My viewer wont run when it did just fine before

[wolf24681488303198]

ok i posted to the forums a week ago i did everything and finally today i reinstalled windows completely my viewer ran for a couple hours then crashed and refuses to even attempt to run.... AGAIN.

[Knowl Paine]

I reviewed your previously asked question, you stated "none" of the Viewers will work. How many have you installed, have you tried to clean uninstall all Viewers on your pc?

What Viewer are you using now? Do you know if the Viewer Auto-updated feature is enabled or disabled?

What are the Second Life programs that appear in your Firewall's allowed access panel/list? Are you running more than one firewall? if MS is the security center disabled?

Have you updated the Drivers for your Graphics Card? Did you try the old Viewer?

Voice trying to access the internet can be a pain, the plugin prompted me only 1 time to allow it, the initialization feature can hang, hmm... web based profile, playing media; I can think of many possible hang ups.

I would try start with a clean slate (pc) if possible.  

 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Reinstalling an operating system is a major thing.  You need to reinstall all your programs and all your drivers (which many people just don't do......ignorance or laziness they just don't do it).  Update all your drivers.....especially your video drivers.  Every hardware device connected to or installed in your computer requires drivers.  Some are relatively unimportant unless you need special features provided by those drivers.......mice, keyboards, and monitors are a few.  Your settings are important too........especially the setting for your maleware and firewall software.  That's just for getting your operating system back to near what it was before you reinstalled it (it's very unlikely you'll get it back to exactly how it was before you reinstalled it........and, for the most part, that's a good thing).

 

But there's something else that your discription says that bothers me.  It's heat.  When your computer crashes or acts up after a certain period of time it's very often related to things heating up inside your computer.  Heat is never good if it causes a crash....it means something is wrong.  Clean the inside of your computer thoroughly........a can of conpressed air costs about $3.50 USD...........cheap compared to a new computer (or hardware device such as a video card or, worse, a motherboard).  Get some hardware monitoring software.  There are tons available for free in the Internet.  Google is a good way to find some..............so is Download,com.

[wolf24681488303198]

ive already got hardware monitors and my drivers are all up to date ill check that again but they all should be ill look into overheating but that dosnt seem to be an issue

[Peggy Paperdoll]

What prompted such a major undertaking as reinstalling your OS? SL crashing or not running properly? That is really out there if that is why.

 

I think something else is going on. Why not post your specs for others to see? Not here in the "permalink", but in the open. there are some pretty computer savy folks who hang out here. I won't go into all the reasons reinstalling an OS is something that introduces unexpected issues that almost always driver and setup problems..........I've installed or reinstalled both Windows and Linux not less than 15 times over the years I've owned a computer.

[Marigold Devin]

You had it running for a good couple of hours and then it didn't. This really sounds like a case of overheating. It cannot be stressed enough about keeping your bits and pieces clean with a can of compressed air. This article over on the Microsoft website is very illuminating and informative.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/cleancomputer.aspx

[wolf24681488303198]

yea but if it was overheating wouldnt it be read higher than 150F and wouldnt everthing else be acting up too

[wolf24681488303198]

im not arguing im just saying nothing my monitors are showing me is showing any signs of it

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I can answer, if Marigold doesn't mind. With a healthy graphics cards that has never been overheated or otherwise abused you can expect the card to run normally up to about 95 degrees Celsius (about 203 degrees Farhenhiet). Above that you will probably start having problems and when the temp reaches about 105 Celsius (221 Farhenhiet) most cards will shut down........which will usually crash your operating system (but definitely close the program that caused the heating issue). Once the upper temp has been reached (that 105 C) all bets are off for what will crash your computer or program.......damage has probably already occurred. The point at which the card shuts down progressively gets lower each time whatever temp triggers the crash is reached. At some point (probably sooner than you expect) the card will fail completely.

 

That's why it critical to know if you have heat build up and do somthing about it before you reach that critical point. If you see your card crashing due to heat at 150 F (105 C) you have a major problem..........expect your card to fail any time now.

[Marigold Devin]

Marigold doesn't mind at all, Peggy. I don't care if people don't want to take my advice, it's their loss! I am just one of those converted people who didn't used to see the importance of taking the side of the computer and giving it a good blow job. It was absolutely life-changing.

And wolf, I lost a graphics card through SL overheating me in 2008. Don't underestimate how heavy SL is on a system - it's far heavier than things like say, WoW.

[wolf24681488303198]

im not arguing and im not doubting anyone im just saying my temps all seem fine when im running sl they arnt as high as 203 and 221 the highest ive seen was my cpu at 192 i know thats high but its run that hot ever since i got this laptop it runs all my games like that and even sl ran like that for months and no problems until now and its only sl none of my other games or programs have an issue at all

[Marigold Devin]

 

Hope you find a solution. Just make sure you keep posting on the forums when you do. It will help other people with simiilar issues.

 

[wolf24681488303198]

i hope to find one im honestly shocked that reinstalling windows didnt help and it would be nice if was showing signs of something other than stubborness

[Peggy Paperdoll]

An operating system will never fix a hardware issue........nor will it fix an issue with software other than the operating system itself. Reinstalling an operating system is necessary (even desirable) sometimes. It gets rid of a lot of errors that come from programs that you removed but the registry entries are left on the computer. It will fix corrupted system files (screwed up DLL's and such). But won't fix a hardware that might be failing or having problems. Nor will it fix programs that are beyond your system's capability to run.

 

I'm not surprised your OS reinstallation didn't fix your problem. The problem was not the OS itself (problems such as yours are seldom OS related).........it's something else. I think there's a very good chance it's a heating problem. But that's just a guess on my part...........some computer specs might alter my "guess". It may give me a clue to suggest that could fix your problem easily. If not me then someone else. Like I said, there's a lot of very computer savvy people who hang out here. And every one of them would love to help you if you'd help them to do it.

