Please please somebody help me! cant stay online!

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

I am unable to play unless i use the meerkat viewer and it goes sooo slow and wont load all the images. i have tried updateing my graphics driver and then it said i didnjt have a compatible one. i had played for three months with no problems then al of a sudden i can log on and a minute later I am kicked off with a crash>> i am so frustrated and mad. i just wanna play again. please help me i am running w xp pro and have a dell with a graphics card radeon x300 and have pentium 4 processor with 3.49 ghz and 1.00gb please i am begging anyone help ?

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I did a search for your graphics card and found that your card is an AGP card which is all but obsolete anymore.  AMD/ATI has moved the drivers to what they call "legacy"..........meaning the driver support is limited for that card.  Here's the link:

 

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Legacy/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.21〈=English

 

I didn't know your operating system but it appears not to matter since the your driver is listed for all but Win7 (unless, of course you are running Win7).  What I would do is download the driver for your card and save it to my hard drive.  Then following the instructions for upgrading you driver found on the same page I'd reinstall the driver to see if it helps.  But, you may be out of luck with that card.  The information I read on the specifications page during my search says it has "OpenGL support" but does not say what OpenGL version.  SL pretty much requires OpenGL 2.0 or better.......OpenGL 3.2 is the latest.  You might be able to help yourself stay on without crashing so often or quickly by lowering all your graphics settings in preferences to the lowest settings........then, one feature at a time, slowly set the setting up a small amount until you start crashing again (then back off to the point of no crashes).

 

Wish I had a better outlook for you but SL requires a fairly current computer with at least medium level graphics capabilities for a reasonably trouble free experience.

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

thank you but i have already updated the driver then sl said it was incompatible and it was a 2010 version then i went back to old one and crasjh again i dont get it i was on here for months then all of a sudden crash crash crash

i am so upset i dontknopw what to do i have tried lowering all graphics and no help

[Sharcel Bellic]

Have you tried clearing your cache?

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

yes , sorry i should have mentioned that before i have cleaned both caches on the viewer, on my browsers, i have used atf cleaner to clean my comp temp files, i have done everything except throw the comp in the road. i am so sad i was so excited when i got this comp and started sl because before that i had a hewlit packard that had win me on it and i could do nothing at all game wise or anything else. now this is a farely new comp and it is a nice one and has extra memory thought it had a good graphics card, and now i am left with nothing i am so so sad..... could it have been the region i was in the time before i started havin this problem ?? i was in an adult area. could i have gotten a virus from there or in the viewer or soemthing along those lines?? i am not sure.. and i dont understand why it will load in meerkat and nothing else are there better versions of third party viewers out there that i can try>?? i have tried meerkat, emerald, and the 2.0 sl viewer.please any help is appreciated.. also i think it is worth mentioning that i have also tried to create a new account and see if it woudl work then. it didnt ty again

[Sharcel Bellic]

Can you copy the info about your system from Help About Second Life and paste it here?

Have you done a "Detach All" to remove all attachments?

Do you get an error message when you are "kicked off with a crash"? If so, what is the exact text of the error message?

Exactly what version of video driver are you using?  Did you update from Microsoft or did you got to the ATI site to get the updated driver?

What anti-malware software are you using?

Have you been successfully using SL on the pentium 4 computer with the x300 for months? If so, with what viewer?

Next time you buy a computer you might want to ask for advice on what to buy from the SL user community before buying it.

Basically, no one should be buying any systems with AGP cards now.  They are long obsolete.

What firewall do you use?

Do you have windows set on automatic update?

Have you got your ports properly opened?

Have you checked that your fans are clean and spinning freely?

What all viewers do you currently have installed?

Do you have the cache folders shared by different viewers?

Have you tried deleting your settings.xml file(s)?

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

ok lets see,

first: yes i will try and get on long enough to write down the info you need from sl viewer.

yes i have managed to remove everything i had on at one point and all that happened was i was naked the next time i crashed.

the onlymessage i get when i crash is " second life has crashed do you want to send a error report" and sometimes if i try and x out before it crasehs or try and minimize the window so maybe it wont crash it crashes and says second life froze or crashed "

I did another update of my driver and have yet to try sl again since but the driver i have at this moment is ATI Radeon X300/X550/X1050 Series Version 8.593.100.0 date 2/10/2010 i updated directly from ati website.

i am using avast Anti virus but yes i have tried playing while it is disabled and still crash crash and had this installed before using sl for the first time.

