Taking off mesh clothing or hud sends screen to black REPEATEDLY

[Chic Aeon]

So I was trying to help a friend with his avatar and his new BOM mesh body that he won.  

To make it simpler and to try and get his old look back (or something similar hopefully) I put him in an old outfit from Glytch hunting days :D. So far so good. 

BUT each time I took off a piece of mesh clothing my graphics card cut out and my screen went black with a "no signal" message. This happened three times in a row.  

I then logged myself in and took off a hud with no problem, teleported out (we were on the same region) and paid some rent and teleported back. No issues and I haven't been having any issues. 

Then I logged him in again and ATTACHED the hud that would open the mesh body (it was not in the series of events before this) and opened the hud.  It appeared to open but then the screen crashed again immediately.  I haven't seen any post about anything like this.  IDEAS?   

Same computer, same sim. He was fine with no problems before this.   I thought it might have something to do with his outfit being OLD, but then when the week old hud attaching crashed again -- not likely. 

 

So if anyone has any input please let me know.   I have left him in  a mess.   I would have him log in on his computer but he doesn't have SL on his new one yet and has RL work to do.   Doesn't seem computer oriented though or "Chic" would be having issues too seemingly. 

 

********** An hour later:

 

This appears to be a Firestorm issue as things have been working fine now in the Linden viewer (latest update as it just installed).  Very odd. No clue really.

And I so VERY VERY much dislike EEP. It is missing the Black to White ramp for one thing. I DO like the way the sun angle works === but not at the price of what is no longer available :D.    

Edited June 8, 2020 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Chic Aeon]

Adding a bit more info from today in case it is important to someone down the line.

Today, the avatar I redid yesterday did fine in Firestorm with only one blackscreen with need to reboot crash (well fine maybe isn't the right word but WAY better than yesterday). The crash came when I tried to use the built in posestand. 

 

This evening I tried to update MY new male mesh body with a favorite old system skin (Maxwell).  I repeated the issues of yesterday with many crashes and then switched to the Linden viewer with no problems (the same as yesterday).   Crashes came this evening with trying to add tattoo layers (OLD system textures).  I wasn't adding any mesh at all.  So this is not an account issue.  It "could" have something to do with the particular mesh body but the complexity is somewhere around 21000 (it tells you in chat when you make changes).  I also crashed when trying to move the mesh eyes (not ones that came with the body).  

 

So that's my report.   I did NOT have any of these problems a couple of weeks ago when I first got the body.  Then though I used NEW BOM skins. Not sure that is relevant but both of the crashing stylings were using five year old system skins == so maybe. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

Here is my update on this and where I am.  

It got so that me as Chic  -- not dealing with any making of alternate avatars or redoing my friend's avatar) was crashing.  Yesterday Chic logged on and sat on a hay bale and immediately crashed to black screen. WELL THAT'S NOT GOOD.

 

So I did a complete  clean install of the newest Firestorm.    That worked pretty well yesterday when I wasn't doing too much, and not too bad today but I did crash to black once.  Logic tells me that since I only crash when in Firestorm and no other program that it is linked to Firestorm ---- BUT since all but on of the crashes were on my store sim, it could be a server issue. The other (one time only) crash was at Apple Fall and we might be on the same server channel. 

 

I am going to wait and see how this turns out but I don't see many options really. The previous BOM FS release had that very nasty line in camera shots so I don't want to go back there.    It could also be a conflict with Win10 and FS since there have been a lot of Windows updates lately and this is a new phenomena. It doesn't appear to be my graphics card and I am happy about that.  So just updating this. 

 

If anyone else has been having this issue I would certainly like to know.    

I DO have a "stand alone' (that was the advertisement anyway) version of FS on my computer. I haven't tested to see if it is still working now that I did that clean install. I also defragged. Again, no issues on any other programs including the Linden viewer.  To be fair though I wasn't IN the Linden viewer all that long LOL.

 

 

[Nova Convair]

Black screen happens when the graphics driver crashes. Since the driver restarts - the computer will not crash but the viewer may or may not survive.
That can be verified by inspecting the system logs.

