Must use Windows Safe Mode now after using SL 1.6 Preview

I'm in the process of rebuilding my primary hard drive after installing the 1.6 Preview.

Here's the story, and if any Linden can tell me why this happened I'd really appreciate it.

I installed the preview last night and used it, but didn't view any streaming videos cause the word was so packed I couldn't move, lag was awful, couldn't walk, couldn't do much of anything. So I logged off.

I get up this morning and log in to find the preview grid much less crowded and start to explore, very much liking what I'm seeing.

I find a video object that someone has set up and begin to watch the video. WOW. Very cool. I'm playing with view rotation as I watch the video and zoom ALL the way out... BAM! Computer freezes, and I get the first Blue Screen of Death I've seen on my computer in WELL over a year.

Nothing else was running in the background, having turned on my computer for the sole purpose of checking out the preview grid.

So I do a reboot only my computer won't reboot. Windows hangs at the loading screen indefinately. The only way I can get into Windows is in safe mode.

Let's recap: 1) computer running fine, 2) install 1.6 preview, 3) view video and pan camera out, 4) BSOD crash, computer dead.

Ouch, looks like I got off easy ! /142/fc/37632/1.html

Sorry to hear this Aaron hope you get it sorted soon.

Sounds like a video driver problem? Were you able to reboot normally after you restarted from safe mode?

--Jack Lambert

either that or overheating.... playing a vidio and transforming the prim in 3d as you do is about the single most hardware intensive process you can do on a modern computer.. it will hugely stress the video, cpu, memory, northbridge etc all at once... any thermal or electrical deficiencies that could have lain dormant in a system for months will prolly all come out at once..

make sure the fans are clean and dust free (and still spinning), make sure there are open areas near hot components in the case for good airflow, and make sure if you can that the system voltages are within spec, even when the system is heavily loaded (a program like motherboard monitor, can do wonders here)

Did you spill any water inside the case? Or beer? That's what normally crashes my system. Or Gnomes. But I digress.

--Jack Lambert

Total disaster. That's what 1.6 has been for me.

I got out an old hard drive and installed a new copy of Windows, then installed and ran the preview again... same thing happened, and only when zooming all the way out while viewing a streaming video.

How badly coded can this thing be to complete destroy an installation of Windows?

My video card is not overheating, nor is anything in my computer. I've spent the last four hours trying to get my computer back to working order again and the only change on it was the 1.6 preview.

I don't even have crash logs to send to the Lindens because it's frying my computer and resulting in a BSOD.

You sure it wasn't beer? It's usually beer.

Sorry to pick on you, I know how much that sucks actually Seriously, I can't think of a reason why installing SL itself would destroy the Windows environment. I took a quick look at the files that are installed along with the preview of SL and I didn't see anything earth shattering. A few DLLs (in the SL Preview directory), and the executable itself. I looked in the registry and the only thing added was a the home location and the Version info, too. None of the DLLs included are registered, so.... Seems awfully suspicious.

--Jack Lambert

Aaron this kind of problem is generally specifically a hardware, or driver fault.. there is nothing that *CAN* be done 'unwittingly' to cause that level of destruction.

Have you downloaded any drivers recently? have you actually checked the temperatures of the components via touch or software when running SL (or say an 'assumably non destructive' system bench like 3dmark)

(yes its safe to touch a computers inner bits while yer running if ya know what yer doin, jus always have one hand touching the case, use the other to gently tap heatsinks with a finger. If a heatsink is hot enough to be almost painful to the touch chances are somethin is really wrong.. even on a high performance system, nothing should get above about 60 c (or about 135f)..

have you tried stress testing your memory with a large number crunch program (like the prime95 torture test)

what are the specific components in your system? cpu/mobo/vid/ram

have you looked at the voltage readouts yet under heavy? system load (the bios is no a very good indicator since when you are in there the system is under no load)

It sounds the most like the problem is going to be found either in the video card and/or its drivers... or the ram/northbridge of the motherboard either havin a bad bit somewhere, or not getting sufficient voltage