[wolf24681488303198]

i plan on taking it apart tomorrow to check that and if it helps you at all im running a laptop and its running an i5 dual core cpu with intel turbo and an nvidia graphics card the only reason im doubting overheat at all is cuz like i said its run those temps since i bought it months ago

[Marigold Devin]

I've gone and read your other posts, wolf, too, and everything is really pointing to wear and tear issues. Graphics cards don't last forever, and this overheating issue we all keep harping on about really does seem very valid. Forget measuring temperatures, just think logically. How old is the graphics card? What spec is it? How many times have you used it, it's heated up, it's cooled down, expanding, contracting, wearing, tearing, failing.

 

Just from my own experience, my initial graphics card wore out within about six months in SL. It wasn't up for the job, I didn't even think about taking the back of the computer to clean it, so it was snided with dust, I kept getting little warning signs, like crashing. Eventually I kept getting a message something like "display driver has stopped responding and has recovered", and then everything, the whole computer died on me! I replaced the graphics card, got a new power supply unit, and some more memory, and everything has run pretty smoothly since then.

 

Do you have adequate memory? Could my old issue be your current issue?

 

Have you blown the dust out with compressed air yet????? (/me gives you a playful tap just here).

 

 

[wolf24681488303198]

no i havnt done it yet and i understand your point and i have 4gb of ram and my average when im running sl and several other programs im still running with over a gig left over and i understand wear and tear i just find it to be ridiculous if my graphics card is going bad already i just bought it in february and the whole system cost $736 im in college i cant afford to replace parts already

[Marigold Devin]

Invest in a can of compressed air for now. Follow the instructions on the link I gave you earlier to the microsoft advice. Take your time, be thorough.

What graphics card have you got? Just out of interest. I can't remember what I had to start with, but now I have an nvidia 9500 which has been working really well for what I do in SL, graphics on mid-high, no shadows or fancy stuff, and I think I only have about 3Gb of ram.

 

Also, turn off the computer for several hours, and when you come back to it, try and log into SL again and see what happens. I'm presuming you've not let the computer cool down since that last SL crash (where you started this forum thread). My guess is that you'll be able to start up SL again, run it for 2 hours again, or a bit less, and it will crash again.

 

The thing is, it's hard to be 100% when advising people on the forums, because we can't actually be physically there and look at your machine, but all things really do point to wear and tear and heat. Keep saying that, I know.

 

I'm off to bed now to defragment my RL head for a few hours. Give us an update after you've cooled everything down and defragged your own head too (cheery smiley sleepy face emoticon)

[wolf24681488303198]

thank you and i have an nvidia geforce 310M ive been running sl on high with no problems till now but ill do that

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I see part of the problem with the 310 card. It's the lowest performance card in the 300 series. Running SL at high settings using that card is pushing the card beyond it's designed ablilities. But, now that I know what card you have, I can let you breathe a little easier..........the crashing could simply be nothing more than your card just not able to keep up with what's coming at it in SL. Lower your settings to mid range (even a little lower) and see what happens. Also the M designation says your computer is a laptop..........skip next weekend's keg party and go to Best Buy or your favorite electronics store and buy a cooling pad. Laptops get hot quicker and stay hot longer than desktops (it's the cramped environment all those computer guts have to reside in). Good luck.

[wolf24681488303198]

ive already got a cooling pad and ive run it on high with no problem for months and even if that turned out to be the problem i cant fix that because my problem is not the viewer crashing.... the viewer wont even run i double click the icon and absolutly nothing happens....

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I think I'm confused. It's the part about you reinstalling your OS that I keep coming back to in my mind. I can not think of any reason to reinstall an operating system unless there are major problems such as crashing (your system crashing and programs crashing excessively). Now you're telling you that SL simply will not launch. Okay, you've started over by reinstalling your OS so I'm going to try to push that out of my mind........you've got a "new" computer, so to speak. Lets go to basic trouble shooting.

 

You say you click on the icon for your SL viewer and nothing happens. To me that means nothing happens at all........like you didn't even click on it. The shortcut could be invalid or not pointing to the viewer application. Try starting SL by going directly to the application and clicking on it instead of the shortcut. I'm using Windows 7 x64 so I'm going to walk you through finding the application without using a shortcut (this may be something you already know but, like I said, lets get basic). Open "Computer". Click on your operating system drive (most likely drive C). Click on "Program Files (x86)". You probably have two "Program Files" but your viewer is in "Program Files (x86)" and not just "Program Files". Find your Second Life folder (mines says "SecondLIfeViewer2") and open it. In that folder you'll find two Second Life files. One will be the shortcut and one will be the application. The application will be easy to see...........it's about 38 megs in size and the short cut is probably less than 3 K in size. Click on the application. If Second Life launches, you have a bad shortcut. If you get the same problem then I'll scratch my head to try to come up with something else.

[wolf24681488303198]

ok we are on the same page now as far as the issue and ive already tried launching it directly the same thing happens nothing. to add to this when i have processes open in my task manager and click the icon the process for the viewer appears for 2 seconds and just disappears without any other sign of the viewer running no pop ups or anything

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I think you mentioned that you turned off your firewall and anti-virus/spyware? If you haven't try doing that. Something is blocking SL from running. If you are using Windows' firewall I don't think it will block SL, but some third party firewalls will. Also Windows' DEP (data execution prevention) might be blocking the application too. Try turning that off temporarily. Needless to say, don't leave those security programs off for long.......just long enough to test.

[wolf24681488303198]

i used to know but can you refresh my memory on how to shutdown DEP (im also running win 7 64-bit)

[wolf24681488303198]

nevermind i remembered and it wont let me disable it for sl2