YES, that is what is bothering me sooo badly because i have always had this setup (well before i updated driver was X300/X550/X86 SSE2 ) and this processor and comp and os.

I have same amount of memory as i did when i first started playing.... and I have always used the viewer from sl.com not the new one but the current viewer that is not beta 1.23 something i believe.

I bought htis comp from a friend i am a single mom and a full time student so this was a huge upgrade for me and i was soo excited... it runs really well and havent had problems till now... and i am kinda a comp dummy so i wouldnt have know what to ask him about when i bought it,,

i use windows firewall and before when it was working(sl) i had it to where it was allowed by the firewall.

yes windows update is set to automatic

i am comp iliterate so can you explain in detail what you mean by ports open?? and how i can open them if they are not?

i am going to check the inside of the comp first thing in the morning , but i am just afraid of messing somehting up when i get inside there.as far as i can tell they dont run all the time constantly or nonstop

currently i have no viewers installed nor do i have sl installed although i am getting ready to try a clean install once again and see if i have any luck i keep praying that it will magically fix itself

no there are no viewers yet and i dont plan on downloading any but the one from sl unless you think it will help??

where exactly are the settings.xml files??

 

thank you so much for being so thourogh and really caring i appreciate it very much you are awesome

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

second life 1.23.5(136262) Oct 14,2009 12:08:26(second life release) release notes  built with MSVC version 1400   CPU:Intel Pentium 4 (Unkown model) (3391 MHZ) Memory : 1023 MB OS Version : Microsoft windows xp service pack 3(build 2600) graphics card vendor :ATI technologies inc.  Graphics card : ATI radeon X300/X550/X1050 Series  Windows graphics driver version: 8.593.100-100210a-095952E-ATI  Open gl version:2.1.8545 release  libcurl version : libcurl/7.18.1openssl/0.9.8jzlib/1.2.3 j2C Decoder version :KDU Audio driver version - 2.01.31499 (mozilla gre version 1.8.1.21_0000000000)

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

i was just thinking since sl uses a browser(ie:firefox) do you think i should uninstall my browser and reinstall:: do you think that would do anything:

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Hey Hotmomma,

   Am also currently using a machine using the ATi x300 graphics card - good to see you out there.  Unlike you am using only a 1.73GHz Pentium M on a laptop - so it is possible!  Am also on mobile broadband and get 800K if I am lucky, 40K if I am not and am running Windows XP.  And, hey, Second Life actually runs surprisingly.  Yes it is laggy even on a modified 'Low' Graphics settings but it does work and doesn't log me off much.  And I run Avast Anti-Virus and a firewall so clearly that isn't the problem.  Am even running Viewer 2.0 at times and it runs slower, but works.

  Would suggest you look at what else is running on your machine - often other processes can often hog resources Second Life needs.

  But at least this shows you that Second Life is not picking on your graphics card - best of luck in finding out what is affecting it.

  I would also suggest you use Second Life's own browser and kill any Firefox sessions before using it as Firefox can really consume resources at times.

[Faubio Alter]

To get this PC to work will be a real achievement. You will need to optimize this PC to the fullist extent, if it will work even then. You might try these suggestions:

http://sites.google.com/site/powerlinks7/second-life-combat-optimizations

I would not expect much even fully optimmized.

You might even ask advise from some PC over clockers concerning that graphics card.

I would also suggest your try another viewer other then the SL Beta 2.

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

i am not using beta 2 i am unable to even get the log on screen to load w that one.. but i feel better to know that sl has not changed everything and that is why i am unab;e to play. so see it is not my comp just someting on my comp. now to figure out what?? does anyone have any duggestions?? i have uninstalled all software that i know of that i had installed hust before the prob started.. would a windows update have maybe caused it?? thank you so much in letting me know i am not alone now i dont feel so hopeless. do you think it is something wrong with my account?? like where i was when i logged off before the prob maybe there was a virus?? ty again

[TC Short]

SL only uses a browser for certain things, not to actually run the viewer. I doubt uninstalling/reinstalling a browser would make any difference.

[Sharcel Bellic]

Do you have Quicktime installed?  Is so you could try uninstalling it.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

There is one other possibility that I just thought of with your video card.  I'm not putting your card down but it's an old card and you say you got it second hand from a friend.  Video cards heat up when they are rendering your graphics........the more they have to work to render the graphics the hotter they get (perfectly normal for any graphics adapter (onboard or discrete).  SL is one of the most graphically intensive programs you can find that is available for the average person...........it will put any card high or low end through the ringer as far as rendering is concerned (the higher end cards will handle that load easier than a low end but all cards available today will heat up more using SL than they will for any others graphics program I know of).  All that means is you may be overheating your card causing your crashes.  Every card has an upper threshold which, when reached, they should shut down to protect themselves from destruction.  That may be happening in your case.

