A while back, I had reported that the Detach Bug had been fixed. For many months we have been waiting for the fix to be implemented in the official SL client. It’s finally been released and as best as I can surmise, the fix now prevents you from making copies of worn objects. This does indeed prevent the first reproduction of the bug, but it does nothing to fix the core problem. HUDs that are worn from the ground are still in danger of being lost when they are next detached or when you log out or crash.

How to prevent the Detach Bug

Never wear your HUD directly from the ground. Right click on the HUD and take it. Then wear it from your inventory.

Wearing objects from the ground may lead to inventory loss

What to do if you have lost a HUD or other detachment

You should do the usual things from the Second Life Wiki like clear your cache. But if that doesn’t work, contact Second Life support. Open a ticket on their website and ask for an inventory restart/fix. Explain that you have lost a HUD when it detached, that it disappeared from your inventory and that you have tried solutions from the wiki. They will help you, even if you are just a basic member. Their support might be faster if you are premium however.

Second Life support can help you! If you lost your HUD from the Detach Bug, they can almost always retrieve it using their inventory fix. Always contact support for this problem.

What else can you do?

Please take the time to log into the jira site (the official Second Life bug tracking system) and vote on this problem. The current jira issue for this problem is SVC-2956.

UPDATE (June 26): There is another well commented description of the same essential bug on the jira. Please vote for VWR-12525.

If you haven’t yet tried the new Landmark Pal Deluxe, it’s really neat. I’ve found it to be very useful personally. It’s great to keep track of all your recent locations via the handy history menu. And it’s so nice to be able to save your favorite places in a variety of ways.

Qarl Linden posted this on the jira:

sorry for all the grief. should be fixed when maint-viewer-12 reaches RC. until then, try to avoid copying worn objects, and wearing objects directly from the ground.

First, try touching the bottom edge of the maximize button a few times. That should work in most situations.

If that does not work, try detaching the HUD and then attaching it to a new HUD location. Right click on the object in your inventory, choosing “Attach To HUD” and choose one of the open spots.

If that does not work, follow this link because you may need to reset the scripts in the HUD. If it’s still minimized, try touching the bottom edge again and attaching it to a new HUD location.

Lastly, if nothing seems to happen when you reset the HUD, the scripts may be missing. Follow this link to see how to put your scripts back into the HUD.

The problem is that when you say something on channel 7 that the HUD doesn’t understand, it gives you the feedback:

HUDDLES EZ Animator Deluxe v1.2.1: I don’t understand

While informative, this can be annoying and confusing, especially if you use channel 7 a lot for another device. To change the channel it listens to, go into the script, find the line which says “integer COMMCHAN = 7;” and change it.

Here are the step by step instructions for you if you need them:

1. Rez your HUD onto the ground.
2. Right click on the HUD and choose Edit.
3. Go to the Content tab (click More if you do not see the Content tab).
4. Find the script named “~Flight Assist 1.2.1″.
5. Right click on the script and choose Open.
6. Find the line near the beginning of the script which says: integer COMMCHAN = 7;
   (it’s on line 90 in the script)
7. Change the number 7 to another positive number and click Save.
8. Close the Script and the Edit windows.
9. Right click and Take your HUD.
10. Wear your HUD from your inventory.

If you don’t use the flight assist, you can just delete the flight assist script. This should cause no problems.

Why?

Nock Forager found a way to reproduce the detach bug and posted it at jira.secondlife.com:

1. Open build menu.
2. rez new box object.
3. rename it “Object A”.
4. Attach “Object A” to Left hand.

- Open inventory list and use filter key “object” make easier what will happen. -

5. You see “Object A” under the Objects folder.
6. Copy “Object A” and paste it in same folder.
7. Rename new “Object A” to “Object B”.
8. Drop “Object B” on floor (rez it).
9. Wear “Object B” directly from floor.

Obserbed:
“Object A” dissapear from inventory.

“Object B” appear under the Library folder as “worn on left hand”, but it just a shadow. You can’t rez it. And relogging make it completely disappear.

Should be:
“Object A” should remain under Objects folder as unweared.
“Object B” should located under Objects folder.

Notice that he is attaching these objects directly while they sit on the ground. This may not be the only way to trigger this bug, but it only reinforces what should be a law for HUDDLES users. Once again:

Do not wear or attach a hud that is sitting on the ground (rezzed in world). Instead, right click on the object and choose Take, then wear it from your inventory.

If you have suffered from this bug, please post a comment to confirm whether or not you ever wear your HUD directly from the ground.

In the mean time, I’m going to research other ways we can lobby Linden Lab to both fix the bug that is causing this latest rash of inventory losses and to create a channel where Basic members can get support for inventory issues.

I also found this issue on jira, I think this deserves many, many votes: To gather Inventory loss troubleshooting data, let Basic users submit tickets for loss.

