Second Life Portable

I’m a big fan of portable apps if for no other reason than is messes with many a librarian’s head when I show them that I can plug in my flash drive and run my software on their “locked down” computer. And, with the recent acquisition of a 4GB jump drive, I’ve got a lot of room to play. So, when I saw these instructions from Brett Bixler of The Pennsylvania State University on how to make Second Life run off a jump drive and leave no trace on the local hard drive (though admitedly, it does use the C: drive while Second Life is running, it just deletes the files when you exit,) I had to try it out. Yes folks, it works. Second Life does run a little slower than usual since jump drives aren’t as fast as hard drives but it did function reasonably and might be a solution for those wishing to run Second Life on public computers.

For some time I’ve been looking for a way to run SL off a Flash drive. This will enable students at Penn State using public labs to run SL, keep up with the frequent updates, etc.

I finally have a batch file (for the PC) that seems to do the job.

I installed SL on a Flash drive.

I created this batch script. A batch script is just a text file, so you can copy this script into any editor and save it as RunSL.bat:


: This script will launch Second Life.
: When SL is closed, it will delete temp
: directories that cause PSU Lab problems.
: For this script to work, the folder
: containing the Second Life application
: (SecondLife) must be in the same directory
: as this script.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Please leave this window open.
ECHO IGNORE ANY "Profile Storage Space" MESSAGES YOU SEE!
ECHO Now launching Second Life...
ECHO.
PAUSE
CD /d %~dp0
CD SecondLife
START /wait SecondLife.exe
RMDIR /q /s "%APPDATA%\SecondLife"
ECHO.
ECHO Second Life is closing. Now cleaning up your temp files...
ECHO.
PAUSE
CLS
EXIT

Student directions:

The batch script named RunSL.bat will launch Second Life when you launch it. When SL is closed, it will delete the SecondLife temp directory that is stored on the C: drive in the Documents and Settings folder. This will keep the PSU labs at UP from forcing the user to manually delete these files, as the user’s file storage space quota is exceeded when Second Life runs. Second Life runs fine without these temp files.

For this script to work, the folder containing the Second Life application (SecondLife) must be in the same directory as this script. You cannot change the name of the Second Life folder, or the names of anything inside the Second Life folder.

If you are running this off a Flash drive, install Second Life (download the software from http://secondlife.com) directly onto the Flash drive (~70MB), copy this script onto the Flash drive in the same directory, and run this script to launch Second Life.

The Second Life application is frequently updated, and most of these updates are mandatory. If you launch Second Life and must update it, please follow the directions Second Life provides. Make sure you have enough free space on your Flash drive (~100MB) to perform a successfull update.

18 Replies to “Second Life Portable”

  1. A brilliantly useful tool ….. I modified this script to run silently by removing the pauses and then compiled it as a ghost .exe with the icon extracted from the secondlife.exe itself …and now it runs as an executable front end which executes Second Life as a portable app on the GeekMenu version of the portableapps.com platform, yea!

  2. I made some modifications so instead of deleting your temporary files, it moves them to the portable location instead (so you save your settings).
    I also changed it to automatically start my proxy plugins. Here is the code if you want.

    @ECHO OFF
    Color 0c
    ECHO Please leave this window open.
    ECHO Now Restoring your cache from last session
    ECHO.
    PAUSE
    XCOPY Greg “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” /H /R /E /Y /I
    RMDIR /q /s “Greg”
    CD /d %~dp0
    CD Proxy
    ECHO Now Starting up grid proxy and your plugins
    ECHO.
    start GridProxyApp.exe –load=plugins/useful.dll –load=plugins/moneyFool.dll –load=plugins/rainbow.dll –load=plugins/hax.dll –load=plugins/disabler.dll –load=plugins/Stapler.dll –load=plugins/coin.dll –load=plugins/test.dll –load=plugins/AwayIM.dll –load=plugins/Shadow.dll –load=plugins/StickyIky.dll –load=plugins/GayLord.dll –load=plugins/GroupSex.dll –load=plugins/Spectrum.dll –load=plugins/primwriter.dll –load=plugins/BypassRaycast.dll –load=plugins/handicap.dll –load=plugins/AwesomeSauce.dll
    CD ..
    ECHO Now Starting Up SecondLife. Please do not close this window.
    ECHO.
    CD SecondLife
    START “Greg” /wait SecondLife.exe -loginuri http://localhost:8080/
    CD ..
    XCOPY “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” Greg /H /R /E /Y /I
    RMDIR /q /s “%APPDATA%\SecondLife”
    ECHO.
    ECHO Second Life is closing. Now cleaning up your temp files…
    ECHO.
    PAUSE
    CLS
    EXIT

  3. Here is one that saves all your setting but not the mega list of temp textures of the cache, and not inmidiatly deletes the saved folder on the flash drive, so when something happens you still have the settings on the flash drive:

    @ECHO OFF
    Color 0a
    ECHO Please leave this window open.
    CD ..
    ECHO.
    ECHO Copying settings to C: drive..
    ECHO.
    XCOPY SLSave “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” /H /R /E /Y /I
    CD /d %~dp0
    ECHO.
    ECHO Sarting SecondLife..
    ECHO.
    START /wait SecondLife.exe
    ECHO.
    ECHO Deleting SL cache from C: drive..
    ECHO.
    RMDIR /q /s “%APPDATA%\SecondLife\cache”
    CD ..
    ECHO.
    ECHO Deleting settings folder from flash drive..
    ECHO.
    RMDIR /q /s “SLSave”
    ECHO.
    ECHO Copying settings to flash drive SLSave folder..
    ECHO.
    XCOPY “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” SLSave /H /R /E /Y /I
    ECHO.
    ECHO Deleting settings from C: drive..
    ECHO.
    RMDIR /q /s “%APPDATA%\SecondLife”
    CLS
    EXIT