That can be a viewer issue. I never have this Issue and I don't read any posts here complaining about it, so it's your computer it seems. It can still be a viewer issue that requires a very special setup. Maybe you maxed the texture memory in FS without having sufficient memory. Maybe it's a heat issue or one of the other 100 possibilities.

Maybe compare the settings of LL and FS viewer and setup the FS viewer the same way as LL and see if it makes a difference.

[Chic Aeon]

Yes, knew and noted that it is a graphics issue, thanks.  I have never had this problem before -- until I installed the newest FS viewer a week or so ago.  I haven't changed any viewer settings and used a restore from the end of May when I installed.   I have done the viewer comparisons between LL viewer and FS viewer before for other problems and it gave no hints. There are just WAY too many differences between  LL an FS viewers even when the settings are identical.  

 

So yes I know it is very difficult to pin down :D.  I was doing a lot in the night and didn't crash (knocking on virtual wood) BUT I was over at the Hop and Shop and not on my store sim.  So will watch that as the server code could indeed be part of the crashing.   

 

When I have had these long term graphics issues in the past (most recently about a year ago dealing with sudden abysmal frame rates and redrawing and GRAY) the problem eventually "fixed itself" with no input or viewer changes from me (I had given up trying). So it is likely this will be one of those cases -- hopefully a quicker fix than last time :D.  

 

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

I can't find any viewer crashes from Chic in Bugsplat. Please make sure that you have crash reporting enabled & "Include Second Life name" enabled under Preferences -> Crash Reports, otherwise I can't find any crashes registered to you.
However when the viewer crashes because the graphics driver crashed, there won't always be a viewer crash logged.  It's a timing issue whether the crash registers as a viewer crash in the graphics driver or the viewer just freezes when the graphics driver crashes & no crash report will be sent.

Look in Windows event viewer to see if you can find any details about the crashes.
Instructions:
https://www.ideateinc.com/blog/2014/05/use-windows-event-viewer-to-help
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/windows-10-crash-log.html (Ignore the advert at the top)

From your symptoms it does sound like the graphics driver is crashing. It could also be a hardware issue with a failing graphics card or power supply etc or the system is overheating or a software issue with the graphics driver or Firestorm or another program running at the same time as the viewer (eg Chrome).
Troubleshooting the cause of sudden graphics driver crashes is always a bit of a nightmare as there can be so many causes.
Hopefully the Windows event viewer will give some clue as to the type of graphics driver crash.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Also, can you go to Help -> About Firestorm.
"Copy to clipboard" & paste all your system information here.

[Chic Aeon]

On 6/13/2020 at 9:23 AM, Whirly Fizzle said:

I can't find any viewer crashes from Chic in Bugsplat. Please make sure that you have crash reporting enabled & "Include Second Life name" enabled under Preferences -> Crash Reports, otherwise I can't find any crashes registered to you.
However when the viewer crashes because the graphics driver crashed, there won't always be a viewer crash logged.  It's a timing issue whether the crash registers as a viewer crash in the graphics driver or the viewer just freezes when the graphics driver crashes & no crash report will be sent.

Look in Windows event viewer to see if you can find any details about the crashes.
Instructions:
https://www.ideateinc.com/blog/2014/05/use-windows-event-viewer-to-help
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/windows-10-crash-log.html (Ignore the advert at the top)

From your symptoms it does sound like the graphics driver is crashing. It could also be a hardware issue with a failing graphics card or power supply etc or the system is overheating or a software issue with the graphics driver or Firestorm or another program running at the same time as the viewer (eg Chrome).
Troubleshooting the cause of sudden graphics driver crashes is always a bit of a nightmare as there can be so many causes.
Hopefully the Windows event viewer will give some clue as to the type of graphics driver crash.

 

Here is all that info. I should preface this though that SINCE THE LAST SERVER UPDATE I haven't have any black screen crashes (please note virtual knocking on wood going on).   I had one regular crash at a busy event but just had to relog. 

