Forced to downgrade... The swines!!

That was my understanding of it, too, but when I asked about it on Second Life Answers, Robin Linden insisted that was not the case. Other residents also said they were not charged for downgrading.

coco

P.S. I should also add I have a friend who was a Premium for a very long time, and says he definitely was charged 9.95 when he downgraded. I believe I was also, but I can't remember it that well.

P.S. Since the last update, I crash on 50 percent of my TP attempts. So it's not just you. I figure this is just the new SL.

Ah, my friend finally got back to me. Short answer: Linden Lab changed the way they do teleports, and it can be fixed by changing some local settings. You can find the problem and resolution description here, and that post has links to relevant Knowledge Base articles in case his specific solution doesn't fix your problem.

Also, if you are running Norton Internet Security or the McAfee equivalent, UNINSTALL THAT CRAP NOW. You don't need it. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be protected, but there are free ways to give yourself protection that are no where near as problematic as Norton/McAfee. See this post for my recommendations.

Wildfire..............You just jabbed my memory!! I had Norton Internet Security several months ago. I had nothing but problems with it.......but it wasn't just limited to SL. But with the Norton software SL would crash constantly.........especially when I attempted to do anything other than fiddle around in my house. So perhaps you may be onto something. And I'm going to refer back to a statement I made earlier...........that problem developed when I made a CHANGE...............that change was installing Norton Security.

I was also sort of thinking "out of the box" last night while shutting down for the evening and wondered if may you have children in the house and have net nanny type software installed? Maybe some restrictions meant for their protection could have been changed or applied to your account?

Heck, with everything else been explored, it's worth a shot LOL

Allright, I have Zone Alarm. I just got it updated, and the old one taken off, so that it starts afresh and asks me whenever it wants me to accept a connection.

I logged onto SL, had to accept two things. Accepted them. Tried to teleport, got logged out.

It did NOT ask me to accept something then.

So . . . what am I doing wrong? Before I put Zone Alarm on again, I looked all over it to see if that particular port was blocked anywhere, and could see no mention of it.

coco

Coco, have you tried without Zone Alarm installed at all? This is another program I just don't think is necessary considering that Windows XP has a built-in firewall you can enable- and even THAT's not really necessary if you have a router or cable modem with built-in firewall enabled and any other PCs on your network are secure.

Anyway, if you uninstall Zone Alarm and still have the issue, time to look elsewhere. (For example, your router/cable modem/dsl modem, etc).

I'll turn off Zone Alarm and see what happens.

coco

I'm not one to advocate venturing out in the internet without a software firewall. I would never do that myself.........I just don't think its a wise thing to do. And Microsofts XP firewall is not quite up to snuff on the protection end either........better than nothing but just barely. A router and cable modem are hardware firewalls which do offer some extra protection but do not make your presence on the internet invisible to any potential intruder........the intruder only sees the router or modem and not your computer. I have used Zone Alarm and it's a good firewall and pretty easy to configure........mostly just taking the default settings and going through the allow/disallow thing til you get the firewall all "trained". At the present time I'm using Jetico Personal Firewall........it's free like Zone Alarm and is just as easy to configure. One thing I've been caught on when installing firewalls..............turn off Windows XP firewall first!!! I didn't do that when I got this computer in June of last year and Zone Alarm gave me fits until I uninstalled it and turned off XP's firewall before I reinstalled it..........no problems what so ever after that.

And you mentioned you got the two allow/disallow inquiries when you launched SL. Every time SL updates I have to go through the whole process of the firewall kicking in..........but it's more than just two pop ups!! Like about 3 durring the installation and at least 4 on initial launch of SL. And did you have the box checked to "remember this answer" (I think that's what Zone Alarm says..........Jetico has a drop down to choose how to treat any access which I choose "treat as trusted zone"?

But I'm still having a hard time understanding why a firewall would treat a TP differently or independantly from allowing access to the game when you launched. When you launch Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox or any other web browser for the first time after installing a firewall you get your inquiry. You don't get it again when you follow a link to another website. And unless my understanding of how SL moves you from one place to another in the world is way way off it's pretty much the same process as following a link or putting in a new URL to go somewhere else in your browser. I'm thinking all this firewall stuff is a dead end as far as fixing any TPing issues in SL. If you can't get to SL or you crash while attempting to get there, then, yeah, a firewall issue makes sense. But if you can get there and then crash when you try to TP I really doubt the firewall is the culprit.