  4. I’d really love to try this, but I can’t seem to figure it out. How do I get SL installed on a flash drive?

  5. During installation, change the install location from the C: drive to a directory on your flash drive.

  6. I am getting ready to try it now, but regarding the Install to USB, If I move the USB to a different computer, it may set up under a different drive letter. It would be useful to change the config to use a USB subdir.

    I would also like to get a portable linux that runs SL… portable linuxes I have by the boxful, I just can’t get SL to run under them.

  7. I’ve not run this in a very long while but as I recall, the assigned drive letter was not an issue whenever I did run it.

  8. Hi Michael,

    I am happily SLing (er, not right now, as I’m at work). SL seems to work fine off of a fast USB memory stick, although I do notice that lag increases until there’s not much else to do but quit and restart. That could be due to my keeping the cache on the USB also. I may have to do a temp move to HD to see if it improves.

    Also, I was expecting much snappier performance on a dual-core nVidia 7400 machine… but a (much) older Lenovo w/ rather run-of-the-mill graphics had it hands down. That and SL wind the system down greatly, and takes up to 1/2 gig memory… yesh.

    Marc

  9. How do you install it at all if it requires admin rights?
    Can someone give some help on that? Please.

  10. is there anyway to install it as different type of file other than an exe? I'm curious to know i f I can run a program like this on my palm pre … since I can access any website and run huge programs now….
    please reply to

    lovelyonetwo@hotmail.com

  11. PSI: Yes, that's the basic concept. However, please keep in mind that these instructions are almost three years old. I can no longer guarantee that they work as written.

  12. Hi. I’m not a UP student but I’m out of town and would love to be able to use SL on a flash drive. But I’m on a laptop that is pretty much just for school/work use (it’s my laptop but I’m hesitant to download SL on it for that same reason). So I was thinking of putting it on a flash drive and following the instructions at the beginning of this topic; however, someone mentioned slowing down the system and I needed to know how using SL on a flash drive will do that. Though I do have friends, work etc. in SL it’s RL that takes the priority lol… I think you get it.

    Thanks,
    Miguel 🙂

  13. To answer the last question, make sure you save the batch file in Notepad as “Save as Type: All Files”, NOT as a text (.txt) file. Name it as Your_Launcher.bat (for example). You can save it on your hard drive, in any folder you like–say My Documents. Do you know how to copy and paste files in Windows? Make sure your USB stick is connected. Copy the batch file and paste it into the directory (folder) on the USB stick that contains the 2nd Life exe. It’s no different than opening a folder on your C:\ drive. Find the letter corresponding to your USB stick. Easy-peezy.

    To answer the query above that: Flash/USB drives tend to be slower than Hard Drives for obvious reasons. However, the new 3.0 USB’s are much faster than the 2.0’s. I can’t see how 2nd Life would harm your laptop in any way, unless you’re afraid of hard crashes. Games do crash sometimes. (Btw, you need 3.0 ports for 3.0 sticks.) You might consider putting 2nd Life on your laptop as laptops generally tend to be slower than desktops.

  14. Wow, it looks so easy. I’m doing this in 2016, so hopefully this will still work after 9 years. Can this be used for other apps?

  15. it’s 2019 almost 2020 has anyone used this recently?
    Where and how this file below is saved in what file extension or where it’s put?
    Is it the same if is done in a external hard drive?
    @ECHO OFF
    Color 0c
    ECHO Please leave this window open.
    ECHO Now Restoring your cache from last session
    ECHO.
    PAUSE
    XCOPY Greg “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” /H /R /E /Y /I
    RMDIR /q /s “Greg”
    CD /d %~dp0
    CD Proxy
    ECHO Now Starting up grid proxy and your plugins
    ECHO.
    start GridProxyApp.exe –load=plugins/useful.dll –load=plugins/moneyFool.dll –load=plugins/rainbow.dll –load=plugins/hax.dll –load=plugins/disabler.dll –load=plugins/Stapler.dll –load=plugins/coin.dll –load=plugins/test.dll –load=plugins/AwayIM.dll –load=plugins/Shadow.dll –load=plugins/StickyIky.dll –load=plugins/GayLord.dll –load=plugins/GroupSex.dll –load=plugins/Spectrum.dll –load=plugins/primwriter.dll –load=plugins/BypassRaycast.dll –load=plugins/handicap.dll –load=plugins/AwesomeSauce.dll
    CD ..
    ECHO Now Starting Up SecondLife. Please do not close this window.
    ECHO.
    CD SecondLife
    START “Greg” /wait SecondLife.exe -loginuri http://localhost:8080/
    CD ..
    XCOPY “%APPDATA%\SecondLife” Greg /H /R /E /Y /I
    RMDIR /q /s “%APPDATA%\SecondLife”
    ECHO.
    ECHO Second Life is closing. Now cleaning up your temp files…
    ECHO.
    PAUSE
    CLS
    EXIT

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