Gettin desperate now...

[Silania Pastorelli]

System specs after major upgrade and reformating inc new graphics card supposedly SL freindly:

Windows7

Processor: intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00 GHz

Installed memory (RAM) 1.5o GB

System type 32 bit Operating system

 

I manage to log in long enough to reply to three messages IF I am lucky mostly just one and I am making my replies short and sweet.

 

I have done clean reinstalls in all Viewers I use, SL Viewer, Phoenx, didn't bother with Firestorm this time and I have since removed them and tried the beta viewer and nothing has improved.

I have turned down my settings to the minimum I dare because i build, cleared all cache and computer history and cookies. My next step is to get my server to check my server speed but I don't hold out much hope that the speed is the problem as this area normally has a good server speed :(

[Peggy Paperdoll]

A little more system information would help but I can tell you that 1.5 gigs of RAM on a Windows 7 machine is very marginal.  An "SL friendly" video card can be almost any discrete card......an nVidia GT 310 card would be "SL friendly" but it is, in fact, a pretty low end card.

 

Launch your viewer (don't bother to log in) and under the "Help" menu click on "About Second Life".  You'll see your basic computer specs........copy and paste back here.

[Lydia Craig]

Have at times had the same problem, the viewer locks up and you crash eventually.  Also loading inventory has become almost impossible again, somehow the fixes they made to inventory early last week were apparently undone by the fixes they made later or something else that was done.  At this point service is as bad as I have ever seen it and the problems fixed with the RC servers two restarts ago returned last week worse than ever.  All this makes you wonder if LL actually cares about service at all and what the hell we are do paying them for service that is worse than it was 5 years ago.  This has got to change and change soon even if LL has to buy a new database and hire people capable of running it.  The present inept and declining service is unacceptable and people are staying away in droves, so guys fix this mess or suffer the consequences and quit making excuses and trying to avoid the issue and deal with it once and for all.

[Silania Pastorelli]

Hi Peggy, done so. I got my son to check the list of graphics cards before he started work on it, it loos like I might need to buy a new one myself then

The info you requested:

CPU: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.00GHz (3000.41 MHz)
Memory: 1535 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GTS/PCI/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562
OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.20.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.4.0.697, Runtime: 1.4.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1
Vivox Version: Unknown

[Shockwave Yareach]

win7 on only 1.5G ram means you'll have maybe 1.1G of ram to actually do anything.  And one fo the first things SL viewer does is take LOTS of ram and create a virtual disk drive in it (that's the VFS - virtual file system).

 

I would say your problem is almost certainly lack of ram.  Fortunately for you, RAM is very cheap today.  You should be able to throw out that ram completely and just stick in two 2G sticks (turn on interleaving if your board supports it for a 50% speed boost.)   That should only cost you about 60 bucks and will max out the computer (32 bit OS limits you to 4G, of which only 3.2G or so is usable.)

 

Your cpu is nothing fancy, but will serve.  Your issue sounds to me like you are simply running out of ram.  And that's easy and cheap to max out nowdays.

[Silania Pastorelli]

Thanks Shockwave, that sounds a lot more hopeful just depending on the price of RAM in the UK  but adding more RAM is certainly a lot easier than sorting out a new Graphics card for my machine. The new one was a Christmas present from my son and I would hate to tell him that it was the wrong type

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I would say Shockwave is on track.  The 8800 GTS is a sufficiently powerful enough card........it will do very well (but get some hardware monitoring software...that card is a fairly hot running card.  About 95 C would be a safe cut off point so if it gets that hot shut down SL and find out why).

 

Maxing out your system RAM would help more than anything for your system.  Turning off most (or all the Windows 7 Aeroglas features will also help.

[Thinkerer Melville]

Here is my collection of issues for problems like yours.  

Login fails? Lots of logouts? Summary 

http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/2011/12/kit-login-fails-lots-of-logouts-summary.html

Sometime the problem is from the router.  And is hard to catch, because the router can fail on ports not used by browsers, but used by SL.  

TKR

[Silania Pastorelli]

Yes my fan does seem to be working hard when SL loads up, that's a good idea ty peggy I will do..

[Silania Pastorelli]

I've done all of that  already Thinkerer. defrag; doesn't need it yet after reformatting, new router also and plugged in, I don't like wifi it's easily highjacked.

Restet is more times than I care to recount over the last week and half and rang my SP people and given them headaches.etc etc...

