Peggy Paperdoll

The point you are missing is that you "updated" your graphics to something less than what you had before. In my view that's a downgrade. Actually, when I searched for your graphics "card" I could not find a discrete card with that nVidia disignation........only intergrated chipsets. I don't know how anyone can change an intergrated chipset without changing the hardware that the chipset is intergrated into. In your case, that would be the motherboard (which is quite a change for any system). I hate to say it but you got horn swaggled if your technician told you that he upgraded your GPU........he may have replaced your motherboard. And it appears the motherboard he used to replace your old motherboard has a weaker intergrated GPU. And technician who hires him/herself out for computer upgrades (or repairs) would know that......if not then that technician is a fraud (read that as thief).

Without knowing anything about your computer or your Internet connection I can only suggest two possibilities (both are merely guesses but since you haven't provided any useful information, that's all I can do at this time). Reboot your router and modem.....just unplug them for 3 to 5 mins, plug back in, then restart your computer to re-establish the Internet connection. Check SL again. The second is to get off your wireless connection and use an Ethernet CAT 5e cable instead.

"Computer reboots when running SL." is the title of the thread. That's a little more than SL crashing......it's a system crash. Ping times, excessive packet loss, HTTP textures, etc might crash the viewer but none of those will crash the system. The GPU timing out as the OP mentioned might cause a system crash but that's something in the GPU or driver that would cause that problem. Not high pings or HTTP texture calls. On further thought a virus could be the cause. So to the OP run a complete virus/spyware scan too.

Check your firewall and anti-malware software.

Once you restore back to a restore point the worked for you before the latest update go to the settings for Windows Update. Change the default setting from "Allow Windows Update to automatically install updates" to "Let Windows Update check for and notify you of important and recommended updates". You'll get the notification of new updates available and you can then go to Win Update at your leisure, look at the updates and choose which to install yourself. When you do that really take a look at the updates Windows has chosen to be installed. Uncheck any driver updates before updating. When Windows updates drivers it treats those updates as any other update and installs the new version over the top of the old..........for drivers that is the major cause to driver issues (remove the old first, then install the new is the proper way to update drivers). When Windows finds a driver for your computer you can hide it by right clicking on the version Windows finds and check "Hide"........you won't see it anymore until you go back and "unhide hidden updates". You can make a note that a driver is available and go to the manufacturer's driver update site and update if you want. For video drivers you don't need to update to every new driver that is released. If the driver you are using works for your needs it's best to leave it alone. If something comes along where a new driver is necessary and you decide you want that new something, then update. Or if something happens (such as a major system crash or you decide to re-install your operating system) go get the driver you want. And so you can always get the same driver or the one that you know works just make a note with the driver version number and date of release (I keep a little 3 x 5 card index with stuff like that. I do that because I sometimes get a wild hair and wipe my hard drive and start over.....a lesson hard learned years ago).

You're temps look pretty typical for use with SL. I would agree that heating is not the cause. There are a couple of other things that could also cause your operating system to crash. One is a corrupted driver (most probably a video driver). You might try updating or re-installing the driver. A clean driver installation is always best and especially so if you suspect a corrupted (or damaged driver). Remove the driver you are replacing before installing the new driver (be sure to get a fresh copy of the driver from nVidia.....don't use the same driver you might have saved earlier (if you did that......which I recommend). The other possibility is your system memory. You have 8 GB which means you probably have two 4 GB sticks. Remove one (you'll still have 4 GB which is plenty for SL) and see if the problem persists. If not then replace that memory module........if it does then put the module you removed back in and remove the other. The problem should go away when you get the module that is having issues. Check your computer manual (or motherboard manual) to see which slot must be populated when using one stick. It the problem remains, then it gets sticky about what is causing the problem. Almost any hardware device can crash your system and it can get tedious to find the culprit. Then there's always the possibility that you have a faulty video card (or other device....even a CPU). Sometimes it's best to just take it to some reliable repair shop when it gets complicated.

Windows 8 is not the problem. The "new" operating system is not a revamping of Windows 7. It can be consdered a an upgrade to Windows 7 much like a service pack. The main difference between the two systems is Windows 8 support touch screen where the user has a monitor capable of such an interface. It also has many security enhancements (like your typical service packs have). The system has been called "Windows 7 fixed"..........and that definition probably fits quite well. What does cause issues is that when you get a computer with Win 8 pre-installed Microsoft includes drivers for all known devices that a computer will typically have. Some are universal drivers like mice, keyboards, LAN, optical drives and monitors. Those devices seldom have issues because they will work just fine with the drivers that Microsoft includes in the software. Other hardware devices like video cards/adapters and some audio devices will not work to their fullest using those "universal" drivers. To get the best your video card/adapter can give you need to replace that "universal" driver with a specific driver for the device. Since SL is rather graphic intensive in nature, the proper driver needs to be installed for the viewer to even successfully launch. All that said, update your graphics driver. Windows 8 is entirely compatible with SL (and SL is entirely compatible with Windows 8). It's not like the jump from Window 98 (or Window ME) to XP was..........XP was a completely different operating with a completely different file system. Since XP each Windows operating system upgrade produced little compatibility issues. They just were not that different as far as operating the system. A new UI and a few more features (along with some security enhancements) are basically the difference.....well efficiency is another change (but that usually leads to better compatibilty and not worse).

