Second Life gives me an error message about mangled network data. What does this mean?

[Lexie Linden]

What is mangled network data and why do I have it?

[Ayana Auer]

Second Life has detected corruption in either your network transmissions or the files it's attempting to read on your hard drive. You might also be logging in from an invalid location.

The following things might help:

• Try logging in from a different location.
• You might perform a traceroute to identify potential problems on your connection. See How do I check for packet loss (network lag)? for details on traceroutes.
• If you haven't done so already, try uninstalling Second Life (Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel), then install a fresh copy from http://secondlife.com/download.
• Try running the defragment utililty for your hard drive. (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter)