Firestorm crashes

[KarraSue]

I am  on the latest Firestorm viewer, on a Windows 10 PC. My PC is within the specs for running SL. What happens is, after about 2 hours online, it will freeze, then crash. Has anyone else experienced this, what can I do, to resolve it

 

[Solar Legion]

As stated in another thread - if your PC is following anything at all similar to the "specs" listed on the "system requirements" page ... no it is not within the specs as those are outdated.

Your OS is only a singular part of the picture - you will end up being asked for the output of the About Firestorm menu entry.

ETA: This has nothing to do with the Server unless these crashes include a disconnection message and even then it is likely to be an issue somewhere between you and the Server. This should have been posted in either the Viewer or Tech Discussion sections.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Rowan Amore]

3 hours ago, KarraSue said:

I am  on the latest Firestorm viewer, on a Windows 10 PC. My PC is within the specs for running SL. What happens is, after about 2 hours online, it will freeze, then crash. Has anyone else experienced this, what can I do, to resolve it

 

Please do post your specs. Top menu on the viewer.. Help/About and copy that to clipboard and post it here.  There's really no other way for anyone to even begin to see where your issue might be.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[KarraSue]

19 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Please do post your specs. Top menu on the viewer.. Help/About and copy that to clipboard and post it here.  There's really no other way for anyone to even begin to see where your issue might be.

I will do that when I am back on that computer

[KarraSue]

On 9/16/2021 at 3:07 PM, Rowan Amore said:

Please do post your specs. Top menu on the viewer.. Help/About and copy that to clipboard and post it here.  There's really no other way for anyone to even begin to see where your issue might be.

Here they are

[NeoBokrug Elytis]

I hate to be brutally honest, but I would not consider your current setup as an acceptable solution to run Second Life.  You should consider upgrading.

Before I get into why your setup has issues, I will throw out the best advice I know:  Open up your PC while it's off and dust it out with a can of air.  Most programs crashing could easily be attributed to overheating.

That 13-year-old Core2Duo is really going to hurt your ability to run Second Life.  SL is mostly dependent on single thread processor speed at the time of this forum post, and I am going to also assume you have just as old of a motherboard for your setup; so the CPU talking between components are going to be agonizingly slowed down.

8 GB of RAM is what I could consider to be the bare-bones minimum to run Windows 10.

The NVIDIA GTX 730 is very old bargain GPU -- and while SL is less dependent on the GPU these days, the 4 GB of onboard GPU RAM is not doing anything to help.  I have seen single buildings in locations eat up more than half of what would be your GPU memory with textures alone.

Right now I think your PC is running out of memory in either your system RAM or GPU ram.

Edited September 20, 2021 by NeoBokrug Elytis

[Babyk Semyorka]

I have the same issue with Firestorm not responding and then crashes. Before this update, on my old computer, the not responding would at least come back and not crash. I knew my computer was old as the specs was just a little bit newer than yours. I ended up buying a newer computer with better specs like 16 GB of RAM, 11th Gen i5 processor, and can't remember what my graphics is but everything is new. I am not running on high or ultra and keeping it on mid with no lag what so ever. I still will freeze up and crash. I have went on Firestorm wiki to do everything it says to do and still freeze up and crash even when I'm at a protected land and with no lag at all. I just can't understand why this is happening unless it's this new release. I'm hoping thats all it is! HELP!!

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Babyk Semyorka said:

I have the same issue with Firestorm not responding and then crashes. Before this update, on my old computer, the not responding would at least come back and not crash. I knew my computer was old as the specs was just a little bit newer than yours. I ended up buying a newer computer with better specs like 16 GB of RAM, 11th Gen i5 processor, and can't remember what my graphics is but everything is new. I am not running on high or ultra and keeping it on mid with no lag what so ever. I still will freeze up and crash. I have went on Firestorm wiki to do everything it says to do and still freeze up and crash even when I'm at a protected land and with no lag at all. I just can't understand why this is happening unless it's this new release. I'm hoping thats all it is! HELP!!

If everything is new and shiny, than it might be your connection TO second life.  Not your connection in general to other sites but specific to LL servers.  Are you running a wired connection?  

