why wont my viewer log me in

[AlinessaMae]

I have second life viewer and I cant log in. It used to work fine and all of a sudden I have been having this problem. I open the viewer and login and it starts loading and as its suppose to load the viewer just closes. no error message or anything just closes. I tried loging into different locations and I tried uninstalling and reinstalling but I get the same problem. It just closes. I cant get on second life.

[Lindal Kidd]

When you reinstalled the viewer, did you do a complete, clean, manual delete and reinstall?  Here are the instructions for that: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-Second-Life/ta-p/1375231

Have you made any recent changes to your computer?  In particular, have you changed your antivirus or firewall software?  Have you recently updated your graphics drivers?  (If you have, an improper driver install could be the problem.)

 

[Nalates Urriah]

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need.  To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

It also helps to know if you are using a laptop or a desktop and a wired or wireless connection between the computer and gateway and/or between the gateway and ISP. T-Mobile and other ISP’s use a wireless system to connect to you.

Without information all we can do is guess. That means you have to try all our bad guesses and eliminate them one by one. This is easier for all of us, if you give us good information to start with.

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When all else is failing and when you and those helping have no clue, look in the viewer’s log files. The viewer has various log files you can read to get an idea of what has gone wrong. Look at the log immediately after you crash or exit the viewer. Logs are replaced the next time a viewers starts. You’ll find the logs in:

C:\Users\[Win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\

 

• crashreport.log – This log is generated when the viewer crashes, the previous version of the file is overwritten. Rename this file if you plan to restart the viewer before examining the file. Otherwise, just read it with a text viewer (Notepad is good).
• debug_info.log – This file is internally formatted as an XML file. I never find it of much use. It is mostly the specs of your machine.
• SecondLife.log – This is the main log file. I find it the most useful. Start from the end of the file and work toward the beginning. Search for ‘WARNING’ and ‘ERROR’. With any luck the messages there will give you an idea of the problem. Recent changes have added section heading to parts of the file that can identify the general nature of the problem. There are lots of performance stats included.  At the end of a non-crash log there are secession stats;  Run Time, Average Packet Size, Dropped Packets, Resent Packets, etc. The file is replaced and recreated for each viewer secession.
• SecondLife.error_marker – I don’t know what information is inside. I don’t have a copy to examine as I write this.  The presence of the file indicates where, when, and what error happened. I think this is a disaster backup file for crash reporting in which information about the crash is retained in the event the crash handlers are destroyed before they can create the other more complete crash files.
• SecondLife.start_marker – There is no information inside. The presence of the file indicates how far into the start process the viewer has gotten. Whether the file exists or not is the pertinent information.
• SecondLifeCrashReport.log – This is another file internally formatted to XML.  It is created when the viewer crashes. I think this is the new version of the crash log. It is mostly text.
• stats.log – This is a short file containing network statistics. Similar information is in other log files. It is an easy to read set of stats that show how many packets were dropped and resent in a secession.

I find the SecondLife.log is the most useful file for tuning and troubleshooting the viewer. It is verbose and reasonably easy to understand. There is a Debug Setting that allows you to increase or decrease the level of reporting.

Most of these files are erased when the viewer starts. If you plan to send the files in with a trouble ticket or bug report, place copies in another folder before starting the viewer.

Marker files are temporary and may or may not exist at any given time.

Entries in the files associated with errors and warnings are labeled as such. That makes them easy to find by searching. Warning entries are common and do NOT necessarily mean there is a problem. Some warnings are a part of normal operation. Some errors are trivial and do not indicate a ‘noticeable’ problem in the viewer’s operation.