Tech support in the toilet.

WTF is the point in having a bug report system, crash reports, or a technical issues thread, when LL simply ignores it. Posted in Hotline to the Lindens......no reply ( yet others were replied to around the same time)

For nearly 2 weeks, my Avatar is seriously bugged.

I CANNOT open my texture folder without crashing. Its not my machine, its my AV. How do I know this?, because I have tried on 3 other computers. They all crash when I open the texture folder. My alt avs work PERFECTLY.


What does LL do about this?.... SWEET F**CK ALL. It's really pissing me off. I can't search, cant use TEXTURE in create mode. I can't access my texture folder.

I does not take a rocket scientist to know it's at the Linden end and there is nothing volunteers can do to fix it. There is nothing wrong with my machine either, because I can replicate the crash on any machine.

I have a train station 3/4 built, which needs texturing. Guess I miss that too

That's a shame about the train station. I hope they get this fixed for you soon.

coco

in hopes that attention is paid and a solution is acheived.

especially in time for you to enter the competition in time. maybe they could let you have an extra day?

have you tried calling tech-support yet? if not, doing so may expedite LL's response time.

Good luck!

Tried a few times. I get "Not available in your service area". There is not much point in having live help, or a forum thread...if all we need to do is phone. Seems LL has dumped tech support onto it's subscribers, whom may be described as cheap labor. Kudos to the many volunteers, who do they best they can, but unsupported by LL is reprehensible.

It sounds like you have a corrupted texture somewhere in your texture folder. Does it do this when you open the library textures as well as the inventory textures?

As far as calling tech support,the only reason I can see for getting that message is because you are outside the US. Have you tried the new international support number?

Yes, I suspect corrupt texture. There is no means for which I can access the texture folder without crashing to desktop.

Open Texture folder.....crash.
While in edit mode, selecting new color is ok, but select new texture.......crash.
Inventory Search..........crash when texture folder is scanned.

My alternates work fine. I tried this with my av on 2 other machines, completely different hardware....still crash.

Oh, and my library textures work fine, I can only apply to one side however.

I can accept copies of textures in folders and work with them, but cannot apply them to all sides.

Most of my usable textures are held hostage in the texture folder, and getting an alt to apply textures is not only a pain in the ass, because copy issues etc.

At 10$L per upload, I'm in no mood to upload all my textures again, simply because LL refuses to do anything.

Hi Weedy, some things to try:


1. Uninstall and completely erase all traces of SL from your computer (go to Application Data) and take out the cache.

2. Re-install

3. Upgrade your power supply.

4. Amazingly, I found if I just stopped using my laser mouse my computer stopped crashing.

5. Consider patching your copy of your OS .. for example, move WinXP to SP2

6. Scan for viruses / adware / spyware. Adaware is great for that.

7. Post in the technical issues forum! Lots of smart people there very willing to help

8. A brief question to the live help channel? More smart people willing to help!

9. IM me if you're still having problems. I'll see if I can brainstorm a few more suggestions.


I Hope you fix your problem. If you do, please let us know how you did it so the community can pass it on.

Warm Regards,

Iron.

Thanks Iron, but I did all that.

No matter what machine I logon with, the problem remains. My alts work fine.

The problem is not my machine, it's my avatar. It's an LL issue. And the whole point of my post here, is not to seek advice, but to get LL to look at it from their end. It's a problem which I cannot fix, irregardless of everyone's good advice.

Does LL staff even read this thread, or crash logs?

This sounds *really* annoying, Weedy.

From Robin's reply to your Hotline post, and from other Linden discussions on this and related subjects, it seems there's a bit of a gap between bug reporting and obtaining support for problems caused by bugs.

And that really sucks.

My understanding was that LL was going to work toward mending that gap in the future, but I guess that's not happened yet. It is a little irritating that there's an in-world tool with which you can help Linden Lab fix their product, but no in-world tool to get Linden help in fixing your own account. At the very least there needs to be a checkbox on the bug report window that forwards your message to support, as well as to QA.

I think priorities have ended up a little inverted, here. If anything, there should be an in-world support tool and an E-Mail address to which users send bug reports, not the other way around.

It's really annoying Enabran. When this problem began, I spoke to Live Help, then filed a bug report with the in-world tools. I almost immediately got a form letter confirming the report. I have crashed several times and allowed the crash report to be emailed. Now two weeks later, I get a response from Robin that I didn't file a support request. Nowhere in world did I see any indication of that.

The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.

If tech support asks me on Monday "Have you filed a bug report?" Im gonna friggen lose it.

Ok, I agree you likely have a LL side issue. Now is the time to get all your ducks in a row. Have you attempted to contact LL in the manor in which they recommend? (from your post it seems so) Create a list of contacts you have attempted with times and dates. For instance " sent bug report #7377464 on Agust 12, 2005 at 5:30 PST, Called support at this number (555) 555-5555 at 12 August, 2005 9pm PST, contacted live helper in game Lotsa Ruck on 13 August at 5pm PST and tried international Support phone number (666)666-6666 at 2 pm PST 14 August" etc.

Describe exactly what your problem is and all the steps you have tried to correct it. Do not get angry or sarcastic, just the facts and the responses you have gotten. Names, times etc. The idea here is to show you have lived up to your side, contacted what and who you need to contact and that you have not recieved any help. Keep in mind, you run the risk of looking like an idiot if haven't done exactly as LL asks to report problems. check the wiki and the web site.