[Peggy Paperdoll]

A format and reinstation of your Windows system does not mean that your hard drive doesn't need to be defragged.  Windows is still pretty sloppy about throwing bits and fragments of files all over the drive (it's better than it used to be but still fragments drives pretty heavily).  I would recommend defragging your drive now and then about once a month (more if you do a lot of installing/uninstalling of programs).

 

And just because you connect to your router with an Ethernet cable does not mean someone can not "hijack" your network.  Lock your router down (secure it) from allowing wireless connections (or allow only the connections you want.....like your iPhone or smartphone, tablets or laptops in your home).  Look in the manual for your router on how to do that.  Joe Jerk walking down the street with a smartphone can access an unsecured network.  That not only takes up some of your bandwidth, Joe Jerk could be downloading child pornography using your network.........and the law enforcement authorities will come knocking on your door because it will appear that you did it.

[Lydia Craig]

This is not isolated or two people but is occurring all over sl, as the level of service sharpely declines.  The time for being patient has run out and if LL will not take the steps it needs to correct this mess, the need to seriously consider rebating players for the time they have lost to inferior service, because otherwise the builders and business people who have made sl will continue to leave and no amount of new players will easily replace their experience no matter how much LL may wish and pretend this is true.  To sum up inventory is a total mess, teleports are at best unstable, lag and memory leaks are horrendous, crashes are constant and multiplying, and it is not getting better.

[Ceera Murakami]

Definitely increase your RAM to the max that the hardware will support (3 to 4 GB with a 32-bit OS).

Seriously consider upgrading ot the 64-bit version of Win 7, if your CPU's will handle it. Then you'll be able to install more ram.

Consider adding an auxillary fan system to cool the computer down. SL makes the graphics card work very hard, and a hot computer is a bad thing when you want performance. There are aftermarket add ons that can be as simple as installing a 1-slot or 2-slot accessory card, or that can be as technical as placing a monster heat sink on the CPU chip and a big internal fan to blow over it and keep things cool.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

I don't have the latest high-speed graphics card, but I have a suspicion that SL bottlenecks elsewhere than the graphics processor. The speed increases charted in the Wiki, at the upper end, are smaller than the GPU speed increases revealed by benchmarking.

My experience is that RAM minimums for Windows and Windows software are claimed as ridiculously low. They always have been. For something such as a word processor in an office the performance might be usable, but no way it is letting the rest of the computer work well.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

Do you have voice enabled? I've been seeing reports of people having problems with it recently.

[Jennifer Boyle]

FWIW, when I replaced an 8800 GTX with a GTX 470, performance noticeably improved.

When I replaced a system that had a 3.2 GHz Core 2 Quad, 8GB of 800 MHz RAM, and a GTX 470 with one that had a second generation socket 2011 3.2 GHz Core i7, 32 GB of 2133 GHz RAM, and a GTX 580, SL performance dramatically improved.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

That would be expected.  The 8800 GT is a 3 or 4 year old card.........it was a very high performing card when it first came out (top of the line was the 8800 GTX).  Since that time nVidia has improved their cards dramatically.  The 8800 GT, today is roughly equivalant to the GT 250.......which is a 2 year old card and right at the mid range for today's nVidia cards.  The GT 250 is just below my video card (GTS 250) and is very capable of running SL at high settings.  It chokes a little at ultra and shadows gives it fits (very sharp drop in FPS but usuable......just not very comfortable with the lag).  A 580 GTX is the top of the line for nVidia cards today so one would expect a dramatic increase in video performance......the newest i7 CPU is great but you won't see a difference in video performance over a high end Core 2 Quad CPU.  SL is computationally intensive.  However a Pentium D or 4 will handle anything SL can throw at it with ease..........it's the video performance that counts in a dynamic 3D invironment (especially a 3D invironment where the content is less than optimal like the content in SL is).

 

So what's the point of the "for what it's worth".  It's quite obvious why.  But it you are implying someone should go get the latest and greatest CPU in order to get the best performance in SL, then you are off base......a Pentium 4 or better CPU (as long as the motherboard the CPU is installed in supports PCI express x16.....which many P-4 motherboards don't) and a high end video card along with plenty of system RAM will get the best SL is capable of delivering (as long as your connection can handle the traffic).  There's so many variables to look at.....some are more important than others.

 

The OP was concerned that the 8800 card was a problem......it's not unless she wants to run SL at ultra with shadows.  In that case she needs a lot of things (a new computer would be a start).  But what I took from her posts is that she wants good performance.  Her system should do that for her.

[Jennifer Boyle]

Peggy, I am not very technically sophisticated.  I was just offering the information that I had in hopes that it might be helpful.  You seem to think that there is something wrong with that.  I do not understand why.