Czari sure sounds Kentuckian to me? I'm joking........actually I think I have you mixed up with another regular here who I sometimes tease. Plus you're just being picky about being from Kentucky..........it ain't so bad. Daniel Boone was from Kentucky and he was the best President we ever had.......LOL

Again.......English 101. *Professor Phil! Professor Phil!! Perrie's throwing spit balls at me!! *

But you're from Kentucky (I think) and I'm from Arkansas (misplaced, at the moment, in S. California). That would explain the "Phil sent me an IM today" vs "Phil an IM to me today"..........y'all just talk funny.

Set your graphics to low and reduce your draw distance to less than 128 meters (64 might be good). I, too, updated my SL V-3 to 3.4.4 yesterday. I just logged in my alt on another computer (the lower spec'd machine that I have.....this computer is quite a bit more powerful than that computer). I went into edit, rezzed some items from inventory, changed clothing items, changed skins, changed hair, danced some dances from my dance hud, and TP'd to a few placed that I know are pretty laggy (Sine Wave Island, for instance). I experienced no problems what so ever.......not even much time to rezz the world around me at Sine Wave Island. I certainly did not crash and I spent some 30 minutes in world (most of which was TP'ing around to the laggier places I know of). I don't believe there is a problem with the viewer update. The computer I used is not quite the same as yours. The CPU is older and slower than your i3 (a Core 2 quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz). I have more system RAM (4 GB), it's a Vista x64 system fully updated and my video is much stronger than yours (GTS 250, 1 GB onboard VRAM). The main problem I see with your computer is your video adapter......it's on CPU chipset video and is not particularly powerful. You need to reduce the amount of work your graphics adapter must do. And getting SP 3 for your XP system is probably a very good idea......not only for performance but for your security. XP is a pretty old OS and has been exploited by hackers 100's of times. That's sort of like locking your gate with a combination lock and 1,000's of people know the combination.

English 101. Got a question professor: Apostrophies are used in contractions too...correct? So say I want to tell someone that a person sent me an instant message. I can say "Phil sent me an instant message today" or I can says "Phil IM'd me today". Would both be correct? Or is the "IM'd me" an incorrect usage of the apostrophy? Sorry, I'm being ornry this morning......breakfast is done yet.

Is it just pictures that blurry? I mean when you are in world everything looks fine but any picture you take is blurry? And is the picture blurry when you save to hard drive and inventory?

If you have depth of field enabled that will blur the background (in theory anyway). I've tried DOF and found over does the blurred background effect.........by a lot in some cases. Disable DOF and see if your pictures improve.

I've not heard of any Avast problems and SL. In fact it is one of the fee AV's that many people in SL recommend because it doesn't seem to interfere with SL at all.......unlike Norton or McAfee. A Cat 5e cable is an Ethernet cable. But that won't help if your router and modem need to be rebooted. I don't know if your technician did that but I would not be surprised if he did not. It's simple to do. Just unplugg the devices for 3 to 5 minutes then plug back in. Restart your computer to re-establish your Internet connection and try SL again. I tried to find out when your video adapter was released. I know the 6150 LE is an old one because I had that adapter years ago on another computer. It is an intergrated video accellerator (not a dedicate, or discrete, card). I could only find reviews and forum posts relating to the adapter dating back to 2005. That makes the adapter 7 years + old (but it could be older since I got rid of the computer that had the adapter about 7 years ago). I'm surprised SL works at all with that graphics.

Torley, bless his heart, is a Second Life photographer (an excellent one, by the way). He may have some technical training but he's basically like the rest of us residents in that his advice stems from experience using SL for years (he started out as a resident way back in the beginning and got hired by LL). I grew to like him back in early 2006 on the old original SL forums.........he was one of the very few Lindens to participate in the forums (mostly on what was then called "Linden Answers" where residents posted a question and a Linden was supposed to answer the question......Torley and a very few Lindens regularly answered). He's a good person and, I'm sure, he helps in any way he can when he can......but his technical knowledge is just like mine (a resident who learned by trial and error plus some common sense and a lot or reading from people who are technically knowledgable). I remember seeing that video tutorial too. I never faulted him but I never took what he said to heart.......it just didn't jive with my experience or what common sense told me about bandwidth. A great big hose can deliver a lot of water in a minute. But it has limits in what it's capable or delivering none the less. Your computer system can process a lot of data in a second. But, too has limits on what it's capable of processing. If you attempt to make either the hose or your system do more than they are capable of doing you will run into issues that will effect your performance negatively (every time too).

