Inventory broken

[Dragonlady Gothly]

Hii all,

after a crash (months ago........... second life had no sense for me to play anymore) my inventory got broken...... all the items I was wearing during the crash, lost their functions....... my weapons can't be used anymore..... my animations are without a function, my pets are not moving anymore, my sword lost the function to attack and more and more and more......

I tried to contact second life for help, cleaned my cache and tried another viewer...... as I said, this was months ago and now I wanted to try to get help again...... I would be really happy, if i could play again...... I mean, I bought many things and now this stuff is useless........ *sigh* Hope to get help from you.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

That's some serious inventory corruption. Did you complete a full uninstall including manually removing the files in AppData?

Uninstall all viewers completely including manually deleting the Second Life and any other TP viewer folders in AppData > Roaming and AppData > Local.

If AppData is hidden, you need to enable viewing. Follow the instructions for your OS here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=7422​0 or here http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial62.html

If you wish to save existing chat files you've had with other avatars, move the Roaming > [avatar name] folder elsewhere on your computer and drag any chat text files you wish to retain into the new Roaming > [avatar name] folder once Second Life is reinstalled and you've logged in at least once. Ignore if you don't want to save any.

Open C: Windows > Prefetch and delete the secondlife prefetch file.

Now download Second Life from the main download page and install it.

Log into the region Smith. If you can't change Login Location, tick the box 'Show on login' under Preferences > General > Login Location. Make sure you are in Advanced mode and not Basic prior to logging in. Allow your Inventory to load. Click the Recent tab to get this going. Once loaded, try wearing and using inventory items.

If still in trouble, hopefully others will have ideas but you may need Linden Lab help and for that you will need Premium membership. You could take it out for a month or so until Support sorts it out. 

[Rolig Loon]

Oh, my. I do sympathise with your problem.  That's a long time.

Sharing the cache folder between multiple viewers is a primary cause of “inventory loss” which many experience, although not the only cause. It also frequently results in crashes or erratic behavior. Clearing your cache manually will “cure” all manner of odd behavior and is the suggested procedure before resorting to more drastic steps like reinstalling the viewer.  This is more than just clicking the Clear Cache button.  We're not going to empty cache; we're going to remove it and force SL to build a new file.

1. Open Preferences → Network & Cache
2. Go to the first path “Cache Location” and click the “Open” button behind the path. This will open a file explorer window displaying your current cache location.
3. Logout (close the viewer) and then delete everything inside the cache folder displayed in your file explorer.

Now continue as follows:

1.Log back into SL, to a quiet region (try Smith or Pooley). On your inventory window, click “Recent Items”.
2.Wait for your inventory to repopulate fully. The process may be sped up, if necessary, by typing random letters into the search bar.
3.While inventory repopulates, do not teleport anywhere, and do not attempt to access anything in your inventory. Talk to people or surf the web, or just go out for coffee
4.Watch as it repopulates. As long as you can see (Fetched…) at the top of the inventory window, it is still loading.
5.Once inventory has repopulated, log out of SL once more, then log back in.

If this process doesn't work, then the best idea is probably to completely remove SL from your computer and reinstall ONE viewer instead of just trying to reinstall over what's already there.  Take a look at Nalates's very nicely done overview of how to do a Clean Install >>> http://blog.nalates.net/2011/02/22/second-life-clean-install/ . Your inventory should be safe in LL's servers.  A total restart should force LL to make new local copies of everything important, including your local inventory file.

[Nalates Urriah]

Rolig and Nyil's answers are pretty much right on.

To have a relevant idea of what the exact problem may be we need to know which viewer and version of it you are using.

SLViewers 2.8 and up have inventory delay and are slow loading and stall while loading. Once you see the inventory load slow down, move out of RECENT to just inventory. Type a letter in the inventory search window. Change to a different letter each time it slows. This slowing was fixed once. It seems to be back because of: VWR-25940 – “HTTP communication with grid capabilities router is unreliable at times affecting HTTP Textures”

TPV's like Kirsten's that are based on the latest code have similar problems. The inventory delay problem where a click in the inventory panel does nothing for 2 or 3 seconds is fixed by clearing the viewer's settings (how to do that without a clean install is in clean install article linked to below).

If you want to use multiple viewers there are additional problems, as Rolig points out sharing caches is a bad idea. But, most new Third Party Viewers now use their own cache and settings files. But, there are DLL conflicts (DLL are support programs for the viewers and other programs) and other issues to deal with. Because of the DLL issues the install order of viewers is important.

As a last resort, keyword being LAST, you can try a Clean Install. This version of the instructions are for those that want to use multiple viewers.

For messed up inventory fixes with an orientation toward a user with multiple viewers read through the fixes in: Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix – Help.