CPU Hogging - SL Unusable

Since getting hold of SL 1.15.0, when I start SL - before I even log in, SL grabs almost all of the CPU and my hard drive works overtime because the pagefile is HUGE. And on top of that SL almost never logs in, it just stalls. I've pretty much given up. I've spent a lot of time trying to find out why this is happening with no success. The earlier version of SL didn't have this problem but I can't find out how to get hold of previous versions. Anybody have any ideas about any of this?

I wish you could revert back, since the new release, I am locking up every few minutes, espeically on my laptop. I hve to do a hard reboot every time. Seriously annoying.

When I do manage to log in, I have about 5 mins of in-world time before the image is drastically reduced in complexity (a hand here, a shoe there etc) and then the image goes black and never recovers. I don't have to reboot my machine though. I've got a Gig of ram and plenty of hard disk, pretty fast connection etc etc. I'm wondering if there's some setting that I need to make......somewhere? Or is the problem wholly server-side?

System specs would help....

Whilst you may have made the SL cache huge, sounds more like the OS cache is very small or set to dynamic. Set the OS cache/pagefile to static (maximum 1 1/2 times your Ram, or 1.5gb). Setting your SL cache to large is a good thing.

Try defraging your hard disc regularily (I mean at least every other time you use SL.. seriously).. also run scandisk at least once a week and cold reboot your PC, let it run and check 'Auto repair bad sectors' and 'Scan Disc for bad sectors', note if you are getting any bad sectors reported.

Run and use a Registry cleaner... I'll wager you will find a lot of errors there (assuming you dont have a freash install of the OS).

Thanks for your help guys:
System specs:
2Ghz Processor with 1Db Ram
MS XP PRO SP2
1.5 Gb static
80 Gbyte Hard Drive (30Gbytes left)
Nvidea GeForce GO 6600 (128 Mb)

The thing that irks me is that I run a lot of different programs on this PC.
Some of them place heavy demands on memory, CPU and the disk drive.
I have NO problems whatsover with these.
I occasionally carry out the necessary 'housekeeping' on the system but haven't since I installed SL 15.
I will do this and see what happens but I am not optimistic - it doesn't make sense that SL suddenly cease to work as soon as I upgraded.
The other thing is that SL grabs a huge slice of RAM and refuses to let go of it.

This possibly points to (among other things)
1. Flaws in the installation process.
2. Poor memory mangement by the SL client.

Not every system is identical, not every manufacturer creates Mother Boards identically, nor GC manufacturers, memory.. the list goes on. The only parts you can rely on being to a 'set standard' is the interfaces between devices (PCI, Memory Buses, IDE controller interfaces etc). It is the same with software, core programmes are all different, it is only the use of API calls that remain the same.

When Windows XP was launched, Microsoft stated it was 'The' most stable platform to date, with protected memory areas to prevent Blue Screen crashes, which is great in theory, providing all software creators abide by the rules. When a memory hungry programme like SL is used, Windows allows a lot of the core programmes to be swapped out to disc, however, should one or more of the programmes become required, it has to attempt to grab back those registers supposedly within the protected area of memory to install them for execution, should the OS find the required areas of memory being used by 'other' programme(s), it will boot them out of memory and install its own elements. This leads to 2 things, 1) Loss of functionality for part(s) of the programme 'stealing' that OS required memory, and if the programme cannot recover, it will crash. 2) The OS being denied access to that 'stolen' memory space and the OS crashes (Blue Screen of Death). Both are often refered to as memory leakage.

The cure?... set Windows to always force kernel programmes to remain in memory and not swap them out... you will need at least 1.5gb of ram to prevent a lot of HD cache thrashing. I always set this parameter in the OS and have never had a system crash.
For LL to state the minimum system requirements is 256mb of ram is laughable http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php, even Micorsoft state minimum of 64mb system ram http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/sysreqs.mspx again unrealstic for XP. It is about time, the real facts were exposed.

Thanks AWM Mars
I concurr with everything you say - I am shocked to hear that the minimim requirements for SL are 236Mb! I have tried unloading all programs and processes that take up RAM which has left plenty of RAM for SL and yet I still have the high CPU and memory usage and disk thrashing - and an unusable SL.
I'm going to clean up my system but I'm not optimistic. I might have to increase my RAM but why should I have to do that (laptop ram is not cheap) when EVERY other program seems to manage?

Simply because what SL needs to do takes a lot of computing resources.

Also, in order to keep the gaming experience as smooth as possible, SL always uses all avaliable CPU time -- it's always doing SOMETHING to keep your display as smooth as possible.

For most applications, it's a grave sin to use all available CPU time. However, it's reasonable for a program like SL. Perhaps in the future it could be optimized to yeild the CPU more when the client frame rate is sufficiently high, but don't hold your breath. More likely, more CPU-consumptive features will be added, and SL will continue to hog the CPU.

