Why is Second Life suddenly crashing my Graphics Drivers?

[Grimassi]

I have seen others asking this and the response always seems to be that the user must have added something or done something to make it happen.  I have the same issue.  After about 10 minutes or so the notice that the driver has "stopped working and has recovered" comes up.  The screen freezes although I still have sound and can move my mouse.  I cannot click off of SL however and in order to clear the frozen screen I must reboot. 

I originally used Firestorm when this started happening.  I made sure I had all the latest drivers (I have a fairly new HP Envy) for my graphics card and have updated everything I can update.  Still it continues.  So I switched from Firestorm to the SL Browser.  Still the same thing.  I've cleared my cache, raised my available space for cache,  dropped my graphics settings as low as they will go and it continues.  To simply dismiss this as a hardware issue is to discount the obvious.  This is happening to many people, with different graphics cards using different computers and different viewers.  I don't have anything other than the standard games that came with the computer and I never play them.  I only use Second Life.  I also have neither added nor deleted any programs on this computer.  This started about six month's ago.  Didn't SL have a major upgrade around that time?  I remember Firestorm had a major push to update their viewer also.  I seem to recall something about making it compatable with Occulus Rift or something.  That's about when it started for me.  With THAT update.  Someone suggested using the Emerald viewer.  I may try it but I'm betting the same results will pop up. 

[Whirly Fizzle]

6 hours ago, Tzunny Nagy said:

This happens to me lately, on 2 different machines, on a PC with 2080 gpu & on laptop where i have 1060 gpu.

I'm a gamer, i play loads of games, but none does this stupid artefact broken gpu video of what can't do anything because impossible to even see something on screen after closing SL, so i have to force close or restart entire pc/laptop. I'm using singularity alpha viewer & i never had any problems ever before but this happens in 2019!

I installed the official viewer just to try it out to see if does the same & it doesn't crash the gpu driver, problem is that i don't like that viewer at all...

It happens no mather the settings i use, was try on lowest possible and highest as well and still crash the video after closing the client.

Got used to much with singularity viewer, any suggestions or i should give up on it completely ?

Singularity need to merge in this fix: https://hg.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl/rev/5f073ce21cc1

You can work around the bug by using the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+WINDOWS+B to reset the display adapter after closing the viewer.

[Rolig Loon]

The Emerald viewer has not existed since 2011. If you somehow found an old copy somewhere, it would not run.

The most common reason why people experience the symptoms you are reporting is that they use a computer -- usually a laptop or a notebook -- that was designed for light office work, web browsing, watching videos, and playing occasional light online games.  Second Life puts heavy demands on a graphics card.  That generates a lot of heat and drawns a lot of current from the computer's power supply.  Computers are designed to avoid self-destruction under those circumstances by shutting down components to keep them from burning up.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

My graphics card was once very good with Second Life. I could run two avatars inworld quite comfortably. However, performance gradually became worse as it aged and Second Life demanded more of graphics cards. It got to the point over the past few months that it kept freezing and/or crashing in busy areas and I had to reboot the computer exactly as you describe.

I installed a new graphics card a few days ago and all is well now.

The HP Envy is a 15" laptop with a Nvidia GeForce GT 740M graphics card. This is quite a basic card to attempt gaming with and it is not surprising it is struggling to run the Second Life viewer, which demands more of graphics cards than most games.

Try the Singularity viewer. You may cope a bit better with it. http://www.singularityviewer.org/

EDIT: Check that your laptop is switching from the onboard Intel HD 4600 to the Nvidia card when playing SL. The 740M is a bit better than the Intel so would help if not automatically switching.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

The others are correct.  However, I have seen this happen (rarely) even on my machine, which is running an NVIDIA GeForce 980, a top of the line graphics card.

[Claireschen Hesten]

What i think is happening is you are going somewhere where another user has a graphics crasher attached to them some times they are very obvious and a huge complex mesh object that causes a white glow on your SL view or rainbow colours other times you wont see this huge complex mesh object unless you turn on highlight transparent mode ctrl + alt + t where your SL view will be completely red if there is a crasher/lagger in use if you can you should try and blacklist the crasher object or at the lest AR the person you think is using the crasher ASAP

i have been affected by graphics crashers in Linden Realms the thing to do aside from AR is block and blacklist the users using them some times people like this will use something i found out through higlight transparent and object inspection is called Lag do Inferno instead it's like a graphics crasher but causes you to get lagged to the point you are logged out because SL thinks the sim is experiencing problems i now avoid areas where i know these low lifes will be operating

[Grimassi]

Thank you all. Good advice all around.

[Sini Nubalo]

This is the issue. You will typically see a DRIVER POWER fault. The tablets are shutting down because the draw on the power supply is out of range.

[Lindal Kidd]

@Sini Nubalo  Huh????

Not to mention that the question is a) over two years old, and b) was already solved.

[Tzunny Nagy]

This happens to me lately, on 2 different machines, on a PC with 2080 gpu & on laptop where i have 1060 gpu.

I'm a gamer, i play loads of games, but none does this stupid artefact broken gpu video of what can't do anything because impossible to even see something on screen after closing SL, so i have to force close or restart entire pc/laptop. I'm using singularity alpha viewer & i never had any problems ever before but this happens in 2019!

I installed the official viewer just to try it out to see if does the same & it doesn't crash the gpu driver, problem is that i don't like that viewer at all...

It happens no mather the settings i use, was try on lowest possible and highest as well and still crash the video after closing the client.

Got used to much with singularity viewer, any suggestions or i should give up on it completely ?

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Tzunny Nagy said:

I installed the official viewer just to try it out to see if does the same & it doesn't crash the gpu driver, problem is that i don't like that viewer at all...

It happens no mather the settings i use, was try on lowest possible and highest as well and still crash the video after closing the client.

Got used to much with singularity viewer, any suggestions or i should give up on it completely ?

If I remember correctly, Singularity is having some problems at the moment.  Try one of the other third party viewers...maybe Firestorm, or Catznip, or Nirans.

[Tzunny Nagy]

On 7/18/2019 at 7:50 PM, Whirly Fizzle said:

Singularity need to merge in this fix: https://hg.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl/rev/5f073ce21cc1

You can work around the bug by using the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+WINDOWS+B to reset the display adapter after closing the viewer.

Months later this issue still exist with singularity viewers, i was try multiple versions of it and same result everytime, you get a screen full with all kind of artefacts barely visible. 

I used in the last couple of months firestorm viewer but i'm so sick of it, i miss this old school style, i might give up completely on SL because of this issue...

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Tzunny Nagy said:

i miss this old school style, i might give up completely on SL because of this issue...

if you don't know already then try Henri Beauchamp's Cool VL Viewer.  Is a very good V1.x old-school style viewer and is regularly maintained/updated

http://sldev.free.fr/

lots of people use this viewer. Henri explains on his website why he chooses not to list on the Second Life 3rd party viewer web page

 

[Nalates Urriah]

On 9/24/2018 at 12:06 PM, Sini Nubalo said:

So? I can still comment and it is still happening to me on a Windows 10 computer. Maybe 3 years from now someone will come along and read this and I will be famous again.

A year later and the question popped again... Maybe it will happen again in 3.

[XxDarkTemptressxX]

rite my pc black screened as well on firestrom and crashed pc totally to point my pc made beep sound <<

>>

yeh  i miss sl bad

[Sini Nubalo]

So? I can still comment and it is still happening to me on a Windows 10 computer. Maybe 3 years from now someone will come along and read this and I will be famous again.