I seem to crash within a few minutes whenever I go to a place with more than a few other avatars.

[Francoise Alenquer]

Is there anything I can do in my preferences to minimilise or eliminate crashes when I'm visiting a busy area?

[valerie Inshan]

In your preferences > graphics: reduce your draw distance to the lowest possible (64 or below if possible).

Disable advanced lighting model and shadows, and set the water reflections to "minimal".

Set the maximum number of max 3D avatars to 1 or 2 (it is set to 12 by default)

These adjustments should help you to avoid frequent crashes and increase your FPS. 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

In addition to Valerie's good advice, you could also make sure that Hardware Skinning and Avatar Imposters are enabled in the same Graphics Preferences.

For more detailed advice than this, you would need to post detailed information about the PC or laptop you're running SL on.