Inventory loss bugs affect many Premium & Basic users. Linden has been interested in getting timely data to help track down the causes. However currently, only Premium users may submit tickets about inventory loss. By not allowing Basic users to submit tickets about this, Linden is losing all the troubleshooting data they could provide. And clearly, it’s needed. Linden should start letting Basic users submit inventory loss tickets. Besides, Basic users contribute to the economy, by buying items, buying/renting land, etc. It doesn’t seem fair that there is *zero* official concern when their investment in the economy (items) is affected (lost).

Please note, this issue is not specifically requesting that Linden HELP Basic users (though actually I think it should when we lose items)…it is requesting that we be ALLOWED to help Linden! By giving them data (ticket info) to help them track down bugs that affect everyone.

It’s not enough. Inventory loss should be something that all users of Second Life should be able to get support for, but it’s a start.

JUNE 23 UPDATE: In order to get help for this, I now advise that you open a support ticket about this. Linden Customer Service has made significant progress in the last couple of weeks to address this. Open a ticket, explain clearly what happened (that your attachment disappeared from your inventory after detaching, after a crash, or after it was replaced by another attachment). Ask for a Directory Repair or Inventory Restart. It will work. At least I don’t know of a case when this fix has failed to return HUDs lost in this manner.

I sent this Linden an IM to thank them and to ask some follow up questions. I’ve removed their name so that he doesn’t get swamped with direct support requests. As always, you should go through the official channels to get support. However, I thought many of my customers would want to know some of the things that he said:

Keiki Lemieux: Hello, if you have a moment, I would like to chat.

a Linden: i have a minute or two.. what’s up?

Keiki Lemieux: first, a thank you. you helped one of my customers today find a copy of their HUDDLE EZ Animator with loads of her animations inside. I have been getting dozens of customers with similar problems over the last couple of weeks. They detach a HUD and it disappears, sometimes with 100s of animations inside. I’ve been helping people for 2 years, and this seems to be a new bug that happens when someone detaches a HUD and it just poofs from their inventory. I was hoping you could give me some advice about what directions I should tell them. I am assuming that some of them could get their items back if they could get to the right support person.

a Linden: correct.. the first step is contacting support either by ticket or Live Chat

Keiki Lemieux: what level of membership are they going to need to get help?

a Linden: Premium helps bunches to be honest

Keiki Lemieux: And the problem I’m describing, do you know if it’s a known issue? I never heard of this a month ago. Now I’m getting a couple inquiries a day, which usually means there are dozens who aren’t bothering to IM me.

a Linden: I’ve been able to fix that issue a few times with a”fix” i can do rather quickly. I’ve seen it creeping up a lot lately. Not sure why it’s happening, but i suspect it could be any number of things.. from which viewer they are using, to issues with the servers, to acts of bored dieties

Keiki Lemieux: is there a particular thing they can ask for? “Run that inventory fix it utility” or something?

a Linden: basically, yes.. that would point to the direction that would need to be taken. although sometimes that doesn’t completely fix the issue, often times it will

Keiki Lemieux: and is it a time sensitive thing? do they need to do it within 24 hours or a week or something?

a Linden: i’m sure it helps to alert us as soon as possible, but a week or two is probably fine.. maybe longer than that as well

Any ideas how to fix this 9:13] ZHAO-II Notecard Converter: ‘AO – Config 2′ does not appear to be a valid ZHAO animation notecard.

He sent me his notecard and it was definitely a card that the older ZHAO script could read. After some experimenting, I realized that the converter script was having trouble with the first line on the notecard. The script would only convert the notecard if the first line was:

:: [ Walking (also Striding) 1 ] ::

So if you get that error message, try changing the first line of the notecard to that.

Well, most likely they have put the dances into a fresh copy of the EZAD, not the one they had been using. See every time you rez the original EZAD you received, SL rezzes a new copy on the ground. So if when you go to add new dances, you accidentally rez a fresh copy and not the one you were using, you will think some of your dances have gone missing.

To find your dances, I recommend doing the following:

1. Open your personal inventory and search for “1.1.3″. This will bring up a list of all the EZADs you have in your inventory.
2. Identify the EZADs which have “no copy” next to the object name. If an EZAD is labeled as “no copy”, that means there are some no copy animations inside.
3. Rez each no copy EZAD on the ground and look inside by right clicking on it and choosing “Edit”. Then select More and Content. Look inside and find your animations.
4. Collect all your animations into one EZAD by dragging them into your inventory and then dragging them back into the copy you want to use.
5. You may want to rename the EZAD something different so you can tell it apart from all the other copies that you might have floating around in your inventory. You do this by clicking on the General tab on the edit menu.

The other reason their animations might be missing is that they hit “Copy to Inventory” or “Copy and Wear” after adding animations to their HUD. If that might be the problem, take a look at this other blog post.