 

What I'm suggesting is that you clean the inside of your computer case.  Get a can of compressed air from your local office supply or computer supply store (Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, and many other carry compressed air for that purpose........I only suggest you stick with major brands to stay away from air that is not properly dried (you don't want to be spraying moisture laden air onto the components inside your computer case).  Blow out all the dust on all the circuit boards, cables, nooks and crannies.......don't get the nozzle so close to the parts that the pressure will damage the parts.  Also,  remember the air coming out of the can is extremely cold and will cause moisture in the ambient air to condense on the components......keep the nozzle about 6 inches from anything.  Blow air through all the fans (including the CPU fan and your graphics card fan if it has one).  Get the fans spinning to make sure they turn freely (no it does not cause harm for the fans to turn backward).  Don't forget your power supply and it's fan.  If you haven't done this before or it's been a while, you might want to do it outside...........computers are dust magnets and there will be a surprising amount of dust inside even in a very clean environment.  The process is not hard.  Just take the side off the computer after you've unplugged everything.  Make sure you discharge any static electricity you may have built up in your body by touching a metal part of the case before reaching inside with any thing (the can of air included).  When you're done, put the side back on and plug everything back in and boot your system back up and check SL.  Hopefully that will help.

 

There is the possibility that your card is dying on you too................I know you don't want to hear that but if your card has been overheated repeatedly in the past it could be damaged beyond repair.  You say it's a used card.  You have no idea how the card was used nor any maintenance (such as regular cleaning, updating, etc) so it's possible, even though you have not overheated the card, it could have been in the past........if it was a frequent thing then the card will suffer and eventually fail.  Hopefully that's not the case.

 

One more thing I just thought of.  You didn't say what the onboard video RAM is for the card.  The overview I read about the card says it comes with 64 megs, 128 megs, or 256 megs.  The more video RAM you have the better the card will perform.  Even at the 256 megs your card will have to take some of your system RAM to render the graphics.  I think you said you have 1 gig of system RAM in one of your posts.  That is pretty low for both XP and SL to run............I forget what XP needs but I think it's about 500 megs (if memory serves me) and SL wants about 300 megs to run (that's not including the video memory to do the rendering of the graphics).  That puts you at about 800 megs for those two programs.  Throw in the video and your system and your video ram are maxed out..........everything slow downs after that.  Things have to start being temporarily stored on your hard drive (called virtual RAM or swap files, or paging files).  That process is significantly slower than your main memory (RAM)...........your computer may reach a point where it's doing too much and can't keep up and has to shut something down such as SL (you will see that as a crash).  The fix for that is pretty easy but you need to know what kind of RAM you computer has.  RAM is cheap......if your computer can handle it get another 2 gigs of RAM.  If not get as much as your computer's motherboard will handle.  Depending on the type of RAM you can find modules as cheap as $50 per gig (with shopping).  You cannot have too much RAM (though 32 bit operating systems will only see about 3 1/2 gigs).  Just another thought

 

Well, windy me..........hope I didn't confuse and maybe something I said will help. 

 

Hotmomma.SecretSpy wrote:

 

i am not using beta 2 i am unable to even get the log on screen to load w that one.. but i feel better to know that sl has not changed everything and that is why i am unab;e to play. so see it is not my comp just someting on my comp. now to figure out what?? does anyone have any duggestions?? i have uninstalled all software that i know of that i had installed hust before the prob started.. would a windows update have maybe caused it?? thank you so much in letting me know i am not alone now i dont feel so hopeless. do you think it is something wrong with my account?? like where i was when i logged off before the prob maybe there was a virus?? ty again

[Hotmomma SecretSpy]

thank you so much everyone who was encouraging and helpful... ITS FIXED!!!! i dont know why or how?? but it is running smoothly again/// but i did save it to a different spot this time i saved it to the desktop.. which i dont know if it helped or not but then i had like a millilion things on the desktop when i was done.. so i am gonna try a install in the normal spot and see what happens cross your fingers thanks again and i hope my trouble will help someone else who needs it .

[followmeimthe Piedpiper]

https://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/14570?tstart=0

I had EXACTLY the same problem, see this thread Crash crash crash