SL Viewer Constantly Crashes in Windows 8

[usagitsukin0]

Hi everyone! I'm sorry if this isn't the correct thread to post this kind of thing, but oh well. 

I'm currently having an issue with the SL Viewer where it constantly crashes of it's own accord. I recieve no error message that may suggest anything's happening, the program just freezes for mere seconds and closes.

I can only manage to stay on for a decent amount of time by staying in rather low lag sims, but with a lot of activity I'll crash again. I also tend to crash upon arriving in a new place after TPing, especially if there's a high prim count. a lot of activity, or if it's particularly large space.

I've tried running as Adminstrator but that only makes the crashing more frequent. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled the SL viewer when I got an update, but I don't know if that was clean un/reinstallation. When I've tried troubleshooting for compatibility I was given the option to test running the SL viewer in Windows XP mode (I assumed that this would be easier for a my computer to handle), but the crashing issue still persisted.

I'm sorry but I don't know any specs about my laptop only that it is running Windows 8, not 8.1 and (sorry if this is extraneous information) that it's touch screen. There's a sticker that says "Intel Corei5" so I'm guessing that that's the processor, but don't take my word for it.

Any suggestions as to what I can do to fix this problem? Thank you so much for your help, it's really appreciated.

 

EDIT: I took Whirly Fizzle's advice by updating to Windows 8.1 and the issue has been resolved. Thank you for your help!

[Whirly Fizzle]

Without seeing your viewer logs after a crash and system information, I can only take a guess at what may be wrong.

usagitsukin0 wrote:

I can only manage to stay on for a decent amount of time by staying in rather low lag sims, but with a lot of activity I'll crash again. I also tend to crash upon arriving in a new place after TPing, especially if there's a high prim count. a lot of activity, or if it's particularly large space.

---

That makes me suspect you are having out of memory crashes.
You said you have an Intel i5 processor. If your system is using the onboard intel graphics and you are using an old driver version this could be the cause.

Some of the older intel drivers had a severe memory leak. Use the Intel driver update utility to find the latest driver for your card if you are indeed using Intel graphics and get the driver updated.

You should also update to Windows 8.1 if you can - viewers running Windows 8 had and still have a much higher crash rate the viewers running Windows 8.1.

If that doesn't help, in the top menu bar of the viewer, go to Help -> About Second Life, click the "Copy to clipboard" button and paste all your system information here.

If you can also get your viewer logs onto dropbox or something similar, that would be a great help.

Reproduce the crash and then before relaunching the viewer, zip up your logs folder, upload it somewhere and give the link here. This page tells you where to find your logs folder: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-report-a-bug/ta-p/733545#Section_.3

[Nalates Urriah]

Go with Whirly's answer...

When you ask a tech question like this, include your computer and viewer specs. OPen the viewer and before or after login click HELP then ABOUT... and copy paste the information provided. All the driver and version information is included. Whirly is having to guess that your problem is an Intel HD Graphics problem.

I suggest you get the free Open Hardware Monitor  and System Explorer so you can see what is happening with your computer. I've been having viewer problems since moving my computer. It seems I suddenly have a heating problem. I would never have thought so with out looking at the fan and temp data.

Also, you can open your viewerlog and see what is happening. It is pretty much English text without too much geek speak. You'll find it here: C:\Users\[Win_ID_login]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs

Start at the end of the log and search backward to the beginning for ERROR and WARNING statements. These may give you and idea of what is happening.

The latest NVIDIA driver is giving an occassional error. 

I am having far more problems with the latest Firestorm viewer. I haven't decided if it is the heating problem or something else.

[usagitsukin0]

I took your advice and updated to 8.1 and things have been running much more smoothly! Meaning I haven't crashed at all!

Thank you for your help