Please help - I keep crashing

I'm at wit's end. For the last couple of months SL was just fine then about a week ago I started having serious crash issues.

I will be in SL for about 5 or 10 minutes and suddenly hard crash. My computer just shuts itself off with no warning.

I have taken off box cover and cleaned the dust and cat hair out of the computer. I have uninstalled SL, ran CCleaner and then re-downloaded and installed SL seveal times. I've cleared my cache numerous times. My drivers are all up to date.

I'm not very technical when it comes to my computer so I can't think of anything else to do. This is very frustrating and I'm beginning to think I have a HD problem.

Any ideas to help?

thanks

lulu

Does it only crash when you are logged on to SL?

yes - seems to be only SL

Gonna tell us what kind of machine it is?

Doing a copy/paste of what's in Help->About SecondLife would be a good start.

/me guesses an overheating video card.

The computer is a Fry's brand. I'm not very technical so could you please tell me where help>about secondlife is?

thank

Once you get into SL, click on the Help menu and pick the item that says About SecondLife.

That will pop up a window with some geeky stuff in it. Drag your mouse over all the info at the top of the popup - it'll say what kind of CPU and how much memory you have and things like that - then click the Edit menu and pick Copy.

Once you've got that, come back here and Paste (using the Edit menu in your brower) the info.

cat hair in your box? ewww, time to get rid of a cat!

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 (unknown model) (3192 MHz)

Memory 1024 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pck 2 (Build 2600)

Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.

Graphics Card: RADEON X300/X550/X1050 Series x86/SSE2

Open GL Version: 2.0.6347 Win XP Release

LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.10_0000000000)

Viewer Digest: 38694245-c439-e5e0-ba41-14468c84f82e

couldn't figure out how to cut and paste so i just typed it

thanks again

I'm no computer expert, but that video card seems pretty low to be running SL =/

i'll check with my computer guy...however, it worked fine for about two months.

^^ that's your problem ... put the cat hair back in ..all will be well again

You say " Hard Crash " .... do you get a blue screen ?... or is the machine just switching off and rebooting ?

My guess is RAM ,Allthogh your 1024 is enough (just )to run SL.. Your RAM can just give up at any stage in its life .

Have you tryed running other games ? ... same thing happen ?... Mybe try stress testing your machine with 3DMark or Super Pi just to see if its your machine thats at fault ... or is it SL tweeking .

Allso worth a try here ... log in .. go to a privet place and detach everything from your body ... hair ... attachments ... clothes ... make sure you avatar is totaly stripped of all objects ... and wait .... see if you trip out again .... if not ... start adding things back on ... start with the basic's and work your way up .

I had this veru same thing happen to me ( i have a super quick PC ) ... went on for weeks .... turned out to be some stupid attachment that was bugged .... worth a try , won't take long and easy to do .

Hon, unfortunately you seem to be running with a graphics setup unsupported by SL --- this is from their system requirements page:

"Second Life may not run on graphics/video cards other than the ones listed above. Unfortunately, if your graphics card includes any of the following words, it's NOT compatible with Second Life:
...
ATI cards that report as RADEON 320M, 340M, 345M, or similar model numbers "

But DON'T PANIC. I too have been running with (different) unsupported components, have observed a steadily increasing number of system crashes as LL strives to up the frame rate, and have found several ways to mitigate that using just the settings in Second Life's "edit preferences". Here's what I do for my Intel chips (which don't implement OpenGL very well):

-- Run in full-screen mode (not a window the size of your screen, actual full-screen where you have to use ALT-TAB to switch to another app). You do this by unchecking "Run in Window"

-- Set the memory for your graphics card to something lower than 128MB. Amazingly, my frame rate went up when I set mine to 64. Since you're not a techie, just take a guess and try it . You won't hurt anything if you set it too low.

-- Set the graphics sliders for Object Mesh, Flexible Mesh, Tree Detail, Avatar Detail etc. all the way to the left. You can inch up the settings once you get to the point where you don't crash.

-- Set your graphics distance to 64 (the minimum). Generally speaking, leave it there.

-- Make sure all cool options for VBO and suchlike are NOT enabled.

If you are still crashing, try limiting your network bandwidth to 300kB or so. That may sometimes prevent textures from being downloaded faster than your PC can handle.

I have never revved down my graphics display resolution (e.g. down to 800x600), but if I were still crashing I might try that.

try setting up a fan to blow across it, it might be heat, that was affecting my laptop bad. If it does not crash then its heat. it is getting warmer out after all.

Have you checked to see that all fans in the system are spinning, and spinning at what seems to be a normal speed?

When did you last update your drivers, and which drivers did you update?

Here's what I'd do, in this order:
1. Clear your cache. (open SL, but don't CONNECT, open Preferences, and on the NETWORK tab, Push the CLEAR CACHE button, close preferences, quit SL. then Open SL again and Connect).
2. Take off the cover of your PC. Point a regular fan into the box to blow cool air onto that board that your monitor cable plugs into.
3. Follow ALL of Nika Talaj's advice in the Prefernces before you connect.
4. Update your 'drivers'. A month or so ago, I fixed my BSOD by updating Active X. Microsoft quietly put out a minor release on April 6. Its revision # version 9.18.944
5. Run the Windows Drive Fix utility.
6. That being said, Luluk, I'm in the 'its your graphics card' camp. For under US$100 , you will eventually want to replace it with one that's *much* better,and officially 'supported'.

Thank you all SO MUCH - am going today to get a new graphics card.

lulu