(i have seen all of those things cause systems to bsod and be un-repairable on reboot)

its not installing it thats causing the problem, its an unrecoverable system fault that happens while running (aka bsod).

generally the kind of system fault where the actual system is damaged, aka cannot reboot successfully, deals with ram (or the mis-allocation therof by a low level device driver like video/sound/network driver stacks) This can frequently happen with over-heating.. or under-powering... especially when pushing a system as hard as SL+quicktime in 3d does

Do you have Local Lighting off? It crashes the 1.6 preview if it is on.

Although I really like the idea of the new streaming video/media feature, i pretty much use a standard laptop system (HP Pavilion zv5000) when i go on SL. Experiences like the one expressed in this thread scare me a little, as I'm worried that prolifigate use of this feature throughout the world will stress my system to point where I may not be able to function in this "brave new world".

Please, please Linden Lab, make the viewing of video optional and capable of being triggered on a case by case basis. I can see something like this, used widely and unwisely on multi-prim models where people must render massive number of spinning videoed prims for example, leading to a mass member flight from SL due to literal system overload. Perhaps build in an adjustable base limit of the number of streams that can be loaded in at once?

Sorry if I appear to be overreacting... If this is not a potential issue (because of the technology) please let us know. thanks.

Well I've trashed 3 installs of Windows so far. That's 3 for 3 running the preview, so I'm not hesitant to say it's the preview's fault.

And it's not overheating, either. My motherboard has audible alarms for overheating and automatically shuts down when things get too hot. I have no reason to believe I'm overheating the video card because it's an nVidia GeForce FX5900 that has run Second Life without a hitch since I got it less than 4 months ago.

Suspecting the RAM, I ran a test this past hour and got no errors on any of the 1.5GB installed in my system. And local lighting is most definately off, as it always is for me because the SL doesn't do it well.

I really liked what I (breifly) saw on the preview grid, but am worried there some inherant software problem that doesn't like my particular setup. You know, one of those bugs that will never get squashed because the Lindens can't reproduce it in their lab and I'll end up having to leave?

Ouch Aaron, I hope that's not the case

Without being too obvious, did you check all your BIOS settings? From what is inside the upgrade, it really doesn't seem to make sense (does it ever?) ... I mean, it seems like if anything it should just blow up and force a reboot...nothing permanent.

--Jack Lambert

try the latest nvidia beta drivers, they are available at www.nzone.com under the beta drivers in the downloads section... i have been using 1.6 with nvidia with no problems with them... i know i did have crash problems intermittently even in main SL when i was using the now nearly 4 month old november 'nvidia.com download' drivers.

also you haven't answered my question in regards to power... do you have voltage monitoring software in your machine? (like motherboard monitor or several others)... the combination of video plus 3d is much much more stressful on systems than normal SL, and its possible that if you are using a generic (came with the case) power supply, with a power hungry graphics card thats throttling to 110% to keep up with the video textures, that it might be causing instability

i wouldn't be tooo too horribly worried though.. 1.5 preview would crash me in seconds every time... by the time it made an official release, whatever that problem was, was fixed...

i will reiterate though that normal applications runing and crashing, will not cause xp to bluescreen, nor will it render the system inoperable unlike with the win 9x line of operating systems... that is generally the sole domain of drivers.. .only they get low enough access in xp to really do that kind of damage unintentionally if a pointer to a block of ram allocated to the video card goes south and it over-writes a texture say to kernel32.dll


another 'dumb' tactic might be to leave the system running a 3dmark05 test loop for an hour or two... that might isolate whether the problem is SL 1.6 preview related.. .or jus general high stress on the system related

Aaron, what version of Windows are you running? XP, 2000, something else? And, what service pack, if any?

This seems as good a place as any to sum up the only tangentially-related problem I've had with video:
My video card just "crashed" in the preview, after simply closing the Find box. This has happened a number of times in 1.5 though, and according to LL support, it is due to my power supply not being powerful enough for my video card (Radeon 9200SE 128MB).

