Totally disgusting and un-called for crashing...

Recently, with the new client, I've noticed a DRAMATIC increase in crashing(i.e. I used to crash once or twice per day, now its at LEAST once PER HOUR. This is shoddy coding and poor handling of recources by the LL team. Also, everyone around me is crashing dramatically more than they did. Before this new client(1.20), things generally ran smoother. Even though the graphics are improved, Ive had the tech team tell me its my comp...its not, and also they are gearing up for the next graphics cards, and are sorry that some of the older, like mine, just arent optomised for the new versions. This is not morale thinking, as many, many users are on older cards, and the newer cards are also experiancing dramatically more crashing and lagg. Guys at LL!!!!!- ya really need to get your stuff together, because this is why most noobs and seasoned patrons finally give up on SL, other than from bad romances. SL needs to run well on ALL good cards, old or new. If you want to keep the increased membership, You need to find out bout writing a server version that actually will help user play, and not hinder it....kisses -xxxxxxxxxx

This is bound to be the wrong forum for your post. There hasn't been a First Look viewer out for a good while.

What version is giving you trouble?

Lol yea wrong forums for Release Candidate 1.21 RC0

As posted in the correct forums is an explanation if the frequent crashes and why..
Looks like LL has it together
Release candidate forum is located @
http://forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php?f=349

===========================================

Indeed, this Release Candidate has extra code checking turned on for crashes. This means we sometimes cause the RC viewer to crash MORE often.

... Now why would we do that??

The special code is called "Thread Monitoring" (or the "watchdog". What it does is: constantly detects when Second Life becomes frozen for a period longer than 20 seconds. If you are frozen that long, it FORCES a crash-- but it spits out a very detailed log of where & what the viewer code was doing when things went wrong.

It's like setting a trap for the many invisible ways where crash bugs may be lurking. When the Thread monitor catches 'em, we can find out exactly what part of code is responsible.

When we look at the hundreds of crash reports over a 1-day period, we can see what are the most common crashes that plague our Residents. You can be sure we'll try to fix those for the next iteration (RC2, RC3, etc). By the end of the RC cycle, this viewer will have less places to crash than even the official viewer 1.20.

That means you are helping every time you run the RC and it crashes! Be sure to let the reporter "Send its report" to Linden Lab. There is no personal information in the crash report.

We call this "Crash Hunting":
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Crash_Reporting#Viewer_Crash_Hunters


Sometimes people post their log file, SecondLifeCrashReport.log, directly to the Issue Tracker. You can find out where this file gets written on your computer by reading more here:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4209

I've had many, MANY 1.21 crashes but they all seem to be pretty instantanious - there's no 20 seconds of being frozen first.

Well terribly sorry, but theres no 20 seconds, it crashes. And frankly, It is not 1.21, its 1.20. The version before that was perfect(last version of 1.19). And again, Im getting a crash every 30- 45 min. And pardon me for not knowing everything about where to post. Im getting not very happy about the increasing complexity of doing or solving problems in SL, as before I just had to put a ticket in and tell the issue, now I get re-directed numerous times. But anyways, the crashing is still big-time. Sorry, not all of us can purchase a new comp with better drivers. Mine runs advanced graphics programs with ease, but noooo, not SL. Trying not to be too sarcastic here, lol. But perhaps they need a lot more testing before changing the coding and specs.

The release candidate viewers are where they do the testing of the viewers people want to have done before a new main version is released.

There's a new release candidate version today, maybe it will work better if you try that.

As for better drivers, you don't have to get a new computer to try different drivers. Some drivers work and some don't. The theory is that the newer drivers work better than the older drivers but that is not true, sometimes the newer drivers have big problems that affect a lot of people, and sometimes for reasons unknown some people have success with older drivers. In general one won't have a way to know in advance which driver might work. One just has to try one after the other. Properly trying a different driver, in windows, means uninstalling the current driver and rebooting, probably coming up with a crummy looking low res barebones VGA display some folks find nearly unusable, stopping windows from trying to install it's own better driver, possibly running a driver cleaner, if you want, and then installing the driver you want to try. It's time consuming and boring, but it has been known to get SL to work for people sometimes.

Its worth considering that if you use Vista, always right click the loader file and choose Run as Administrator, otherwise Vista will only load portions of the driver set, thinking quite miraciously, that MS's drivers are always best.
If you read the nVidia tech stuff, it always tell you to uninstall previous drivers before installing newer ones. I always run a registery cleaner in between, just to clean out any leftover dross.