I agree about the wheat/chaf stuff. However there are enough preveyers of chaf to confuse the new people. I mean someone is having some issue or problem and is seeking help then some sour puss jumps in with bull chips about SL and fills the new person's head with completely untrue "facts".........how is the person going to get their problem resolved when that happens. To be honest it "peeves" (I want to use another word but the filters will bleep it anyway) me off. Sometimes I just can't hold my fingers still. Oh well, it entertains some (I hope it doesn't put too many off........though I think it might). Makes life interesting....I think you and I have had some discussions at opposite ends of the spectrum a few times. Take care.

"Yes, Peggy's advice was something I'd found recently myself. I use Firestorm and the Phoenix page that advises people on settings suggests that you find out what your download bandwith actually is and then set your inworld bandwidth to about 3/4 of that. In my case 1500 works pretty good but again that might be because I do have a relatively close connection and pretty quick pings. ..." ------------------------------------------------ Thanks for vote of confidence. But reading the rest of the paragraph one might be lead to believe I have some affiliation with Phoenix or Firestorm. I just want say I do not..........I don't use TPV's and refuse to use them again since the Emerlad fiasco of a couple years ago (especially Phoenix since many of the folks involved in that whole childish mess are now the devs at Phoenix.......they lost my trust and soured me on all TPV's). All I know about making SL work better is some hands on experience at building computers and the necessary configuring involved to make the system as efficient as I can and some 7 years of reading SL related forums and blogs where some bonifide experts share their knowledge. A little experimentation is something I've never shied away from so, naturally, a lot of my advice stems from that experimentation (including the stuff that doesn't work.......bandwidth settings, for example).

A 2.5 mbps connection is more than enough speed to have a very good (if not great) data connection to SL (or almost any other site that depends on a lot of data being transferred quickly). The servers are only going to send so much to each and every viewer that is connected to the servers. I mean think about it a little bit (it's not difficult at all). You have some 50,000 viewers requesting data. The servers process the requests, retrieve the data from the asset servers and then pump it out to the Internet to the veiwers requesting the data.......that's a bunch of bits and bytes being shot into a pipeline that has a finite capacity. The servers will only deliver what that finite capacity can handle.......like a hose that can, at a maximum, provide 100 gallons of water per minute, you can't magically send 200 gallons a minute through that hose (one of those physically impossible things that just can't be done). You'll only recieve a portion of that 100 gallons. The servers will never give any viewer more that a quota established by the software per request. If it did then the entire system would fall flat and die (I believe that actually happened in the earlier years when 7000 concurrent users were online..........hours, even days, of the servers being down because the grid crashed). That quota limit is somewhere around 1.5 mbps (1500 kbps). If your speed is above that then you've got about 1 mbps (1000 kbps) more than you need. Connection speed is really minor unless you have a very low broadband speed (like about 500 kbps or .5 mbps). Most connections are well above that (I'm talking about tested speeds, not advertised speeds). What will slow you down is high ping times. If you are far from the servers then there's nothing much you an do about it except move closer. But that won't cause a crash.........it might cause a disconnect (very different from a crash). But more important is packet loss. Packet loss will not only slow you down but it will cause many not disconnects (again that will not cause a crash). The problem with packet loss is that it can occur anywhere on the Internet path from your computer to the recievers and back again. It can also occur right at your computer itself. Packet loss along the Internet path is rare and you can't do much about it except wait it out (the folks who keep the Internet running are pretty much right in top of things like packet loss). It's a little less rare for the packet loss to occur between your computer and and your ISP......but it does happen so a call to them is always worth the effort. Where most of the packet loss occurs is between your modem and your network interface and/or you computer itself. And you are responsible for maintaining that portion of your connection. 3% packet loss will knock you off the Internet. A very common cause of packet loss (from my reading the forums for 7 1/2 years) seems to stem from people setting their bandwidth too high in the viewer preferences. If your connection can handle 2 mbps it really doesn't matter what you set your preferences to...........the servers won't send anything above about 1.5 anyway. But if your connection will handle only 500 kbps and you are telling the servers to send you 1500 kbps then you are going to have trouble. High packet loss is typical (10% will get you dumped from the Internet is a few seconds). But another thing a lot of people do is that they test their speed and find what is a good preference setting for the speed of the connection. But their system cannot process the data coming into it at that speed (1 mbps hitting your system that can only process 750 kbps is going to get you dumped just as quickly as 10% packet loss........actually your system is probably missing much more than 10% because it busy processing while being flooded with more data. Bottom line is that you have to find what works for your connection and your system. If you have unfixable issues such as you live half way around the world then that's something you have to resolve yourself to live with (or stop using SL entirely). If you are causing your own problems by not knowing what you are doing then you have to learn what you are doing that is causing your problem and fix it. What you cannot do is blame others for problems that are not their to begin with. Just because you live somewhere that is further from the servers than someone else (I'm in California too by the way), or you are experiencing packet loss from your ISP, or you have a system that is not capable of doing what you want (or need) it to do, is blame Linden Lab. And that's exactly what you do............almost every post you make in these forums.