[Babyk Semyorka]

That I'm not sure. I do have cable at speeds of 100Mbps. Let me know how I can check how to see my connection to SL and will get back with you later. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I ran a GT710 for a few months and experienced similar graphics crashes. As others have said here, a few mesh buildings, a mesh avatar with earrings that have 5 1024x1024 textures, all these are enough to tip your system over the edge.

 

As a workaround, use the third tab in Firestorm's graphics settings to limit textures to 512 pixels. You've already done the sensible thing with the draw distance and turning off ALM, so there's not much else you can do except be careful which places you visit. I ended up with a few places I could go to with no problems, and a bigger list of ones to avoid.

An old Nvidia GT520 will actually perform better than the 710/720/730 range, if you can find a reliable secondhand source for them. Beware new GT1050 cards at low prices or "refurbished" ones, they are often much lower spec cards, lower even than a GT710, with the bios faked to claim it's something like a GT 1050 . The fakers usually don't bother making their refurbished cards pretend to be GT520s, they're after bigger fish. GTX460 is another reliable performer rarely faked although it needs the pair of 6-pin leads which not all low-power PSUs can provide.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Rowan Amore]

36 minutes ago, Babyk Semyorka said:

That I'm not sure. I do have cable at speeds of 100Mbps. Let me know how I can check how to see my connection to SL and will get back with you later. 

You'd know if you were on a wired connection because there would be a line from your computer to your router/modem.  If not, you're using a wifi connection which is always less stable.  Connection stability if extremely important when running SL.  

You can pull up your statistics bar to show Ping to sim and packet loss.  Both numbers are better on the lower end.

[Babyk Semyorka]

Oh I thought you were asking about something else. I am definitely wired in. I only use my wifi for mobiles, tablets, and a laptop. I'm usually the only one that uses it unless my daughter comes in from college and she will use wifi for her laptop. 

 

[KarraSue]

On 9/20/2021 at 12:14 PM, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

I hate to be brutally honest, but I would not consider your current setup as an acceptable solution to run Second Life.  You should consider upgrading.

Before I get into why your setup has issues, I will throw out the best advice I know:  Open up your PC while it's off and dust it out with a can of air.  Most programs crashing could easily be attributed to overheating.

That 13-year-old Core2Duo is really going to hurt your ability to run Second Life.  SL is mostly dependent on single thread processor speed at the time of this forum post, and I am going to also assume you have just as old of a motherboard for your setup; so the CPU talking between components are going to be agonizingly slowed down.

8 GB of RAM is what I could consider to be the bare-bones minimum to run Windows 10.

The NVIDIA GTX 730 is very old bargain GPU -- and while SL is less dependent on the GPU these days, the 4 GB of onboard GPU RAM is not doing anything to help.  I have seen single buildings in locations eat up more than half of what would be your GPU memory with textures alone.

Right now I think your PC is running out of memory in either your system RAM or GPU ram.

Interesting, yet my older Windows 7 machine that I use all the time, with onboard Intel graphics . 80 GB hard drive and 8 GB RAM runs SL just fine

[NeoBokrug Elytis]

I was just speculating as to the reasons why Firestorm was crashing, because systems that old are going to struggle with SL.

Could be that you just need to dust the system out; and/or the thermal paste on the CPU is completely dried out after 14 years.  If you're brave and know what you're doing I would look into fixing that.

The Windows 7 machine is significantly newer than the first specs you posted, with a 10-year-old Core i3 processor.  The Core2Duo has 2 cores and 2 threads, while the Core i3 has 2 cores and 4 threads (with probably a far better chipset on the motherboard).  And while raw processor speed plays a role in how well SL runs, it still uses other cores/threads for a few tasks.  Win 7 has less system resource usage demand, and copes better with just 8gb of ram.

Now, "running SL just fine" is technically correct -- but I wouldn't say it's a good experience.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

It's most likely the GT730. Mine was bought as a supposed 730, announced as a 710 n the Bios, and crashed to black or to desktop randomly when visiting mesh-heavy regions or meeting people with mesh bodies.

The same PC with a different card (GT520) runs reliably.