For me, what generally happens is my monitor goes dead for a few seconds, then the video card driver says the card stopped responding and it had to be reset. Sometimes, it says it had to switch to software rendering, at which point if I exit SL I can't start it again without a reboot. Once or twice, the video card never came back online and I had to manually reboot. There have been times when this has happened a few times in a row, but usually it doesn't happen even over many days of heavy SL use.

Anyway, my windows installation has never been messed up. I'm wondering how you are getting a BSOD. I don't think I've ever seen one of those on XP, which I'm using.

Would be absolutely wonderful and most likely useful to have the actual BSOD text (assuming you're running 2K/XP). In fact, which version of Windows ARE you running?


Never heard of one automatically shutting down. It must be new?
And what're the settings at?


As was said a few posts ago, the entire system is put under stress as this is not something that's usually done in 3D - even the latest video cards could have trouble with it (but don't quote me on that). What's your FPS while you do this?


Tested 1.5 GB in an hour? What kind of test was that?


Recap: You have to leave because you can't completely zoom out during a video stream?

No, I didn't copy down the BSOD text.

I'm running XP Pro SP2.

ASUS boards have been shutting down on CPU errors and temperature limits for several years now. You can even set the temperature at which the board shuts down in the BIOS. Get with the times.

FPS before the crash was very high, probably 30-40, though I didn't have FRAPs running to know for sure. I used the memory tester available from Microsoft (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp).

Heh well that would account for cpu temperature, and only cpu temperature... and that also doesn't mean it won't do what you are talking about... those failsafes only kick in at the extreme outer edge of the processors thermal enelope... usually 96 degrees c, or 200 f... you will be getting software errors *LONG* long before that (its designed basically to keep the cpu from physically damaging itself in the case the cpu fan *dies* completely, not to prevent windows from eating itself alive with bit errors)

That aside, ram temperature and voltage, motherboard northbridge temperature (especially on via chipsets), video card temperature and voltage, all of those are possible culprits that have caused *me* those exact problems, over the years.

Is the video card power plug on a dedicated rail from the power supply? or is it getting power on the same rail as hard drives, the video stream launch causes alot of hd activity during SL that used to be more intermittent, and that could be draining power away from the card especially if its a generic no-name supply that came with the case, which can cause the cascading memory problems i described before (the driver allocating invalid memory areas and over-writing them when the hardware in the card starts getting bit errors in memory addresses)

All my fans (6 case fans in all) and my video card pull power from the secondary 400W power supply. The hard drives and motherboard are all powered by the primary 500W power supply. Both power supplies are Coolmax's. My RAM is Corsair XMS (built-in heatsinks). My BIOS is set to shut down when the temperature reaches 89 C, which it never comes close to because of the 6 case fans.

well the power setup seems damn nice.. but the shutdown is meaningless as i have said.. most consumer cpu's will start popping up bit errors around 65-75c (individual mileage may vary obviously), also of course overclocking will throw things for a loop as well.

It sounds more likely though that drivers may be the problem... do get the latest series 70 drivers from the nvidia developer beta site... www.nzone.com, they have passed whql but haven't been signed yet (they will be shortly, and will *FINALLY* replace the aged november 6th drivers on the main nvidia.com)

also quality, not quantity, is what to strive for with cooling... 6 80mm fans won't do as good a job cleaning air through a case as a pair of 120's, and will make a hell of alot more racket in the process.

Airflow ducting can be a big issue as well... i was having some graphics corruption with my 6800 gt recently, and the occasional odd hiccup and wait for awhile, then resume... turns out the video card was hitting almost 90c... with no hardware changes, i jus opened up the case, re-routed some cables, and some hard drives to other positions, air blasted some dust out, and now it runs in the 60c range... quite the difference for no actual change in any hardware... cpu was helped abit too.. now on the desktop at least its about 29c, running SL it only hits about 36