Viewer crashes upon start-up

[NJMike]

This is an issue I have been facing for about a week or so now -- no matter what viewer I use, even if it's the official Second Life viewer, it crashes without warning after "Detecting Hardware". I have noticed that this only happens if I have my graphics card (Nvidia GeForce GT 540M) selected as the preferred device through Nvidia's Control Panel's Manage 3D settings to run the viewer client. However, if I have my integrated graphics selected to run the viewer client (Intel HD 3000), it does not crash.

I have always been able to run any Second Life viewer with my graphics card as the selected device for years with no issues, all the way up to just a week or so ago. I've tried countless troubleshooting methods, but no matter what I do I always have the exact same results every time.This started to become an issue ever since I had updated to Nvidia's 320.00 driver. I have tired downgrading to older drivers and even done clean uninstalls, and I still get the same crashing upon viewer starup.

For those that need to know, my specs are:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit

PC: ASUS K73SV (laptop), owned since 2012

Processor: Intel Core i5 2430M @ 2.4 GHz

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GT 540M / Intel HD 3000 (integrated graphics).

Graphics driver: Nvidia Game Ready Driver version 320.00

RAM: 8 GB (two 4 GB sticks).

[Whirly Fizzle]

Test reply - testing https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11543

[Whirly Fizzle]

NJMike, do you have Nvidia Shadowplay enabled?

If so, disable it.

I suspect your crash is BUG-11530 - Viewer crashes in nvwgf2umx.dll or nvwgf2um.dll when Nvidia ShadowPlay is enabled when opening Help -> Report bug, Help -> About, & sometimes when detecting hardware during launch.

[NJMike]

This is a bit funny but heh, I cannot even run ShadowPlay because I do not meet the graphics card requriement for it. So that's out of the picture.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Have you tried the latest Nvidia driver?  The 320 driver is a couple of years old now.

The latest driver for your card appears to be 362.00 - http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/99204

I'm currently running this driver on a Win 10 Optimus laptop with a GTX 960M & current viewers will run okay when using the Intel or Nvidia graphics.

Having said that though, which viewers did you test on?

There have been a few support cases now filed with Firestorm from users with Win 10 Optimus systems who can run the viewer just fine using the Intel graphics but the viewer crashes during detecting hardware when using the Nvidia graphics.

All of their crash stacks show that the viewer is actually crashing in the Intel driver igd10iumd64.dll

This particular crash is specific to 64bit viewer builds only - they crash on Firestorm 64bit, Alchemy 64bit & Singularity 64bit .

They can run any 32bit viewer build just fine using the Nvidia graphics though.

So if you have not tested a 32bit viewer, give that a try & see if it works.

 

[NJMike]

I have to apologize, I actually have 362, sorry, I am a bit dyslexic with reading numbers.

I have had this same crash happen on Singularity, Alchemy, Second Life official viewer, and Catznip, but they are all able to run when only on Intel HD 3000 as preferred device.

I have not tried 32-bit viewers, no;  I will have to try and get back to you later on that.

[NJMike]

Update: 32-bit Alchemy crashes the same as well.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Hmm.  I would need to see your viewer logs after reproducing the crash to have any idea what's going wrong.

If you use Firestorm (I'm Firestorm support), file a Firestorm JIRA issue & reproduce the launch crash & attach your logs to the JIRA issue. Reference this forum thread if you file a JIRA issue so I know it's you.

Alternatively, if you usually use Alchemy, file an Alchemy JIRA issue & attach your logs & one of their people will look at it.

[Bret Simondsen]

after windows did an upfdate no viewers would work.  then I checked my NVIDIA experience and after it updated all is working again!  experience is the program that updates the NVIDIA driver.