 

Also checked on overheating etc and that was all very good. 

 

Here is computer info.  

Firestorm 6.3.9 (58205) May 27 2020 01:20:51 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at 33.0, 32.2, 21.5 in Carbonara located at sim10683.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.53.45:13010)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Carbonara/33/32/22
(global coordinates 164,897.0, 299,552.0, 21.5)
Second Life Server 2020-06-05T19:36:41.543337
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3298.09 MHz)
Memory: 16286 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 18362.900)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 980/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 26.21.14.3200
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 432.00

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.08
Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 2560x1377 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1.5
Draw distance: 120 m
Bandwidth: 1500 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: 2048 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2020-6-12T15:31:16 
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 0/1,545 (0.0%)
June 16 2020 10:29:24 SLT

 

I do have reporting enabled but these were all black screen - reboot crashes (graphics card) not typical ones. 

 

This is what I see in the event viewer.

Example 

 

The last few days I have been mostly over at the hop and shop but did tons  of camming and teleporting and such. Also in other sims and my store sim (where almost all black screen crashes occurred) with no issues (again knocking on wood). 

LOGICALLY (not techwise) it "seems like there was some kind of conflict between that previous server code and FS.  And now hopefully it is fixed.  I say that because I had no issues with the Linden viewer when I had been crashing continuously (like four or five times in a row in minutes) in the FS viewer.  

No crashes or issues of any kind in any other software including other games. 

 

So that's all I know for now.  I would have written back sooner but didn't get any notifications from tagging  :D.   Thanks. Hopefully this is solved. 

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Chic Aeon
spelling and adding info

[Rachel1206]

18 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

 

This is what I see in the event viewer.

Example 

 

ESENT errors are normally Windows services for indexing, property caching, search, which indicate there are problems with either (most likely) the databases used internal by Windows or hard disk faults ( maybe even errors in hardware).

[Chic Aeon]

I had a hard time finding this thread again (not a good forums searcher) but wanted to update.

Since doing a clean install of  FS and since an update in the server code I have been doing fine --- UNTIL THIS MORNING. 

 

LOL. There is a bit more to the story. I was looking for land and went to check out a listing here in the forums. I went to the office of the land company no problem but when I went to the land itself (an eighth of a sim ) I crashed immediately. The same black screen and need to do a hard reboot to get back. I again as "normal" when crashing made my Windows panes VERY SMALL.  So the same issue. It also told me again that my driver was outdated (it is up to date). 

 

After a few tries I logged into my home sim and all was fine. I rented a homestead later that morning and have been working there going back and forth between my home sim and the new sim  with no issues. I am VERY happy about that. So this can't JUST be a FS issue. It must have something to do with the server code.   

 

That is the extent of my techie knowledge but documenting in case it will help someone else along the way. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

The closest I can get to what you have been experiencing is on a machine of mine that I have recently discovered has a Chinese fake GTX1050, not a real one. If I visit places with large mesh structures I can get anything from a black screen for a few seconds to a full Crash to Desktop followed by an NVidia driver restart popup. My only workaround for this is to use the 32-bit viewers that Singularity, Firestorm, and Catznip offer. But for how much longer?

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

The closest I can get to what you have been experiencing is on a machine of mine that I have recently discovered has a Chinese fake GTX1050, not a real one. If I visit places with large mesh structures I can get anything from a black screen for a few seconds to a full Crash to Desktop followed by an NVidia driver restart popup. My only workaround for this is to use the 32-bit viewers that Singularity, Firestorm, and Catznip offer. But for how much longer?

 

Well except for that ONE sim a few days ago I seem to be doing fine again. It "could" have been some nasty mesh -- at least this last time. Before though it was definitely (when it started) related to me DOING something in the viewer.  I moved to a new sim this weekend and so far (fingers crossed) I have had no issues.  I won't have anyone else's mesh to deal with here happily so that cuts out one possibility.   Glad you found some sort of work around.  

