Why might I have been banned?

Today I tried to log on and received the message that the System had logged me out and I would be able to log on in approximately four minutes. Again and again I received the message always claiming that I would be able to log on in four minutes. It's been over an hour and still the same message. After searching through the support site I found out that I had most likely been banned for bad behavior! And why the sadistic process of promising me that I would be allowed to log on in four minutes, endlessly? I am new to SL but I am quite sure that I have not intentionally offended anyone or violated any rules that I am aware of. I have had no message from anyone that I had broken any rules and no response from the SL support staff. What is going on?

Thanks to anyone who can help me understand what is going on.

Have you made it back in yet?

Second Life gets screwy in a myriad of ways. Sometimes an the system does not properly log out an avatar and you have to wait a while. In these cases there's nothing to be done to speed things up. In other cases it gets confused and you end up having to contact support to get things straightened out.

Someone else is bound to pop up with more info shortly.

Its the 'four minutes and you can log in' torture. You are required to attempt logging in another 6,879 times before your punishment is complete. Is this because you have been banned for some infraction? No. We are all punished once in awhile for the sheer sadistic pleasure of Linden labs

Winter, I am delighted to have amused you but I have no idea if you are joking or not. Are you trying to say that this sometimes happens and there is no explaination? Are you implying that you do not believe me? I do not understand.

Peregrine, the message you got does not mean that you have been banned.

When you log out, the server for the sim you were in contacts the SL central server to confirm that yes, you did indeed log out. However, if you were forced to log out because the sim you were in crashed - or for other similar reasons - then that message can go missing or not make it to the central server, in which case it will think you are already logged in and you won't be able to log in for a while.

Try clicking on the preferences button and selecting a different starting location (meaning switch from "My last location" to "My home" or vice-versa). You probably didn't get banned. Probably just a glitch in the game with your av's location.

Fingers crossed my home sim hasn't refused to let me in that I remember but last night over half the places I tried to go to refused to teleport me Peregrine. SecondLife just gets cranky sometimes.
If you don't see start location in your login screen, open preferences and tick the 'show start position' button under the general tab.

You have corrupted data in your cache. Clear your cache and log in.

Happened to me several times, even though I logged out, my avatar could still be seen ingame. Same process, you cannot log in until <insert 4 minute intervals here> message. I 'cured' it by having someone with the right permissions to eject me from the sim (not ban ) and I could log in again, simply because it forced a reset of my avatars location from the sim server, which had 'frozen me'.

Ah, so that is specifically the problem eh? Good idea to have a regular SLer friend have rights to see where you are on map then so they could hunt you down and get you ejected?
Cool!

I just fake it Bilbo, I enjoy the pain

I often get this message when relogging, as well as "server is beginning its logout process" or something like that. At first I thought they were meaningful, but now I ignore them and try again right away because they rarely are. As mentioned below, try logging in to a different location. If your last location was your home, then type in any sim name (e.g., Hanja).

I've never seen it happen persistently as you did. Hopefully it's just a temporary goofup.

I learned a workaround for this some time ago here in the forums...

Get someone to send you an IM. They can say anything...once the system 'knows' you are offline, you'll be able to login.

Works for me every time. I have an alt account and use it to wake up my account when it gets locked like this.

-2fast

I was stuck in the mode described for 8+ hours. I appreciate all of the helpful responses.
I will keep in mind and try all of the suggestions.

Glad you got it figured out because the first time this happened to me I was trying to figure out what in the world I had done to be banned for 3-4 minutes, lol

You couldnt tell if I was joking or not? Look for the 'winky' at the end of the post, thats just in case the humour goes over anybodies head If you dissect my pseudo dissertation you would find my actual theory...
Meaning, no its not you being disciplined and banned for some mysterious infraction, ( they will inform you if you've been naughty and warrent a suspension) its SL being SL and showing you just how crappy things can get once in awhile. I totally believed your sad story, and have experienced the 'wonders' of such anomolies many times before. Sorry to have rendered you confused.

Glad you got it straightened out. The first time this happened to me, I was "unable" to get in for about 8 hours ( I didn't try for 8 hours straight...I resumed my RL for a bit and then went back)
Still nothing....changing to my home position instead of last position did nothing as well...I still got the same message (please try again in 4 minutes)

Clearing cache cleared all the bad data and allowed me to get in immediately.