I downloaded the SL viewer, but nothing appears when I try to open the link

[jenkin81]

i need help downloading the SL viewer, please help!

[sirdarius42]

There is a third party veiwer at http://www.firestormviewer.org/downloads/ that works until things do get resolved with the sl veiwer.

[Lindal Kidd]

Did you try clicking the big DOWNLOAD button here: https://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

That should save a file to your Downloads folder.  Then you double click that to run the installation.

Once installed, you MAY run into a problem that some people are having with the latest viewer.  The startup process may hang at the "Initializing VFS" step.  If that occurs, then try one of the third party viewers.  A list can be found here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory   The Firestorm viewer is very popular, and it's the one I use myself.

[Nalates Urriah]

First step: Check that your computer meets the System Requirements | Second Life.

Then do the download and install as Lindal Kidd says.

I would put off trying to install a 3rd party viewer until you get the main viewer working.

If you have the viewer installed, you will have viewer logs created when the viewer tries to start. Look here for a log file:

Windows 7 and Vista: C:\Users\[win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\[viewer_name]\logs\

Mac OSX: Users/Username/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/Avatarname/logs/

They are text files. Open the log and start at the end working toward the beginning, look for errors and warnings. Let us know what they are and we may be able to tell you what is happening.

We need to know details about your computer. Windwos, Linux, or Mac? Which operating system? (SL Viewer will not install on a Windows XP system without SP3). What video card and driver version?