Viewer Keeps Crashing?

[LilMsAngelBear]

I have only been on SL for ONE day.. I signed off so I could restart my computer because it was lagging and now I can not get onto SL at all. Half the time the viewer crashes other times it takes me to the log in screen then STARTS to log on but then I get a pop up saying that something has made the program stop working -__- This is REALLY making me angry, I have been dying to get on SL and its not working!

 

What should I do?

[Jenni Darkwatch]

You might want to try clearing the viewer cache, possibly the settings too. Clearing cache can (mostly) be done from within the viewer in Preferences->Setup. Clearing preferences depends on what OS you use.

[LilMsAngelBear]

Alright I will try that, if it doesn't work I will let you know. 

 

Edit:

 

I tried it and it did not work ;(

[solstyse]

The more technical info you post, the more we'll be able to help.

what viewer are you using? what operating system? What hardware? what is the specific error message?

 

[LilMsAngelBear]

Im running on a windows 7 starter OS, using google chrome, my laptop is an acer aspire one and it keeps telling me that the app is crashed.

 

I can get to the log in screen but if I try to play it crashes halfway through the load up.

[Qie Niangao]

As you've probably already gathered, SL is going to be a bit of a stretch for this machine, but you had it running, so it must be possible to get it running again.

Even from the login screen, before trying to actually login, you can get a nice bunch of details about your machine that may help figure out what's going on. Go to the menubar "Help", choose "About Second Life", then from the resulting "ABOUT SECOND LIFE" window use the "Copy to Clipboard" button and paste those contents into a reply here.

Meanwhile, if you haven't already, you might try completely uninstalling and reinstalling the SL viewer by following the Windows 7 steps in this knowledge base article (which goes beyond clearing the cache to also clear settings / preferences as Jenni suggested).

[LilMsAngelBear]

Second Life 3.4.5 (270263) Feb 12 2013 04:43:00 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

CPU: Intel® Atom CPU N2600 @ 1.60GHz (1596.01 MHz)
Memory: 1013 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel Corporation
Graphics Card: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 Series

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.14.0008.1075
OpenGL Version: 3.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Built with MSVC version 1600

[Qie Niangao]

Thanks for those details. It looks to me that this is probably the model AOD270-1410, which is a nice little netbook... but it is a netbook, with an Atom processor, only 1 GB of RAM and integrated graphics. Still, we know SL worked on it at one point, so I'd be very interested what happens after that complete uninstall and re-install.

My best wild guess would be that a graphics setting got changed and is preventing the viewer from starting, and that the clean reinstall will undo the settings change.

Failing that, we might need to look into the viewer's console log to see if it contains any hints, but if it comes to that, I'm hoping somebody who actually runs Windows will take on this problem.

(Incidentally, Intel does have a more recent driver for the GMA 3600, but I wouldn't recommend installing it because Acer doesn't show it as a download on their website, so it's possible that for this hardware they may depend on something specific to the release you already have installed. And again, we know it worked with the current drivers.)

[solstyse]

I respectfully disagree with Qie. I think you should Set a restore point, get the new driver, and if you don't like it, simply use the restore point to get your computer back to normal. I'm on a computer that only works because of a driver that HP doesn't support.

Also, not just for SL, but because you're running Win7. Your machine will be MUCH happier if you double your ram. It's an inexpensive upgrade. If you don't want to open the computer, then get a usb stick or sd card that can run ReadyBoost. then after you figure out what's making SL crash, your experience will be much better.

[AnaLucia Gothly]

This has been happening to me too. I had no problems with SL until today. Here's my situation:

I logged on a couple of hours ago and the region where I last was was really lagging. Which is really odd because it has never lagged before. So I'm waiting patiently for everything around me to fully load, then suddenly a lot of users started complaining about numerous supposed crashes of SL. Users randomly started disappearing too and some of them came back after a few minutes, some of them didn't. Then all of a sudden, I was kicked off aswell and found myself repeatedly trying to login with no succes. Just after logging in when that bar has fully loaded and I'm expecting to see my avatar again, the damn viewer crashes on me and all I see is a crash report on my MacBook dock, that disappears as soon as it appeared.

So what is really going on? I have been trying to find out anything fishy about SL's server for a few hours now and no one else besides us seems to be having this problem? 

 

 

[solstyse]

The last few days, I had some random crashes too. But I was able to log right back in, so i didn't look too closely into it. I just assumed it was on my end. Guess not.

[Qie Niangao]

---

I think you should Set a restore point, get the new driver, and if you don't like it, simply use the restore point to get your computer back to normal. I'm on a computer that only works because of a driver that HP doesn't support.

Also, not just for SL, but because you're running Win7. Your machine will be MUCH happier if you double your ram. It's an inexpensive upgrade. If you don't want to open the computer, then get a usb stick or sd card that can run ReadyBoost. then after you figure out what's making SL crash, your experience will be much better.

---

In fact, I agree with both of these suggestions, but I'd wait until we get SL running again before trying them, only because we know it worked before and, for me, I'd try to get back to that state before working on improving the experience.

I guess, if we simply can't figure out how to get SL running on this machine as-is, it would be just as well to try these changes. The memory expansion, in particular, is something that will greatly improve the overall experience with this machine, even if it never runs SL again.

(A bit more about that Intel graphics driver. There are three versions of interest:

• 8.14.8.1065 dated 1/2/2012 on Intel's site, listed as the previous version
• 8.14.8.1075 dated 3/20/2012 on Acer's site -- not shown on Intel's site; installed currently
• 8.14.8.1089 dated 11/12/2012 on Intel's site, listed as the latest version.

I can imagine two possibilities for this .1075 version: maybe it includes modifications specific to the Acer hardware, or maybe it was so screwed-up that Intel dropped it from their download listings.)

[Nalates Urriah]

LiIMs, 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... before logging in 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.

I've been crashing like crazy with the Main, Beta, and Dev SL Viewers. 10 to 30 minutes is all I can stay on. The logs say there is a problem with image size (0x0x1px).