Chat failing to initiate
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Tinker Pixels
Both group chat and IM failing to initiate. I mostly experience it in Firestorm Social Island (simhost-0be97bd680c67540a.agni), as do the rest of the team.
Starting an IM with someone else will work most of the time and every once in a while end up with a popup stating "Unable to start a new chat session with Username. The session initialization is timed out".
Group chats will either fail silently or give the following message inline:
"Second Life: You are the only participant in this IM session. Your message is not being broadcast at this ti2me."
Tested on Second Life Release 26.1.1.23806384790, Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2516 and Firestorm 7.2.3.80036.
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OMGWTF Barbecue
There have been no updates on this issue since July 22, despite many reports of this being an ongoing issue. It's still hapening as of today October 7th 2026. Can we please get an update and time estimate for fixing this? It's causing quite a lot of problems when trying to do business in SL as I lose messages from customers on a regular basis. Many business owners in the comments here are reporting this as an ongoing issue, please help to prioritize this. Maestro Linden Mercury Linden Lettie Linden
Tinker Pixels
OMGWTF Barbecue Seems the issue almost disappeared back then but has flared up even worse in the last month or so.
M
Mercury Linden
Merged in a post:
Instant Message time out issue.
Evil Skelly
send a Notice, Group IM, 101 IM
send message
wait
no message
timeout error ping box
im closes
rinse and repeat
(its isnt 100% some people get messages some done, sometimes a relog fixes it sometimes it dosnt.)
AlettaMondragon Resident
The most annoying thing about this is that a few months ago they said they addressed this issue. It seems less frequent since, but it varies randomly, so it is far from fixed.
MiaJolina Resident
Yeah, I’ve noticed the same issue it happens to me too!
Honeybunny Hotshot
this is happening to myself too has been going on for a while
Tahiti Rae
Seemed to calm down for a couple days but Sept 17 it's happening again for me. Chat session timed out...have to reply via notecard, then relog to get the IM going again. Thank you for your diligence and look forward to a fixie-poo lol. :)
Kaylynn Blackcinder
I seem to be missing my friend and groups list from nearby chat menu. Is this normal or did I do something wrong? Anyone help please https://gyazo.com/d9226ceb54973a9aef4a2e311316de5b
Tahiti Rae
I've had this issue for months and posted here a long time ago.
UPDATE: It seemed to 'calm down' a bit for a couple weeks, but never went away. The last 48 hours, Aug 22-24, it seems to be nonstop for me, even on fresh new log ins. Have to relog a g a i n. Really bad for business communications, not to mention friends. For urgent messages, I have to send a notecard to reply to incoming, before I relog again. Same errors - chat session timed out, can't reply, click OK on error and the chat window disappears... can't reply until relog. Hope you find the cause soon!! Get the military on it lol SO frustrating!!! Thanks in advance.
Maestro Linden
Merged in a post:
"Failed to initalize IM" blah blah error still occurring
Ikaros Alpha
Someone tried to IM me. Before I could attempt to answer, I received the "failing to initialize IM" blah blah.
This happens several times a day, still.
You always tell us to first look if a bug was already reported. And I know this was, many times. But now I read on the status page: "Please report any unexpected issues with IM's in our feedback portal". So be it then.
crystlemarie93 Resident
This has not improved at all and between the chat failures and the seemingly associated TP crashes, it's very obnoxious. Just had another failure at 10:12 pm on August 9, 2026.
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