Login problems
Login halts
When you login, the Second Life Viewer goes through a number of steps; you may be able to troubleshoot your issue based on the last step performed successfully.
Connecting to region
There's a possibility that the region you're attempting to log into in Second Life is down for a few minutes (it might be restarting). If Second Life just crashed or you were disconnected, it's possible you're attempting to log in from a bad location.
Try changing your login location and log in again.
If you're running a firewall or firewall/internet security software, it may have a security warning in the background that's interrupting Second Life's login process. You may have to reconfigure or disable this third-party software to use Second Life.
If you're using wireless networking, you may want to try a wired connection.
During periods of high activity, the login process may pause during Connecting to Region. In this case, wait for Second Life to return to the Login screen, or display an error message.
You might also try uninstalling Second Life, then installing it again from http://secondlife.com/download, to remove any temporary files that might affect the login process.
Connecting to user server
If you're using firewall or internet security software, it may be blocking Second Life's access and interrupting the login process.
If you're using wireless networking, it may not be providing a stable enough connection to log in.
It's possible that Second Life might be down; See http://secondlife.com/status .
Entering login queue
The most important thing to realize when you receive the message, "Entering Login Queue" is that this is normal. Second Life has not stopped responding!
During periods of high usage, the Second Life login process may take longer than usual. During this time, your login screen may remain at Entering Login Queue for several minutes while the login servers prepare to log you into Second Life. You should leave Second Life at the Entering Login Queue screen until Second Life crashes, or returns to the login screen, or displays an error message.
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Important: Windows XP may report that Second Life is Not Responding. This is normal; Windows XP is incorrectly reporting Second Life's status. You should be able to log in even if this notice appears. |
Preparing inventory
Residents with large inventories may find that Preparing Inventory takes a substantial period of time. While Second Life doesn't provide a declared upper limit on the size of your inventory, extremely large inventories may take an exceptionally long time to load, or may not successfully complete during the login process.
The best solution is to always clear out unwanted objects from your inventory to keep it at a reasonable size.
If you're finding Preparing Inventory takes a long time, allow the login process to continue. Exceptional cases (very large inventories and low bandwidth) may take several minutes to fully download.
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Important: Windows XP may report that Second Life is Not Responding; this is a normal part of the login process and should be ignored. |
If the login process sits at Preparing Inventory for more than fifteen minutes, contact Support.
Pre-caching or Initializing World
This means that Second Life is failing when it asks your graphics card to begin drawing the Second Life world. This is almost always due to a graphics card that isn't compatible with Second Life. This article about graphics cards discusses how to tell what kind of graphics card you have, provides a list of graphics cards that are compatible.
- Verify that your graphics card is compatible.
- If your card is compatible, try updating its drivers.
Error messages
Despite our best efforts, something has gone wrong...
The error message may also tell you to contact support. Before you so so, try these steps:
- Change your login location.
- During periods of high login activity (evenings and immediately after a new release of Second Life), this message may indicate that your login attempt has timed out. In this case, wait a few minutes, then try to log in again.
- Inspect your firewall settings (if you have a firewall) or consult with your network administrator
- Completely uninstall Second Life (including temporary cache files) and reinstall.
The system is logging you out right now
An earlier Second Life server update (1.9) made major infrastructure changes to how your login session is maintained on our servers.
Occasionally, the server that handled your last login session may take a few minutes to recognize that you have logged out. Please wait until the time specified by the error before attempting to log in again. Repeatedly attempting to log in when you receive this message may result in the process taking longer, preventing you from logging in at all.
Mainland regions
After waiting at least fifteen minutes, if the time until your account becomes available continues to change, please submit a ticket through the Support Portal and we can investigate further. Providing the error message and the last region you were logged into will help speed up the process.
Private regions
If you were on a private region owned by a Resident and are able to contact the estate owner or a manager another way, they're able to restart the region to clear your "presence" and allow you to login again.
Crash logger appears
If Second Life crashes during the loading process, you may be using an uncommon combination of settings that we were unable to test during our quality assurance process. This problem is more common in beta and Project Viewers than in released Viewers.
To restore your default settings without reinstalling Second Life, move all of your existing settings files to a different, temporary directory. Next time Second Life starts, it will create a new, default set of settings files. Get help finding your user settings.
If restoring your default settings fixes your problem, please file a bug report in the Public Issue Tracker and attach your original settings files (the ones you saved in a temporary directory) so we can analyze them and solve the problem for future Residents.
If this still doesn't solve your problem, some bad cache files might be causing the crash logger itself to crash. Try clearing out your cache files, uninstalling Second Life, and reinstalling.