Crash = Blue Screen!

Hi guys as you can probably guess im new here and im enjoying SL immensly except for one small problem that is hindering me enjoying SL to the fullest! My game crashes every 10-20 minutes without fail often giving me the blue screen automatically restarting my PC! I have no idea what is wrong but one small suspicion i have is that once my CPU hits 100% thats when it crashes!

Please help guys i really want to enjoy my SL

The best way to get help is to provide your computer system specs. There's no way to troubleshoot your problem without some knowledge of your graphics card, CPU, and memory.

If those components don't reveal a problem (like having too little RAM for effective play), then the culprit is probably a setting in your Preferences.

Sounds more a computer problem than a problem with SL the game itself. Ten to twenty minutes without fail would lead me to think of a heating problem somewhere......CPU, graphics card or even a power supply. It would also help if we knew the operating system.........XP seldoms gives a BOS (though I've seen it on my computer a few times). But the restarting at regular intervals sure sounds like a heat problem. As you know SL is a very graphics and CPU intensive program...........the harder you work those two components the hotter they get. A couple things you might check that don't take much except a little time. Open your case and get a can of compressed air and blow all the dust out (don't put the nozzle too close anything because that air is very cold coming out and it will freeze on contact with the stuff on the boards and wires........and possilby damage them or even distroy them). Also you can look and try to see if all your fans are running (but don't run the computer more than a very few minutes without the case sides in place..........the case must be closed properly for proper cooling). And if your CPU has a cooling fan mounted on it make sure it is securely locked down on top of it.

That's about all I can offer as help for now.

I'd just like to offer you and Peggy a minor piece of advice. Running a PC without a cover though not to be recommended for safety reasons is not a problem. Some peoople, myself included with an earlier machine, actually combatted overheating by running with the case side removed.
Yes, system spec would help here. Have you compared yours with the required specs on http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php ?

Im running on an:

AMD 64 3500+
1 Gig RAM
ATI x800 XT PE
2mb connection

I will post back in a bit with the cpu, gpu and system tempratures when the game crashes next! I have a Guru Clock but have never thought of checking it when the game crashes

Thanks

All temps never exceed 65 oC and ive re-installed, defragged etc but it's still doing it >

Any last ideas before i uninstall and walk away?

Thanks.

Neo, check your memory usage. This past week I was trying to get SL to stop using so much RAM, because the amount of virtual memory it was using up was grinding my harddrive and making my entire machine lag.

I disabled virtual memory and then I found SL had exactly the symptoms you are talking about. As soon as SL would use up all of my available memory, then it would silently crash, no blue screen, etc.

Do cnt-alt-del and go to Processes. On the bottom-right you will see Commit Charge. This is your total amount of memory, RAM and virtual memory combined.

If you look up Second Life in the list above that you can see how much memory it is currently using. If the amount of memory is hitting your total Commit Charge, that might be why its crashing.

yeah lol, your experiencing the blue screen of death

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death

Any idea how i can check if my virtual memory is off?

I doubt that it is off, but the quick/dirty way to see is just look at the Commit Charge. If the total amount (on the right side of the /) is greater than the known amount of RAM that you have, then its on. So if you have 1gb of RAM, and its reading 2200 on the Commit Charge, then you have a virtual memory cache of 1200mb.

You can check this by going to your control panel and system, goto the Advanced tab. Hit the Settings button under Performance. In the new window click on the Advanced tab and go to the bottom where it says Virtual Memory. All your options are in there for the VM.

If you are showing a cache size, you might want to increase it. If its already big enough, look at unstalling SL, reboot, and reinstall it.

Other issues might involve the drivers on your graphics card. If none of the stuff I mentioned above works, try downloading the latest drivers for your graphics card and see what happens then.

Are there any other programs that are crashing?

Neo, do you have a virus checker or spyware detection or another programme that accesses the internet every 20 minutes or so?
I brought the college LAN to a grinding halt a while back by having an internet clock set to check every millisecond or two once!

It would be interesting to know whether any games cause a crash after a similar amount of time. Even better if they use OpenGL rather than DirectX for rendering.

I gotta say, I suspect the GPU. I had an x800 (PCI-e) bundled with a new computer once, and it was just awful with proprietary drivers. To prevent BSODs, I recall having to enable a (system taxing) GPU Recover option which would temporarily freeze the game for a few seconds when it would otherwise have crashed.

The Omega Drivers made the x800 a LOT more stable for me but I was quick to rid myself of it altogether.