Regards,
Jeff

With 1.5GB RAM, it's unlikely that memory alone is the problem.

My guess is that there's a video card issue on your system: SL's code doesn't work well on your video card, and this is causing problems.

This is not likely to be a server side problem since it doesn't happen to most of us.

Jeff

it is if your running windows xp but thats not the mimimum requirement, windows 2000 is, which win2k uses quite abit less memory for system things (like 10,000,000,000 wizards and bubbly windows)

my garage computer only has 256 mb of ram, with an old badass videocard, 850mhz amd athalon, and windows 2000 its not awesome, but its well, playable

thats all the minimum requirements are "it will run, but anything below these specs good luck but we cannot be held responsible for support"

and why is it anyone that complains about the min specs never scrolls down where it says 512mb OR MORE is reccomended

PC Minimum System Requirements:
is totally different from
PC Minimum System Recommendations:

edit the min requirements now say windows XP or 2000 it used to only say 2000, thats abit false considering the extended memory requirements of XP

My problem persists.
SL started misbehaving straight after I installed version 15. Before that - no problems.
I would think this indicates a fault in the install process.
I am using Toshiba laptop with the standard video drivers that came with the machine.
I don't know where to go with this problem - not much luck on the SL knowledegbase etc.
I'm lucky if I get 5 mins in SL before the screen freezes and most of the scene disappears
while my hard drive gently thrashes. 3 minutes later I get a scene refresh but I'm lucky if I can do anything at all. Soon after that a black screen.
I'll try again in a year when hopefully they've sorted things out.

The major advancements of the revised batch of clients released over the past few months, were all called FirstLook, which were blogged as having major improvements of the rendering pipelines, this in turn is now stressing certain elements/systems on your client system/PC.

Ok I, my wife and three people I know personally can no longer use Second Life. The time varys from machine to machine but the end result is the same.

The world just freezes/crashes the machine. It becomes totally unresponsive and the only way to get access to the machine again is to do a forced powerdown and reboot (which then requires a disk check).

This isn't acceptable at all for use. So far tested on.

Thinkpad T60p - Core Duo 1.8Ghz, 2GB Ram, 80GB (40GB free). Both single and dual screen tested. Crashes in 2-3 minutes of entering the world.

Dell XPS laptop - Don't recall the processor but 7800 GeForce gfx card, 2GB Ram, 80GB drive (30GB free). Crashes around 15 minutes of entering the world.

Dell Desktop - 3GB Ram can't remember the rest but better spec then the Dell XPS. Crashes around 40 mins after entering the world.

See post above and /111/9d/183546/1.html

It is not the same issue at all.

- You don't even get a blue screen.
- You don't get any slowdown/warning before it happens. It just freezes the machine.
- The X41 is not the same machine spec, if anything it is lower.

I didn't say you would get a Blue Screen in every case... in one senerio, the programme can freeze. I'd still bet your system allows the kernel to be swapped out, and suggest you try setting that to not swap out first, to see if that works for you. I use xpTune http://downloads.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000375,39181208s,00.htm to set my system.

Nope it won't. As crashes go it is pretty impressive. Everything becomes unresponsive. I have not even been able to find any crash information on the machines as the hang appears to take that out as well.

I never get the BSOD - I just get the behaviour I described above. The other programs and processes still run fine. In the end I have to kill SL -there is no menu for me to do an elegant shutdown. Downloaded XPTune and ran it but it didn't help.
Do I need to increase the RAM to 2 Gbytes to solve this problem?
If so, why doesn't SL strongly recommend this?

P.S
When I tried the download link for XPTune on ZDnet it redirects me to the wrong site. I googled and found this one which works:
http://www.download.com/XPTune/3000-2094_4-10531719.html

Ho Hum.
Upgraded to recent release and still have the same problem.
Got a run time error this time as well - something new!
Main symptom at the moment is:
After a few minutes in SL, my view goes black then after a minute or two the scene reappears and if I'm lucky I get a couple of minutes in SL and then black again.
Not as much disk thrashing though.
Still unusable.

Are you using Norton or McFee auntivirus? They scan the HD a lot while you are playing, every texture etc downloaded, gets a scan.. if you are, try removing the C:/Documents and Settings/<your PC log on name>/Applications Data/Secondlife and all nested folders within.

I'm not using those Antivirus programs.

After getting some email support from Linden, I turned off 'Avatar Vertex Program ' and 'Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects ' and it seemed to fix things.
Very suprised that I couldn't find this anywhere in the knowledgebase or known problems, but it might be in there somewhere.

This used up a lot of my time.

How do you do this, please?

Thanks,
Jeff