 

Reviewing this whole process, I am inclined to believe that it had something to do with my having the "stand alone" Opensim Firestorm on this computer along side of the SL Firestorm. That was supposed to work just fine, and did for many months until I installed the latest Firestorm.    After my clean install my OS viewer is gone but I am not logging in there lately so hopefully that wont be an issue.  

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

39 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Reviewing this whole process, I am inclined to believe that it had something to do with my having the "stand alone" Opensim Firestorm on this computer along side of the SL Firestorm.

Ah, now that's interesting, I've also got the second FS for a standalone, but I noticed that despite what they claimed on their web page (@WhirlyFizzle), the folder you choose for the cache is not different between the two versions. If I make a cache folder Firestorm_SL, and set that in Secondlife, then make another one Firestorm_OS and set that as the current one when I log into the OS version, when I then come back and choose the SL version, the cache folder is still set to Firestorm_OS (suggesting the two different installs are sharing a common set of files in the appdata local/roaming areas). I have to do a lot of renaming folders so that I have a single FireStorm folder which is either the SL or OS one, and a third folder Firestorm_now_SL or OS to remind me which is which.

But I don't think the crashing is to do with that, I think it's to do with throwing too many large textures at the graphics card at once. I've tried reducing bandwidth to see if that allows me to throttle things but it doesn't seem to affect it. Turning off ALM to reduce the amount of textures to be thrown at the card by 60% does help considerably, until I turn it back on for safe places and then forget and go hopping around again.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Whirly Fizzle]

3 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

but I noticed that despite what they claimed on their web page (@WhirlyFizzle), the folder you choose for the cache is not different between the two versions.

Can you point me to that page?  Ta!

[Chic Aeon]

4 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

But I don't think the crashing is to do with that, I think it's to do with throwing too many large textures at the graphics card at once. I've tried reducing bandwidth to see if that allows me to throttle things but it doesn't seem to affect it. Turning off ALM to reduce the amount of textures to be thrown at the card by 60% does help considerably, until I turn it back on for safe places and then forget and go hopping around again.

I agree that heavy mesh will do this. BUT, as noted in my OP and beyond. I had been using  the previous version of FS successfully for months. I didn't change my habits (same sims visited for the most part, same viewer settings, no new software etc.) with no issues. And my crashes at the beginning where ONLY when I changed clothing on my store sim.    So "something" changed --- or seems to have --- in the latest release.  It could have been odd timing with a Win10 update that conflicted. It could be something in the new release code. So many variables.  Yhe clean install (and deletion of the OS version) seems to have fixed the problem.  VERY happy about that. 

 

Here is the info on the Opensim version that I installed. It should be noted that I installed this OS version and the SL BOM version LONG LONG after it came out. I had a few friends with issues that had to go back to the previous version, hence that.  But again, no issues FOR ME until the date of this original post.  And hopefully that black screen thing is behind me .   Also while many could use the alternate OS version for SL too, I need to be able to upload mesh and I really hate the Linden viewer. So my choice. 

 

If needed I can install the OS version on my notebook and turn down the graphics settings. The version that I have on the notebook (an old one) currently crashes my graphics card when I exit .  That is UNDOUBTEDLY a Win10 conflict as my notebook hasn't changed in a couple of years. I only read books on it.

From the FS website (toward the bottom of the post):

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-3-2-58052-with-bom/

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Can you point me to that page?  Ta!

When I went looking for it all I could find was a statement on page 2 (October 2019) referring to the inability to offer the previous build for Opensim. All I can assume is I interpreted "We will continue to host Firestorm 6.0.2.56680 on our downloads page in the Opensim section until we are able to remedy the major issues. The SL version of this update will install separately, so you can use the 6.3.2 update for SL and continue to run 6.0.2 for Opensim. " as meaning the two versions would install and use sub-components separately.

My apologies for casting any slurs upon the good people at PhoenixFirestorm.

[Chic Aeon]

Five months later and I have a bit more info on this same problem so adding here in case it helps someone.