[Jaylinbridges]

The GT730 is not a gaming card.  The 4 GB VRAM sounds good until you realize is it only DDR3, and not GDDR5 or better memory.  It has no fan.  Seems it works fine for a graphics work station, or watching HD movies, but it's too slow for SL and most games.  The Intel Dual core is not helping.  You could clean out any dust and try to blow some fan air at it if your ambient room temperature is high.  Note it's retail price is lower than a 30 series 2GB VRAM gaming card.  Amazon is still selling them for a non gaming desktop with HDMI and VGA outputs.  The reviews here confirm it's limitations:  

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Express-Graphics-ZT-71115-20L/dp/B00R5UW038

You could try changing the default Texture Memory settings in Firestorm.  Pref/Graphics/Hardware Settings and unclick Enable Dynamic Texture Memory, and then set Viewer Texture  Memory Buffer to 2048.  The old style memory management for FS.  That limits your VRAM to 2 GB.  

My latest FS crashes randomly about once a day, usually a graphics freeze-up that will not recover.  The old 6.3.9 version never did that. Shrugs  That only happens when I am running three accounts on the same computer w/ only 2GB VRAM.   

8GB system memory can also cause crashes w/ a 64 bit viewer. 16 GB should be the minimum requirement for SL.

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[KarraSue]

Jaylinbridges, my GT73O DOES have a fan on it. I'm leaning toward the card getting too warm causing the issue, as I installed Singularity, and was able to stay online 6 hours before it froze and crashed. Will be looking into this

My old 64 bit Win 7 machine has 8 gigs RAM, never crashes.  I'll keep plugging away hopefully solve it

 

Thanks everyone

Edited September 23, 2021 by KarraSue

[velvetgurl]

On 9/20/2021 at 6:14 PM, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

I hate to be brutally honest, but I would not consider your current setup as an acceptable solution to run Second Life.  You should consider upgrading.

Before I get into why your setup has issues, I will throw out the best advice I know:  Open up your PC while it's off and dust it out with a can of air.  Most programs crashing could easily be attributed to overheating.

That 13-year-old Core2Duo is really going to hurt your ability to run Second Life.  SL is mostly dependent on single thread processor speed at the time of this forum post, and I am going to also assume you have just as old of a motherboard for your setup; so the CPU talking between components are going to be agonizingly slowed down.

8 GB of RAM is what I could consider to be the bare-bones minimum to run Windows 10.

The NVIDIA GTX 730 is very old bargain GPU -- and while SL is less dependent on the GPU these days, the 4 GB of onboard GPU RAM is not doing anything to help.  I have seen single buildings in locations eat up more than half of what would be your GPU memory with textures alone.

Right now I think your PC is running out of memory in either your system RAM or GPU ram.

sorry i disagree i have a dated pc what runs it np at all it ran on a amd athlon dual core with 4 gig of mem and a amd graphics card a 5670 asus amd one np only with camera lag at clubs where there was a lot of avs

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, KarraSue said:

My old 64 bit Win 7 machine has 8 gigs RAM, never crashes.

Windows 10 is often doing a lot more behind the scenes that Windows 7 didn't. I've switched from Windows 10 to Linux and also seen much better stability and performance in SL.

Going back to your earlier observations that Firestorm seemed to crash after a couple of hours, and then that Singularity seemed much more reliable, I've posted elsewhere my observations that Firestorm seems to hold onto memory after leaving a busy region. This was Firestorm 64-bits on Linux. I wsn't able to compare this to Firestorm 32-bits because there isn't such a release for Linux, but why not try Firestorm 32 yourself and see if it' any improvement?

Edited September 23, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Jaylinbridges]

15 hours ago, KarraSue said:

Jaylinbridges, my GT73O DOES have a fan on it.

Yeah I just picked the first GT730 that popped up, and the ZOTAC has that big azz heat sink instead of a fan.  All the other brands have a fan. 

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=GeForce+GT+730&i=electronics&ref=nb_sb_noss

DId you try changing the texture memory in Firestorm?  That goes back to the old memory management, like Singularity and most TPV's that don't have the latest SL viewer updates.  SInce it only uses 1/2 of your VRAM for SL, it might run cooler.  The FS new default attempts to use more VRAM.

