"Haystack Hair" problem

[StellaNorthwood]

Hello all. I'm a recently returned resident who is having hair problems all of a sudden :).

I just came back after a hiatus of years (and I wasn't a real regular user back then) and of course raided the freebies right away trying to make a decent-looking avatar.

I found some great stuff and all was well for approximately 5 days until my hair suddenly went haywire.

To be more specific, I obtained two new items of nice "flexi" hair (not listed as demos) that after looking fine for days suddenly turn my head into what looks like a haystack when I put them on.

I don't have pictures to post right now as I'm not at that computer but the hair has become a giant pile all over my head and face. It doesn't move anymore, and looks a bit square.

One of the "haystack hairs" is the same color as the original hair was and the other is a weird mosaic rainbow-colored pile of hay when previously it was red.

In addition, my original avi hair (Maria?) was brown and is now a weird blue/coral/white mosaic pattern.
And I'm seeing the mosaic coloratin on some of the scenery prims inworld as well.

Does anyone know what causes "haystack head"  and/or this weird mosaic color thing, and how to fix it?
I didn't change any settings from the install other than the max complexity setting and after this happened I put it back where it was. It didn't help.

I do have some other hair and so far those are fine.

Thanks in advance,
Stella

Edited October 16, 2017 by StellaNorthwood

[Skell Dagger]

Run some tests on your graphics card. Sounds like it could be on its way out.

[AnnistynSL]

I had the same problem. It happened when I put my viewer on a lower graphic setting. Then the hair looked really bad. I put ithe setting one higher, and it looked normal again. 

Maybe that's the problem? 

Edited October 16, 2017 by AnnistynSL

[StellaNorthwood]

I figured it out ! . Something was corrupted in the cache and when I found a  "clear the cache " button, cleared it ,and restarted the program my hair came back!

Everything is looking more normal now, no more mosaics.

I also found that SL was using the  Intel graphics and not the GPU (its a laptop with a discrete GPU) so I  tinkered with the settings and forced SL to use the GPU and things are drawing a lot faster now.