Crashing During Install or Startup
General
Viewer freezes while "Loading world..."
If you have Intel HD 620 or Intel HD 630, and Windows 10 – This is an Intel driver issue.
The easiest fix is to use Firestorm Version 6.2.4. or newer.
If you are using Firestorm Version 6.0.2, use another viewer to remove the jacket layer.
(Ref. BUG-225655 and BUG-227078)
Firestorm "Locks Up" on "Initializing VFS"
If you have Intel Graphics HD, Intel Graphics HD2500 and Intel Graphics HD4000, and are using the 64bit version of Firestorm 5.0.7 or later, on Windows 10, refer to this page.
If you don't have the above graphics and this occurs, chances are good that some part of cache is corrupt. Deleting it should solve the problem.
- Locate your cache folder. You will probably need to do this manually, if you are unable to log in. Use a file manager (like Windows Explorer for Windows system, Dolphin, or some such) to locate the cache folder. In its default location, the cache folder is hidden on most OSs. To find it, you will need to show hidden folders. Default cache locations are:
- Windows 7, 8.1, and 10: press [Win] + [R] and type %localappdata%, then look for the Firestorm folder. (This method avoids having to un-hide folders.)
- Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Firestorm
- linux: ~/.firestorm/cache or ~/.firestorm_x64/cache
- Delete the cache folder you located.
- Log back into SL, to a quiet region (try Hippo Hollow, Aich or Hatton). Allow your inventory and cache to repopulate fully.
Windows only: If the above doesn't work, then click the speaker icon in the system tray, then touch the volume slider, just enough to change the volume slightly. It may be that the Windows sound system has stalled; this should “give it a kick”.
One other possibility concerns starting the viewer on a secondary monitor rather than the primary. So if you are starting it on the secondary, try the primary instead.
If the above fails, then try doing a full wipe of all settings.
Startup Crash with "Must Supply a Comment for Control..."
This indicates that a debug setting (a control) is missing a comment. It is unclear which comment is missing, but the fix is to reinstall Firestorm using the Clean Install procedures.
Firestorm Won't Start Up after a Recent Nvidia Update
Please see Recent Crashes on Windows, following a Driver Update for this issue.
Login Crash with a Private Pool Error
Ref. FIRE-12339
This is almost always caused by the MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled being set to TRUE. It should never be set to TRUE. But before you try to fix this, we could really use a copy of your crash logs to help us work on a fix. See here for steps to collect your crash logs, then attach those logs to FIRE-12339.
Then, do the following:
- Make sure hidden files/folders are set to show - see here for steps.
- Browse to your user_settings folder. This is located at -
- Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\ [USERNAME] \Application Data\Firestorm\user_settings
- Windows Vista, 7, or 8, 8.1, and 10: C:\Users\ [USERNAME] \AppData\Roaming\Firestorm\user_settings
- Mac: User/Library/Application Support/Firestorm/user_settings
- Linux: ~/.firestorm/user_settings
- In the user_settings folder, find the file named “settings.xml”
- Open settings.xml in a text editor - For Windows, Notepad++ is ideal for this
- Search settings.xml for the term MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled
You will see a block of text like so:
<key>MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled</key> <map> <key>Backup</key> <boolean>0</boolean> <key>Comment</key> <string>Enable the private memory pool management</string> <key>Type</key> <string>Boolean</string> <key>Value</key> <boolean>1</boolean> </map>
- Near the bottom there, change the “<boolean>1</boolean>” line just above </map> to “<boolean>0</boolean>”
- Save changes to settings.xml and edit the text editor.
- Login.
- Profit.
Other Crash Situations
Issues outside of Firestorm can, and often do, result in viewer crashes….
- Make sure your file system is not corrupt by running chkdsk or equivalent for your OS.
- On Windows, ensure that your registry isn't messed up by running CCleaner or similar.
- Reboot your PC and modem/router.
- Ensure that video drivers are current, as well as your OS.
- Do a Reinstall of Firestorm. Be sure to use a fresh download of the viewer; either clear your browser cache or use a different browser for the download.
By Operating System
Windows
If the installer does not run at all, try the following steps
- If you use Windows Defender :
- Right click your Win Defender icon on your system tray > View Security Dashboard > Apps & Browser Control
- Scroll down to Exploit Protection and click the 'Exploit Protection Settngs' link
- Scroll down to “Force Randomization for Images (Mandatory ASLR)
- Set to 'Use Default (Off) and close Windows Defender
- This issue was documented in this LL Jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-225790.
- For more info about Windows Defender workarounds, see this page https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/antivirus_whitelisting.
- You may have corrupt registry information; refer to this page. This is especially common for those rolling back from Win10 to an older version of Windows.
- If you crash at startup with an error like: “failed to initialize properly code (0x0150002)”, or you get an error that the “side-by-side” configuration is incorrect, or“Firestorm failed to start because the application configuration was incorrect. Reinstalling the application may correct the problem”, please download this and install it, as your system is likely incompatible with the Visual Studio C++ 2005 SDK DLLs: AppFix.exe
- Open the Firestorm install folder and search for any files named .config - delete any you find.
- Note that some anti-virus software will result in errors during installation; more information is here.
Windows 10
If you are using Windows 10, and have an Intel 2000/3000 or older graphics card, please refer to this page if you cannot start Firestorm without crashing.
Windows Vista or Windows 7
If you crash during login, then try setting Firestorm to XP compatibility:
- Locate your desktop shortcut for Firestorm
- Right click on the icon and select Properties
- Select the Compatibility tab
- Check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select Windows XP from the drop down
- Click Apply.
If you get a User Account Control security popup, then please see this page.
linux
If you have just installed Firestorm on a linux system and it will not start, it is highly likely that you are missing some required libraries. You need to verify if this is the case.
You need to open Terminal and cd to the Firestorm install directory. If you are unsure how to locate it, use your linux file manager to find it first; it will help you locate the install directory. Useful shorcuts:
- ~/ - is your home directory
- ~/Desktop - is your desktop directory
so for example, from terminal, you would do something like this:
cd ~/Firestorm
Assuming that Firestorm is installed in the directory called Firestorm, in your home.
Once there, copy the following into Terminal:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="./lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}" ldd bin/do-not-directly-run-firestorm-bin | grep not\ foundThis will spit out a list of libraries that are not found on your system. You will need to install these with your package manager.
Viewer wont start due to an error with libstdc++
On the odd occasion, some have reported an error like the one below:
bin/do-not-directly-run-firestorm-bin: /lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.22' not found (required by bin/do-not-directly-run-firestorm-bin)
If you see this error, it means your distributions libstdc++ library isn't compatible (possibly due to age of the library).
If the viewer will not start because of this specific error, try downloading this library, and place it in the lib directory under the viewer install directory.
Note, this solution is to be considered a workaround. Ideally, you should consider investigating matters such as being up to date with operating system updates for your distribution etc.
For popular distributions such as Ubuntu, please ensure you are using a current distribution release. For Ubuntu systems (Ubuntu, Kubuntu etc), please visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases to check the status of your distribution. If you are using a distribution that is end of life, or, on the verge of being end of life, please consider updating to a current release.