Quite a temper tantrum. Oh, on the problem you seem to be having. Things change.....sometimes in less than a minute. I would think anyone who names themself "Professor" would understand that. That same person (being someone who wants everyone to think of them as a "Professor") would be smart enough to know that we are just residents and not associated with Linden Lab beyond being "residents" (just like you). So all the shouting did nothing for me except show me that you are far from a "Professor". More like a child with a broken toy crying because their precious toy was not working like it did before it broke. Odds are the problem exists on your end..........it has nothing to do with that kind of programmers. If you, "Professor", had an inkling of what is envolved in the programming of Second Life, you would never diss the people who developed the platform. And, just so you know, I don't care how much you have invested in SL. If you invested a substanial sum of money (which you implied that you did) and don't have a clue about what you invested in, then, "Professor", you need to go back to school.

If it gets that sports BS stuff fixed (or reduced), I'm for it. I'd rather put up with difficulties like certain characters being rejected than the page after page of spam we've been getting over the last couple months.

Lower your bandwidth in preferences to not more than 75% of your tested speed. http://www.speedtest.net/ is a good (and free) broadband speed test site. 2 or 3 tests to both San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX and take the average of all tests (to both locations) would give you a good base to start with. Or you can use the default setting of 500 kbps..........that is generally a good speed for most people (it's the speed I usually have set and I have a tested speed of over 12 mbps).

If your drivers are up to date then that's one out of three possibilities stated by the error message. You can have an up to date driver that is corrupted (almost all driver corruption issues stem from drivers not being installed correctly). And your video card (a hardware device) is not supported is the third possibility. You're getting a generic error message listing three of the major problems related to video.........the bottom line is that the SL servers see your video card/adapter as not able to run SL. You can help yourself a great deal by giving some computer specs......without them all you are going to get in the way of "help" is guesses (some educated since your question is not unusual here in Answers......but guesses just the same). If you can get to the log in screen click "About Second Life" under the "Help" menu. Copy the specs listed and paste them back here for someone to give you more than a generic guess (just like the message you get when you try to log in.........a catch all answer which usually doesn't help much). Please don't start a new thread. Use "Edit" under "Options" in the upper right corner of your post to add anything that might help Or you can search "Answers".........you find dozens (or even 100's) of posts asking exactly the same question. The anwers given might solve your problem. That takes just a few minutes..........the question has been answered so many times already.

Only Linden Lab can answer your question about "instances". But I'm going out on a limb by saying that the answer to your question is no. Despite what some may say, the people who develop and impliment new features to SL are far from inexperienced (and even farther from dumb). If something that can be done that improves both the performance of SL and adds substansianlly to the users' experience it's been looked at (and probably in depth). The mistake many people with what seems to be a very viable (and doable) feature is that they make a comparison to "online games" (well, game [insert your favorite here] does it and it works fantastic). Second Life is far from any online game in existance. Online games are 90% to 95% housed on your local computer........nothing except the viewer (think browser) is housed on your local computer for SL. That makes a huge difference is what will or can work for a game and not for SL. That makes a world of difference.

It sounds like a firewall or anti-virus might be blocking SL. It's hard to tell from such a brief statement and no computer specs but the hour glass indicates that your computer is trying to do something but has not completed whatever it is that it's doing. In this case it sounds like the computer is waiting for the connection to the servers to complete. Have you tried waiting it out? I don't know how long the built in browser for the viewer takes to time out (I'm pretty sure that is the browser the SL viewer uses by default for connecting to the log in page which I think your computer is waiting for). With just the white screen and busy hour glass there's no indication that your graphics card or you computer are the problem (though they could be......it's not my first inclination to think it's that severe, yet). You might try a clean re-installation of the viewer. Do that by uninstalling the SL viewer, then doing a complete computer search for anything related to Second Life and manually deleting what is found. Then go to the SL website and download another copy of the viewer. Save the setup file to your hard drive......do not run from the website (that can cause issues with corrupted files). Scan the downloaded setup file for mal-ware before installing.