Second Life help?

[Chishio Kunrin]

I might play Second Life again if I can get it to where it doesn't lag too terribly. Considering my computer isn't exactly new, the main problem I had with SL is lag, and quite a bit of it. So I'd like some help and tips on how to have it run better.

The only specs I know for my desktop computer are the ones I found in System Properties:
Intel Celeron CPU
420 @ 1.60 GHz
1.60 GHz, 504 MB of RAM

I don't really know what most of that means, and I don't know how to find out specs about my graphics card or 3D card or anything like that.

I think whatever help I get on making Second Life run better might help me run other multiplayer online games better too, right?

[Tara]

Eep, your computer is kinda poop.  That really is a shame, but I'll try to help out as best I can. I wish I knew more about hardware.

First of all, please right click your desktop, select 'properties', and then go to the 'Settings' tab. Under 'Display:' you'll see your graphics card, what is it? If it's not really, really old, you should be able to update its' latest driver via Google. That can make a huge difference right there.

How often do you defragment? Defragmenting on a regular basis makes a very big difference (at least for me) and make sure to restart your computer afterwards, especially if it does a big sweep.

Now a program that I really, really recommend is Advanced Systemcare as it's the best registry scanner I've ever used, but it's useless unless you have the full version. I suggest getting the full version with serials that you can find on Youtube (yes, really) and if it makes a big difference, then buy it. If you get the free version, then it'll do a free scan and only fix a few things, but if you've never used a 'big' registry scanner before, it'll most likely find lots and lots of things for computers that haven't been reformatted in a while and wont fix them for you.

The reason why I say to try it first with a 'fake'serial is because a lot of people claim that it ripped them off and that it only pretends to find a lot of registry errors and then fixing them doesn't do anything. This way you can test that theory out first.

It also comes with game booster (additional program) and settings to help boost your computer speed during gaming.

What do you use for malware or spyware (viruses)? I highly recommend that you get Super Antispyware and Malwarebytes. Both have great free versions and you really don't need the ones that cost money. I've used a lot of virus programs through-out the years (several I wasted quite a few dollars on) that were either too sensitive and/or couldn't find as much as these two programs. Always do full scans and update right before every scan, trust me.

I know that there's stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment, but I hope that will help you.  Sorry it's a bit rushed.

[Rissian]

You could also try CCleaner it's a free tool that can fix registry errors which I think can slow down your pc I've used it for years it can also clean out more files then the windows default disk cleaner itself can, I think you mentioned somewhere on the forums that you have norton with 200 days or something left on it even though it may seem like a waste of money not to use norton it may be better to find a different virus protection a lot of good free ones exist out there and I've heard people say norton is not a good service I've used Comodo for my virus protection and firewall it's free but it's not for everyone as it's very paranoid especially on a new install and if you don't know how to customize the settings correctly it can slow down your PC from it's active scanner. AVG is another free option but I've only used it for a few months once and it seemed good the few months I did use it, but I cannot say for sure how good it is at virus protection.

I may also be able to help with checking your hardware against Second Life's system requirements.

If you want to check press the windows logo key + r at the same time on the keyboard then type dxdiag and press enter, next you can goto the display tab and screenshot it to show us all of the details of your Graphics Card which will make it easier to compare to what second life needs, and find out if that's why it's lagging also explaining when the lag happens in the game will help as well, like if it starts off laggy or if something happens then it turns laggy.

Dxdiag should look similar to this.

[Chishio Kunrin]

Eep, your computer is kinda poop. 

Yes, he's a little old, and a little bit brain-damaged from past viruses. But he still runs pretty well.

I'll see how many of those things I can try. As for virus protection, that change won't come for another 225 days. That's when my Norton antivirus expires, and I'll try to get Kapersky instead of renewing Norton.

As for graphics, the Display Properties thing says "Plug and Play Monitor on Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family"

I actually posted this thread before I updated Second Life and went on it out of boredom. I think it actually lagged a lot less this time, but there was still lag, and after a while, the lag increased. But that's kind of weird, considering there's a lot more stuff in Bronytown now than there was before, though there were less ponies online.

[Book Smarts]

Norton is not worth it, they charge money for something you can get online for free, in addition, it takes a huge chunk of your computers memory and processing to keep itself running in the background.

[Chishio Kunrin]

Norton is not worth it, they charge money for something you can get online for free, in addition, it takes a huge chunk of your computers memory and processing to keep itself running in the background.

Explains a lot. I ended up setting it on my desktop and netbook to wait the longest amount of time it'll allow me to have it wait (30 minutes) of idle time to do background scans. So if I leave the computer idle for 30 minutes, it'll start scanning in the background, which tends to lead to lag.

It's also really annoying when it brings up a little thing in the corner to tell me that a program is using a lot of memory. Most of the time it's something that's not lagging at all, like Windows Live Messenger or Google Chrome. It really hates Chrome. I tried to turn off notifications for Chrome's memory usage.

But those notifications are the worst when I'm playing a game like Minecraft or Second Life. It comes up and the notification and game start fighting to be on top, so the notification flashes and clips from behind the game until I click X on the notification, usually through the game. So I usually have to pause Minecraft to tell it to shut up.

[Rissian]

As for graphics, the Display Properties thing says "Plug and Play Monitor on Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family"

I actually posted this thread before I updated Second Life and went on it out of boredom. I think it actually lagged a lot less this time, but there was still lag, and after a while, the lag increased. But that's kind of weird, considering there's a lot more stuff in Bronytown now than there was before, though there were less ponies online.

If the game lag slowly builds up it could be a low RAM issue, I looked up your intel graphics and if I'm not mistaken it has no video memory so it uses some of your system RAM for that if that's the case then there are some things you can try that might make the game run better.

Most computers come with an easy program for adjusting your graphics settings usually by right clicking your desktop something related to the company will pop up, if that's the case it may have an intel program which could have some settings that will help it run better on games when adjusted such as forcing vertical sync off or an option to set the graphics to quality or performance which is what you would want to adjust that may help ease the lag, or even remove most of it depending on the situation.

In old PC's vertical sync can cause a lot of lag because it will forcefully lag your game to avoid image tearing but image tearing has no side effects other then being slightly annoying to see so turning vsync off can improve a game a lot if that's what is lagging it.