 

1. Once I moved from my rental sim to another the problem pretty much disappeared. 

2. I would happen every now and then still  -- like weeks between times -- but my graphics card seemed to be fine and running well.

3. Paying attention to what I was doing showed that it really didn't have much to do with putting on clothing -- or at least the problem could be triggered in other ways like camming -- although tons of camming while in very busy events like Shop and Hop did NOT cause any problems for five hours of shopping.

 

Eventually I surmised and tested that it had mostly to do with particles and the viewer.    I have never had issues with particle before -- in all of twelve years or so. But after crashing setting up a Halloween exhibit that had a fog generator (old and used many times in the past) I did some tests by turning off my particles. The same areas no longer crashed me.    

 

This particle test was repeated a few times with the same results. So turning off particles will hopefully keep me OK now -- or at least it has so far.   It is still a mystery as to the WHY of things though. It all started for me after I installed the BOM Firestorm viewer.  Firestorm 6.3.9 (58205) May 27 2020 01:20:51 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support.    I have not been on the Linden viewer except to import EEP skies and don't plan to try a test on it as painful.   But something seems to have triggered a problem.

 

Not long after installing the viewer a new neighbor (with purple particle "waves") appeared and immediately after that I started noticing the issues. WHY taking off and putting on clothes triggered things, I still don't know. That has only happened once recently; other crashes were from camming or simply standing near a particle area with particles on in the viewer.

 

So for anyone finding this, try turning off particles.  

Edited November 3, 2020 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[Rachel1206]

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Five months later and I have a bit more info on this same problem so adding here in case it helps someone.

...

So for anyone finding this, try turning off particles.  

A GeForce 980 graphic card should handle particles without problems, how high is your particle count set? I use 1024 as particle count normally on my GeForce 1060 6 GB and crank it up to max, if I want see particle shows.

Now some old particle scripts are written bad with high burst rates and burst numbers, which of course will cripple any system, but a normal particle emitting system should be handled without issues by all modern high end graphic cards.

 

[Chic Aeon]

2 minutes ago, Rachel1206 said:

A GeForce 980 graphic card should handle particles without problems, how high is your particle count set? I use 1024 as particle count normally on my GeForce 1060 6 GB and crank it up to max, if I want see particle shows.

Now some old particle scripts are written bad with high burst rates and burst numbers, which of course will cripple any system, but a normal particle emitting system should be handled without issues by all modern high end graphic cards.

 

It was set automatically by the viewer at the highest level.  I never changed that.  BUT the fog generator is really OLD and I have used it for most of a decade without issues. So it really can't be the script per se OR the particle count per se as neither of those changed. SOMETHING changed and it could have been something in the viewer OR something in Win10 (just the other day I had some very different settings for my bluetooth headphones (for the better happily) so lots of interesting things happen in the background (for me). :D.

 

I agree that it SHOULD and it DID for about four years. No other issues. Can bake big files in Blender with no problem.   That's all I know. 

[Rachel1206]

24 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

It was set automatically by the viewer at the highest level.  I never changed that.  BUT the fog generator is really OLD and I have used it for most of a decade without issues. So it really can't be the script per se OR the particle count per se as neither of those changed. SOMETHING changed and it could have been something in the viewer OR something in Win10 (just the other day I had some very different settings for my bluetooth headphones (for the better happily) so lots of interesting things happen in the background (for me). :D.

 

I agree that it SHOULD and it DID for about four years. No other issues. Can bake big files in Blender with no problem.   That's all I know. 

Driver update could also be the problem, I reverted back to GeForce drivers version 451.7 from 09-07-2020, as I had problems with latest drivers and Second Life.

[Chic Aeon]

36 minutes ago, Rachel1206 said:

Driver update could also be the problem, I reverted back to GeForce drivers version 451.7 from 09-07-2020, as I had problems with latest drivers and Second Life.

Thanks but since this started in JUNE I doubt that is it. I have the current suggested one.    I am fine turning off particles unless I really need them -- so far that has worked.  Appreciate your help though.