Can't Log In to Second Life? Try This One Weird Trick

I spent hours today unable to log in to Second Life. I thought I was being punished for first visiting Kitely, a competitor, on Imprudence and Catznip, third-party viewers, then using viewer 1.23 to log on -- just to be able to find my inventory (only half my inventory ever loads on viewer 3) and to use the easy and better search to look up my own search/places ads to see if any need to be removed because people had rented the land -- I must have found 20 of them! That's because I can only get through so many pages in viewer 3 search of my search terms before I can't turn the page over any more.

OK, so if I can't get logged in, what can I do?

Check the SL grid status -- and find out that yes, they are doing what is euphemistically called "unscheduled maintenance" -- or fixing something that broke that they didn't expect. They are "working on avatar profiles" whatever that means. That may or may not be related to login. I gave it time to perk, but after a few hours of still no log-in and "no connection to server," I was getting perturbed.

So I tried that other standby, changing my log-in from "last place" to "home" or to "Ahern" or whatever. That's because the "last place" could be some crashed sim that still isn't up or who the hell knows.

But that didn't work.

OK, now it was time for surgery in my folders. I don't fear digging into the innards of game folders -- 13 years ago, The Sims taught us how to become absolute aces at folder digging, deletion, changing, editing.

So off you go to first USERS on Windows Vista (it will be something like this on other versions of Windows -- you'll have to play around).

In USERS, find your name folder.

Inside NAME, go to APP DATA. To even see *this* APP DATA folder, you have to check option "show hidden files".

Make sure you don't go to that *other* APP DATA that is on the same level view as USER. Make sure you go INSIDE USER.

Now in User/Name/AppData you look for ROAMING.

Then find SECOND LIFE.

And now you're ready for the surgery.

Find the folder user_settings. Accept no substitutes.

Inside user_settings you'll see a bunch of stuff. But the appendix that you will want to remove is called settings_xml

In Vista's view of folders, you will just see "settings" without the xml. In Windows XP you might see xml.

But it's this "settings" file you want to DELETE.

Fear not, because reloading Second Life generates it anew, minus whatever was buggy about it.

Make sure you don't delete other stuff in there. I don't know if "ignorable dialogues" is something that you could really do without, but leave it.

settings_xml is your thing to delete.

Close folders, go back and click on SL to load it again. Should work again.

If it doesn't, try turning off you modem and computer and also re-installing SL, after saving your chat log folders under your avatar name, as these can be wiped out by re-installs.

 

Comments

[Rex Cronon]

It is possible that at least one of the other viewers that you have used today also use the same file(s)(like settings.xml)
After using a viewer(either official sl ones, or TPV) look in that folder to see what files changed. That way u will get at least an general idea what viewers modify what files. u could even do a whole hard drive search to see what files were created/edited:)