Now, once you have this all typed out very much in the manor of a legal document, it is time to become the squeeky wheel. Go ingame and send a copy to every Linden that comes up in a search. Send a copy to tech support, Phillip, Andrew, Victor, Robin etc via email. Post it on the Hotline every day until you get a response.

Your problem is likely going to involve messing with the asset server in ways the techs would rather take a bullet than mess with right now or, being human, they may simply have missed you.

I think it needs to be made absolutely, explicitly clear that a bug report or a crash report WILL NOT GET YOU ANY HELP FROM SUPPORT. I don't think that it's unreasonable for the end user to assume otherwise, and I'm certain this misunderstanding leads to a lot of unnecessary friction between support and the customer.

The point of this thread, thank you. If a bug report, and crash logs do not relate to anything, then what's the purpose?

If the person reading the bug or crash report is unable to elevate obvious issues for support, then I can't see it's purpose other than to gather lower priority data.

We are reasonably computer savvy around our LAN, and we all agree, that after consulting Live Help, filing a concise bug report (explaining issue and replication) and posting to the Technical Issues forum might merit a response. Sorry LL, we were wrong.

This might be a longshot, but have you tried some of the command line parameters when running the client? -safe, -noinvlib & -local all sound like they might be promising. I'm sorry it's been such a pain and I know you're frustrated. Hope you can either find a remedy or garner some Linden attention soon.

-noinvlib I considered, but that wont fix anything, because I can load my av, teleport, fly, get email and most of everything. Can't build though, because I cant use textures. Any function that points to the texture folder causes a crash. Even search causes it to crash, when it eventually gets to browsing the texture folder. I can type a 1 in the field, and it contently scans the upper directories, fetching some 200 objects before the Texture folder search, then I get teleported back to my first life.

Hey Weedy,

Are you in the U.S.? I didn't see a reply above. Try:

US/Canada: 1-800-860-6990
United Kingdom: (00) 800 722 00010
Australia: (0011) 800 722 00010

US/Concierge: 1-800-977-6731

Regards,

-Flip

In my year in SL, I'm pretty lucky in that I've had no real problems with my account, my land, my billing, anything. However, with everything I've read in the forum, the moment I do have an issue, I'm picking up the phone. It just doesn't seem worthwhile to do it any other way. Flipper makes a good suggestion.

Hi Weedy, hope you have this fixed before you read this.

Maybe you could move all the textures out of your texture folder, every single one of them, and put a few back in, and see if that works.

No, the hands do know what they are doing. The response in Hotline was a disingenous brush off as was the response to my follow up. Put more bluntly, they're simply lying to their customers, supporting diddly, and wondering why they are having customer retention problems.

It's clear that they have some agenda which is other than caring about their "world". The system is coughing up blood and rumor has it that they are stuck with the all to common start-up syndrome; that is, there is no one at LL who knows how to fix your corrupted inventory because they were too busy making SL1 to do it well and document it. Also, their primary developers are working on SL2, so in a very real sense SL1 is discontinued and they are merely milking it for whatever revenue they can while reducing their investment in it to zero. At least Microsoft has the courtesy to tell their customers when they have given up on a particular product.

To be fair, they are in a position that is dreadfully difficult to work their way out of. They know that the system is failing badly but have to keep the revenue flowing until their next big thing comes out. What I think that they are failing to realize or act on is that their customers are on the whole pretty damn smart and don't take to kindly to being so condescended to. My big fear is that with their push into the foreign markets they'll buy themselves some short term revenue at the cost of poisoning their reputation even more broadly.

They do have the distinct advantage of having no credible competitors at present, and are likely hoping that will hold until the system they *are* working on is ready for release. That you and a prominent forum figure who rents an island yet cannot even play are sticking around is testament to just how fanatical their customers are. Were you not so heavily invested you wouldn't even bother posting, you'd just walk away. That LL is willing to squander that with smoke, mirrors, and handwaving is a farking shame.

Nevertheless, their approach of "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" seems clear. And these forums are beginning to look more of a sorrow support group than that of a growing community. Look over the Hotline to Linden responses over the last month or so and see how many reponses are merely diversions. Ignore the man behind the curtain! And Toto too.

Please don't ask me why I continue to work for them as front line support for no recompense. Sometimes people do irrational things based on past emotional investment.

Sigh.

Malachi, I think you're being needlessly uncharitable.

I think in this case, we're simply looking at bad procedure. I think it genuinely did not occur to Support (or to QA) that QA would often receive missives that would also require follow up from support. So, a system was not put in place that allowed QA to flag certain bugs as requiring action from Support, as well as requiring investigation from an analytical point of view.

I think such information sharing between QA and Support needs to start happening on a customer-by-customer basis. This can be achieved, as I mentioned earlier, with something as simple as a checkbox that says "I need assistance with this problem. Please forward this information to Support."

As I said, to Linden Lab's credit (not very much credit, it moves Support from seeming deceptive to seeming incompetent -- and I don't think they're either one) I think we're looking at bad procedure. It has been stated in the past that bug reports don't ever get touched by support. Lindens have also said that this needed to change. I guess it hasn't.

So be pissed that they haven't followed up on that improvement, not that they're being intentionally crappy (I don't think they are).

Suezanne,

I am sure she would also welcome any suggestions as to how she might accomplish that.

That'd be great, however QA has been understaffed for over a year.

So understaffed they can't forward a support ticket? Or E-Mail the Dev team and say "Hey, give us a checkbox that optionally forwards bugs to support?"

As I understand it, yes.