Second Life viewer crashes, unable to end process forcefully

[Mellissa Gothly]

Hey guys, I just thought I would raise a thread about this since it is a really unique problem that I have never seen before. After a varied amount of time the viewer just locks up, and the next click turns the screen white as per usual with not responding windows on Windows 7. After attempting to end the task the problematic viewer remains dormant, in which Windows 7 suggests you 'End Process' the task. While this 'break the door down' method of killing programs usually works, for the Second Life Viewer it remains open, not showing the slightest bit of difference.

I have tried Process Explorer and various different taskkill commands, however the program still remains open and hanging. So far the only resolution I know is rebooting, however Windows still kicks a fuss about this showing the warning screen saying Second Life is still open and is not responding.

This problem also occurs with any 3rd Party viewers such as Firestorm which is built upon the latest Second Life client. When it is hanging there is no CPU activity coming from it, although it does retain the memory it was using, so opening a new viewer window after this crash results in a slow down.

I was wondering if anyone knows a reason why this is occuring, as much as it does not bother me it is a really confusing and intriguing problem which I have never had before. This does not occur on Linux (tested with Linux Mint 12-13). If I posted this in the wrong forum I appologise, this is one of the few times I have used the forums.

 

EDIT: Screenshot example, bear in mind this also occurs on the default viewer - http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/1451/fioedsnf.png

[Thinkerer Melville]

I have not seen a  recurring problem where Task Manager could not end the program, at least not on Win 7 --maybe on Vista.  But when a recurring failure appears after running a program for a while, the cause is often  overheating,  Be sure your fans are operating and the computer is well ventillated.  Especially the  graphics card.  And be sure the room is not too hot.  

TKR

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Hi Melissa,

Can you please post your computer specifications from Login page > Help > About Second Life. IF GPU only shows series, what specific card do you have in the series?

I suspect your graphics card is causing this, either overheating or failing, turning the screen white and locking your computer up..

I found two previous threads similar to your problem but no solutions other than those replying were thinking it was viewer issues or hardware issues. I think it's more likely hardware..

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Bug-and-Issue-Reporting/My-laptop-keeps-going-white-and-crashing/td-p/297046

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/SL-Viewer-Crashes/td-p/1083365

Download a free monitoring program called OpenHardwareMonitor and run it in the background. It will show you current and max temperatures and loads on GPU, CPU etc. Look for anything out of the ordinary such as really high GPU max temperature and let us know. If you like, post a screenshot (blank your name from the PC name at top if necessary)  http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

 Edited to correct spelling errors.

[Mellissa Gothly]

Hmm unless the graphic driver itself is faulty I wouldn't put this down as a hardware fault, because this does not occur in Linux, however that runs on a universal driver rather than a specialised driver.

I forgot to note two things, not only is my graphics card not officially supported, this started happening since mesh was introduced (I believe a crash of this nature occured on the latest Phoenix Viewer, until it suddenly stopped loading mesh). So I believe the mesh feature seems to be reacting with my graphics card, however the fact the crash happens without warning is unsual. This is kind of a reason why I am more curious than seeking a fix, because I know the nature of my card means a fix is not feasable. But I digress, here is my specifications.

 

Firestorm 4.0.1 (27000) Mar 19 2012 16:21:21 (Firestorm-Release)
Release Notes

CPU: Celeron® Dual-Core CPU       T3300  @ 2.00GHz (1995 MHz)
Memory: 3003 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Mobile Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.15.0010.2413
OpenGL Version: 2.1.0 - Build 8.15.10.2413

I'll give the program a shot when I am next online, thanks for your help.

 

My laptop can run at high temperatures, so in future when that occurs I will try cooling it down and see if that makes any difference, thank you both for your help.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Hi Melissa,

Rather than a discrete graphics card, you have an integrated system, in other words, onboard graphics where the chipset is built onto the motherboard and uses the same memory as the CPU. Running v3 viewers such as Firestorm or the official v3viewer are likely to run your laptop very hot as you've discovered and it must be overheating to the extent of crashing the viewer and laptop. Constant overheating is going to damage your hardware. I suggest you use a laptop cooler which is relatively inexpensive and also try the Phoenix v1 based viewer which should be less stressful than Firestorm.

[Toragon Arado]

I have this problem as well. I am running the latest SL viewer.

I have a Dell XPS 2nd gen quad core, NVIDA graphics card, win7 laptop from 2012 - it's a pretty high spec laptop really.

It started happening in the last year and is now not an infrequent occurance, maybe once every few weeks.

It can happen soon after log in to SL, so it's not an overheating problem on the graphics card.

The only way to get out of it for me is to reboot my laptop, I can't kill the SL process running.

I have re-installed latest SL a few times and that has not helped the situation.

I'm reluctant to mess with the graphics driver.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Toragon Arado wrote:

 

It can happen soon after log in to SL, so it's not an overheating problem on the graphics card.

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I've had cooling issues in the past, on a desktop with a passively cooled card. The temp when running SL could litterally shoot up to 90C in under a minute. So unless "soon" means 5 seconds, it could very well be an overheating issue.