I'm no geek........but I've been using firewalls for a long time. Been on a cable connection through a router for just as long. Just does not make any sense to me at all.

Too late, I already did it. (And not happily.)

And it made no difference at all. With Zone Alarm disabled, I still crash on 1 of 4 attempts. (I made only four.)

Yes, it gave me a couple of things, alarms, whatever, the deal where you click "yes"," or maybe four, because I put for it to remember them and still got another two.

I also took Second Life OFF Zone alarm and then tried it again, got the same things, and said yes, and remember them.

Still crash while TP'ing.

I agree with you that this is not my firewall - being as how I had it DISABLED, and the computer tells me the Windows firewall is disabled as well.

In addition, it seems to me that if you give a game access, you give it access. You shouldn't have to be going in and configuring for various ports (which I can find no mention of anyway) because they did an update.

Something is wrong on the LL end.

coco

In everything I have read on this post thus far, I have seen lots of helpful ideas and a couple useless ones. To the person(s) who just automatically assume it is the user's PC that is at fault, did you ever stop and actually read the entire post? The first clue would have been that others have stated seening or encountering the same issue. 2 Some logical thought would have been pointed to my next lil paragraph.

The user states they can connect on both household pc's but can not get off that sim. Also, they mention that they at least sometimes get a message about ports being misconfigured or such. Well common sense should kick in at this point and tell you that in fact it most likely would not be the user's 2 pcs but instead either thier ISP has now changed a configuration setting for which the user has no control over but to contact thier ISP and have it manually opened or a workaround put in place. If that is not the case, the next logical thing would be LL. If the user CAN enter thier home Sim, but can not go to another, perhaps it is a port misconfiguration on the server side that is preventing communication between that one sim and all of the others.

I am sorry if this comes across rude, but the person who answered it is your pc and that is that should really have stepped back and thought about it logically, especially since the OP stated they have run every test on thier machine that they are aware of and found no misconfigured settings and thier specs are up to par..a lil low, but up to par.

Okies, we now have the source of the problem.

Since the last 'upgrade' LL changed the way that Teleports worked, and now use TCP Port 12043, which was not used previously. This is not the fault of Thunder, but it looks like he will have to solve it.

For most people, this change will have gone un-noticed, but for those few, whose firewall or ISP block this port, the inability to get out of a sim will be a real pain, especially as before the 'upgrade' everything was working fine.

I recommend using a port scanner service to determine if the required ports are open or not, then take it from there.

Thunder, try both of the following:

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

http://www.auditmypc.com/firewall-test.asp

Enter tcp port 12043 directly to test, and see if it is open or not.

Good luck mate, and ignore the forum flamers, many good people do come to these forums to try to help

Rock

Hoping someone can sticky the changes in TP function as I suspect there are going to be more with questions on it. Good on everyone for helping hunt down Thunder's problem This is why RA is still very helpful!

Okies, looks like we now have the source of the problem.

Since the last 'upgrade' LL changed the way that Teleports worked, and now use TCP Port 12043, which was not used previously. This is not the fault of Thunder, but it looks like he will have to solve it. Note also, that LL do NOT provide any list of required ports in their System Requirements, but it is provided you know where to look in the Knowledgebase:

UDP and TCP connections, inbound and outbound, on network ports 443 and 12020 to 13050, inclusive are required for SL to functiion correctly. Read the following Article for more detailed info:

http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=029

For most people, the change will have gone un-noticed, but for those few, whose firewall or ISP block this port, the inability to get out of a sim will be a real pain, especially as before the 'upgrade' everything was working fine.

I recommend using a port scanner service to determine if the required ports are open or not, then take it from there.

Thunder, try both of the following:

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

http://www.auditmypc.com/firewall-test.asp

Enter tcp port 12043 directly to test, and see if it is open or not, then the full ranges.

Good luck mate, and ignore the forum flamers, many good people do come to these forums to try to help

Rock