Second Life crashes at start up every time

I haven't been on SL in a while (and haven't had the program on my computer in a while), and I got the urge to play it again, so I downloaded the most recent build for it and installed it.

The little gray window pops up like the game is about to start, but then disappears. If I try to start it again, I get the "Second Life appears to have frozen or crashed on a previous run. Would you like to send a crash report?" message, so I send a crash report. I tried to start it a couple more times with the same result, so then I went to the wiki.

I went to this page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/When_I_start_Second_Life,_the_crash_logger_comes_up_briefly,_then_it_disappears._Second_Life_never_loads._What_do_I_do%3F and tried both methods. The game still won't start. I can't use the Issue Tracker, because its apparently down.

Interestingly, the exact same thing happened with IMVU, it would crash every time I tried to start it. But uninstalling and installing it again fixed the problem.

Please help ;_;

System specs would be useful.

Brand and model of computer, laptop or desktop, operating system, service pack level, amount of ram, video card model, amount of video ram, version of video drivers, exact version of SL in use, type of internet service, networked or non-networked, wired or wireless, in a dorm or at work or other location of significance.

You might want to let your anti-malware software do thorough scans.

You might need to update your video drivers or possibly other drivers.

You might need to delete the settings.xml file following an uninstall of SL.

Laptop, MSI Notebook GX610 with Windows XP service pack 3
1gb RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600, 256mb RAM (I'm checking dxdiag for this, "Approx. Total Memory" = RAM, right?)
SL version: Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
The main driver is ati2dvag.dll and its version 6.14.0010.6912
I have cable internet and I'm on a secured wireless network at home.

If you can try connecting wired instead of wireless that is an easy thing to try.

Did you moved or renamed the folder wth the SL settings and clear the cache like it said on the page you liked?

Have you tried updating your video drivers?

The format you show for video driver is hard me to figure out. (ATI's system of identifying it's drivers puzzles me.)

Can you tell what version of Catalyst you have, assuming you have Catalyst Control Center installed?

Someone should really make a big red banner on secondlife.com stating "DO NOT USE ATI!". It's getting more and more complains every day.

CCC is version 2009.0203.2228.40314

I've updated my drivers and tried to run SL again afterwards, but the same thing happened.

Moving the user_settings folder doesn't change anything. :[ And oddly enough, there isn't a cache folder where the wiki page says there should be. According to the page my cache folder should be in the SecondLife folder under Application Data (with user_settings and etc), but it isn't there on my computer. There's a cache folder under browser_profile though, so I cleared that, but that didn't change anything either.

I don't know much about drivers, but I can paste the full dxdiag info if that will help clarify it:
"Drivers"
Main Driver: ati2dvag.dll
Version: 6.14.0010.6912
Date: 2/4/2009 6:55:00
WHQL Logo'd: No
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
VDD: n/a
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Also I don't have the means to connect wired at the moment.

Ugh really? SL worked just fine on my laptop before, though.

I found a page that associates that 2009.0203.2228.40314 number with Catalyst version numbers.

http://developer.amd.com/drivers/ccc/Pages/default.aspx

That appears to be Catalyst version 9.2.

I'm not sure if you need to use drivers from the MSI site or if you can use the drivers from ATI-AMD. If you can use the ones from ATI then you might try updating your driver from there. There's newer ones there.

If you have a premium account you should file a support ticket.

You might try posting about your problem in Second Life Answers. Also it couldn't hurt to post it at SLUniverse.

You can search the jira.secondlife.com site. I'd try searching for MSI, or for HD2600, or ATI 2600, things like that.

The user settings are in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\SecondLife
The cache is in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\SecondLife

Or on the network tab in your preferrences there is box just below the clear cache button that gives the path to the cache folder for your particular machine.........that help if you moved it too. Probably the easiest way to find the location on any computer.

OH. I feel silly now. :[

You mean the preferences in game? That won't work, I can't even get to the log in screen because the game crashes a few seconds after I start it.


The MSI site is useless and I tried to search for drivers for my card on the ATI site, and fortune would have it that they list just about every graphics card but mine. :[ I Googled a lot too, and all I get are dead links or suspicious looking links.

I also looked under the Local Settings/Application Data/etc for the cache folder, is the SecondLife folder there the cache itself? Because there's no cache subfolder inside of it. Anyway I cleared all the texture stuff inside of the SL folder and restarted the game, but it still crashed. I tried the release candidate with the same results. :[

I'm browsing the Issue Navigator (It was down when I originally posted this) and Second Life Answers now.

You can get to preferences from the log in screen prior to attempting to log in by applying the keyboard short cut. I think it's CTRL-P or CTRL-ALT-P

The only problem with that is the game crashes **before** the log in screen ever appears. There is no way for me to check the in-game preferences because of this.

There is another way to start over with a fresh cache. Not sure if it will help but since you did at one time have SL on your machine and the uninstall process does leave intact several folders on your system it's worth a shot.

Uninstall SL again. Then before reinstalling unhide hidden folders for your computer and do a complete search of your hard drive for anything related to Second Life or SL and manually delete them from your hard drive. Then reinstall from a fresh downloaded copy.

That should start you from scratch.