Firestorm can crash on the slightest network glitch.  When it does there is no warning.  

The other day my web DNS server went down for about 20 mins.  That was an interesting crash that took a few minutes to log me out.  IP#'s in the SL/FS code kept working, while named URL's stopped resolving.  Was more interesting since I was in the Linden Realms at the time.

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[NiranV Dean]

On 9/20/2021 at 7:14 PM, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

I hate to be brutally honest, but I would not consider your current setup as an acceptable solution to run Second Life.  You should consider upgrading.

Before I get into why your setup has issues, I will throw out the best advice I know:  Open up your PC while it's off and dust it out with a can of air.  Most programs crashing could easily be attributed to overheating.

That 13-year-old Core2Duo is really going to hurt your ability to run Second Life.  SL is mostly dependent on single thread processor speed at the time of this forum post, and I am going to also assume you have just as old of a motherboard for your setup; so the CPU talking between components are going to be agonizingly slowed down.

8 GB of RAM is what I could consider to be the bare-bones minimum to run Windows 10.

The NVIDIA GTX 730 is very old bargain GPU -- and while SL is less dependent on the GPU these days, the 4 GB of onboard GPU RAM is not doing anything to help.  I have seen single buildings in locations eat up more than half of what would be your GPU memory with textures alone.

Right now I think your PC is running out of memory in either your system RAM or GPU ram.

Running out of GPU RAM (VRAM) does not crash you, just kill your framerate. Running out of RAM is simply an out of memory crash and is the best bet here as you already explained 8GB is very little (SL easily uses 1GB to start up and load a couple few things and can quickly go up to 2GB) and apps start crashing long before your RAM is truly full (due to privately allocating memory for future use and if said allocation fails they usually crash)

[KarraSue]

On 9/23/2021 at 10:58 AM, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Windows 10 is often doing a lot more behind the scenes that Windows 7 didn't. I've switched from Windows 10 to Linux and also seen much better stability and performance in SL.

Going back to your earlier observations that Firestorm seemed to crash after a couple of hours, and then that Singularity seemed much more reliable, I've posted elsewhere my observations that Firestorm seems to hold onto memory after leaving a busy region. This was Firestorm 64-bits on Linux. I wsn't able to compare this to Firestorm 32-bits because there isn't such a release for Linux, but why not try Firestorm 32 yourself and see if it' any improvement?

Can I run 32 bit Firestorm, on a 64 bit system??  On the Win10 machine with the GT730 card , using Singularity I was averaging 60-70 FPS, with some spots higher than that. But after about 4 hours is when it did the freeze and crash. 

 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

You can run 32-bit Firestorm on a 64-bit system, but I'd expect it to crash more, not less. "The GT730" isn't really a thing, it's one of those names Nvidia unhelpfully gave to several different video cards. Looking at the driver you're running (391.35) you either have one of the older, crappier cards or your video drivers have not been updated in 3 years (seems unlikely). On the bright side, unless there's a cat stuck in your PC, it's probably not overheating.

A couple things I'd try I didn't see mentioned, first is go to https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and get the latest drivers for the GT730. The worst thing that will happen is they won't install if you have the old version of the GT730. Best case, you get much newer drivers which may solve your problems.

The second thing is run a hardware scan of your hard drive and memory. Dunno how old the drive on your PC is, but they do wear out and if it's as old as the CPU, it may be time to replace it. Especially if it's a mechanical drive. Every PC should have an SSD now. 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Looking at the driver you're running (391.35)

This is the last reliable Nvidia driver for the GT520 and GT710 cards I've been running, higher numbers have either refused to install or have installed but Windows then disables the device.

I'd recommend the OP make sure they have the necessary re-install media if they do try updating the driver.

[Rachel1206]

On 9/22/2021 at 3:23 PM, KarraSue said:

Interesting, yet my older Windows 7 machine that I use all the time, with onboard Intel graphics . 80 GB hard drive and 8 GB RAM runs SL just fine

 

Could be a simple thing as a fault in your viewers cache, try and clear cache. Windows 10 checks hard disk drives, but hard disks have limited life time and SL uses caching a lot.