't really change anything.

I do have the targus under laptop cooler...i go through them about 1 ever 2-3 months as they don't' seem to last very long under constant use. I will say they back up their warranty though!

As for the auto updater stuff....I'm pretty clueless there...

I think I have Norton & ZoneAlarm set to leave SL alone. I will check that out for sure

I definitely appreciate your time and thoughts!

I'm on a Centrino (isn't that Pentium M!?) with 1.5GHz, 1GB RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200.

I can run Second Life + Corel Draw + watch TV on my computer (Leadtek, WinFast PVR) + run Yahoo Messenger and some other standard applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, Rainlendar, Object Dock etc.). All of this AT THE SAME TIME! Needless to say I usually don't do that, cause even though SL will run ok, textures will load extremely slow...

So, what I wanted to express...overall my system should be below yours regarding performance. And Second Life runs smoothly. It does crash or freeze sometimes, maybe once a week (maximum), but it has not lead to a system freeze for many months...I think this year it happened twice.

BUT I had the same problem you had. The system would lock up randomly while SL was running and I had to cold boot it. The issue was the graphics card. I did run the latest graphics driver, tried the latest ones from different sources (HP, ATI and some other), however the only thing that helped was downgrading the graphics driver (source: HP, the manufacturer of my laptop).

So, if nothing else helps you, try this as a last resort. Under normal circumstances it's not recommendable to downgrade your drivers!!! But you can try and upgrade anytime if it doesn't help. Just make sure you uninstall properly before you install the new drivers.

Oh and did you try to tweak the graphics card? Like decrease the hardware acceleration or stuff like that?

Good luck!!!
-tina-

Hmm so I should downgrade the graphics drivers instead of upgrading them? (at this point I'm willing to try anything!)

I will have to get help with uninstalling and reinstalling drivers...I'm too chicken lol

How do I decrease the hardware acceleration? Not sure what other tweaks I can do. (blushing...such a newb!)

Thank you Tina!

Mommazon

My first thought was "maybe its not SL, but something that runs in the background, which locks up the laptop when SL runs" Then i read that you use norton... That thingy makes PCs run considerably slower even when you don't try to run anything else but just browse files, using your explorer. And as soon as SL downloads and stores cache files, thats where things get really ugly. So my suggestion would be. uninstall norton and install an antivirus program that doesn't turn your laptop into a slug (youd be amazed by how fast your laptop could be) like NOD32 for example and reduce the running background task to an absolute minimum (don't use millions of tweaking tools that alienware PCs usually come with, for example. And the built in windows firewall is enough 99% of the time. Zonealarm isn't known to be a very stable software either.).
Good luck ^_^

-Asriazh

I have this same issue. Exactly this same issue... I'm running on different hardware too.

Athlon X2 3800+
ATi X850 XT 256 Meg
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
2 Gig Ram Corsair
600+ gb hd space
Pretty decent cooling.

I've checked everything, I've had this issue across two completely different system builds. The other system was the following build.

Athlon XP 2800+
ATi X800 Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer
2 Gig Ram house brand
400 GB HD space

I have noticed another issue that SL tends to cause with my system that was true for both PC builds. Occassionally, though not often, (maybe after 50+ played hours, and no not continuous, over maybe a week or two.) it will cause my hard drive to lock up and fail. My system will fail to see it, and my pc will hard lock. If I just reboot without powering down all the way, my HD will fail to boot back up. I have to power off completely (switch off the power supply) to bring the HD back online.

As I said, two different machines, completely different hardware (nothing recycled) same issues.

just google directX, its available tru microsoft's download website and its pretty much a 1 click install

Nothing very mindblowing, regrettably. I would get rid of Norton. I use AVG, myself. I had McAfee, and ditched that.

Please forgive me if you are already doing the following, but have you cranked down your graphics preferences? Your CPU is probably laboring because it's doing graphics. I do the following on less-than-muscular laptops (these are all in Edit/Preferences screens):

-- run full-screen, not in a window (on general tab)
-- set draw distance low (64 is the minimum in the GUI)
-- try setting graphics card memory low! Try it at 32MB - if your graphics card is running in some brain-dead mode because the rest of your PC is icky, this may help.
-- crank down the resolution sliders on trees, flexi etc.
-- turn off graphics HW acceleration -- that is, anisotripic filtering, shiny/bumpy, I forget what else, but they are just checkboxes.

Downgrading drivers has, very rarely, been known to help. There are specific versions that work ... search the forums and your manufacturer's website for references to your specific chips/card. Whenever you change drivers, be sure to uninstall the old ones first! Otherwise SL gets really uppity and claims your drivers are out of date.

Defragment?