Beginner's bad luck or serious problem?

Hi, I'm new here and SL worked fine for me for about 5 minutes. Then I tried to change my appearance and now I have no eyes, no eyebrows and no way to get them back. I get the sliders to change them in the appearance screen but they're simply not on my face.
And every few minutes when I'm walking I can't seem to stop or change direction as if the controls are frozen and I get logged out. I can't transport anywhere, each time I try I get logged out.
It looks like something is badly wrong but I don't see what it is. I try to do the things suggested in the help screens but it just doesn't work. Anybody else has had the same problems?

Charlemagne, post your computer specs and I know there are knowledgeable people who will tell you what's going on.

Well, it's a less than 1 year old PC, XP Home, Pentium 4 820, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1300 HM 512MB, 2Mb cable DSL.

Hi,

Which viewer are you using, the normal one or first look?

It sounds like a problem some UK users are having when using that viewer at certain times of the day due to some of our ips.

How do I find out? To my knowledge I never changed anything about a viewer.

When you start up SL, does it say Second Life or Second Life First Look? (First Look is still in beta mode).

Are you UK based?

Now I see: It's the normal viewer and no, I'm not in UK, but in Western Europe.

I do get the exact same problem in our evenings, we have now found out some of the UK isps limited the use during peak times. Try logging in at different times of day if you can and see if there are good and bad times.

Sorry I can't help more.

It seems that the problem is the same no matter what time of day I log in. But thanks very much for your help.

You might try wearing a different outfit from your library, just because it's easy to do.

You say " I can't transport anywhere, each time I try I get logged out", this makes me wonder if you need to make sure SL can access the ports it needs properly, particularly port 12043, which needs to be open for both UDP and TCP. See http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=355 for more info.

What kind of firewall do you have?

Wired or wireless router? Or do you plug directly into your cable modem?

I have a cable modem with integrated firewall. I had opened the other ports mentioned in the article about firewalls but not 12043. When I opened this port I could transport to help island where i found a message that said I could always leave but not come back! Is that so? Can I go there only once? So I did not dare transport somewhere else, I walked around and then SL crashed. Oh, and I still don't have neither eyebrows nor eyes.

If you go to Control Panel / Security Center what does it show in the firewall section?

Do you have any firewalls other the cable modem's running?

Are you running any malware protection programs and if so which ones?

Have you tried using SL while Windows Firewall is turned completely off?

Do you have more than one computer networked together? If so, are they hooked up with a router, a switch, a hub, etc., and what is that device's name and model number? Is it wired or wireless?

If you are using a router or similar device, what happens if you hook your computer directly to the cable modem?

What programs are running in the background?

Are you sure you have opened port 12043 for both TCP and UDP? It has to be open for both protocols. Perhaps you only opened it for one.

Does the crash reporter appear, and does it appear to finish sending the report?

If you don't have the Client menu showing in the main menu, press Control Alt D to make it appear. Then do Client / Consoles / Debug Console so that you see the debug messages. What are the last three or four messages that appear before crashing?

Have you tried putting on a different avatar from your inventory by clicking the Inventory button, opening the Library folder, opening the Clothing folder, and dragging one of the folders onto your avatar?

Have you updated your video drivers and possibly other drivers?

Thanks for your help, I think that now communicating with the server is not really the problem, most things do work but not as they should. For example, I can drag things from my inventory folder to the avatar, they attach and detach , I can edit my appearance, my nose, clothes BUT not my eyes or eyebrows, I see the sliders to make them larger and so, the sliders move but they just don't appear on the avatar.

vid card drivers?

Can't help with your other issues, but I can tell you that this is correct. Fear not, however, because there is another help island that you can go to, called "public help island."