Blue Screen

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Juan,

Since installing V1.5.5 I have been getting lots of blue screen crashes. These stated when using HDRWavelets. I could use it on small previews, but not on whole images. It doesn't happen all the time...it will crash say once in every two or three goes. This happens on CR2 files and TIFF files. I haven't tried other formats.

I didn't worry about it too much at first because I knew the 1.5.6 version was coming out....I thought maybe it was just an issue with 1.5.5. So I installed this latest version when it came out but the problem remains.

Last night it crashed when I was using ATrouswavelets. I haven't seen it happen with any other Processes.

No other programs are causing these crashes. I am using Win 32 bit version on an HP laptop running WinXPPro with 3GB ram.

Is there anything I can do?

Cheers
         Simon

[georg.viehoever]

Hi Simon,
I am running PI 1.5.6 on Vista with 2 GB RAM. I havent seen many Blue Screens lately.

Maybe you can work out a procedure so Juan can reproduce the problem. Otherwise fixing such issues is extremely difficult.

Georg

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Georg,

Good idea. I just tried it and it crashed again....so here's the details.

Open PI. File OPEN........ http://cid-7754931c69f7958d.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Astropics/10%7C_08%7C_2009-18%7C_36%7C_38-0549.CR2

Then go to Processes / HDRWavelets. Set Number of Layers to 8, Iterations to 2, inverted, tick To Luminance.

Press the blue square. I then get a few lines (maybe three or four) in the Processing Console, and then the computer switched itself off, and restarted automatically.

Is this any help?

Cheers
          Simon

[Nocturnal]

Brutal!



I've had PI crash a few times but never cause a BSOD.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Simon and all,

Unfortunately I have no Windows machine at hand now (only Mac OS X until September). On Linux and OS X I have seen no problem of this kind. Of course I didn't see anything like this in all tests I made on Windows before releasing versions 1.5.5 and 1.5.6, including Vista 64-bit and XP 32-bit. In fact I haven't got a blue screen with PixInsight on Windows since years —maybe I've been just lucky

Somebody else can confirm this behavior? Somebody could check if this happens with Simon's CR2 image, testing the same HDRWaveletTransform procedure?

HDRWaveletTransform and ATrousWaveletTransform are the most memory-intensive processes in PixInsight. This is because both tools make extensive use of wavelet transforms. In other words, by using these processes in PixInsight you are probably accessing every free byte in your computer's RAM. Note that not many software applications do that on a regular basis. Since the problem happens intermittently and you're getting blue screens and spontaneous reboots (which are often related to hardware problems), chances are that this is actually being caused by a defective RAM module. I'd advice running a good memory test software on your computer, just to make sure that your hardware is OK. MemTest86 comes to mind (http://www.memtest86.com/). There is a free version of this utility (click the Free Download menu option).

[Nocturnal]

I was not able to reproduce this on my Vista x64 machine with 6GB. Then again PI only grows to about 330MB when doing this operation.

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Juan and Sander,

Thanks for the input. I went to the HP website and ran their Health Check utility. It flagged up plenty of updates to install including a new BIOS upgrade. I did all of these and then reran the Health Check. I did the '1min' memory test and it was all OK. There is a 3hour deep version that I will run tonight when I'm asleep  8) .

However, some more info that may help. After doing all of the above (apart from the deep memory test), I restarted PI. I loaded the file as before and ran HDRWavelets. It ran fine. So I upped the number of layers to 12 and it crashed. The blue screen said something like 'Windows is shutting down to avoid damage' and then 'HINE_CHECK EXCEPTION'....and then some other stuff which disappeared too quickly. I have no idea is this is any help to you.

So I will do some deep memory tests and report back. Fingers crossed!

Cheers
           Simon

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Simon,

Yes, that's very helpful to diagnose the problem. It seems you're getting a MACHINE_CHECK exception. Take a look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Check_Exception

If your RAM passes thorough memory tests, another firm candidate is CPU overheating. Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Juan,

I did the extended HP memory test...it only took about 70mins. It came out fine...no errors. I'll try to follow the overheating thread.

Cheers
          Simon

[Cheyenne]

Another suggestion... you might want to simply re-seat your memory.  I had a problem a couple of weeks ago with intermittent system halts (sometimes when running PI, or other multi-CPU intensive processes).  I suspected that the problem was the result of a thermal issue with the memory chips.  The problem would only occur when the system was running "hot".  memtest would run clean on a cold system, but would fail with a bunch of memory errors when run with the system running "hot".  The problem went away when I re-seated the memory chips.  I remember ages ago having to "flex" motherboards every now and then and then push all the chips back down to eliminate odd errors.

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Cheyenne,

I took one of the flaps off theback of the laptop and found one of the memory modules. It was only a 1GB module even though I have 3GB on the system. Do modern laptops have say 2GB on the motherboard and a slot for extra memory?

Anyway, I took the module out and reseated it as you suggested, put the flap back on and restarted the laptop. I then repeated the HDRWavelets with the same image. It ran through fine with no crash. I then bumped up the number of layers from 8 to 12 and the number of iterations from 2 to 4. Again it worked fine.

I then repeated the process again and it crashed. But about 30 seconds before it crashed the fan increased quite a lot. So maybe it is an overheating problem???

So I wonder if I should try to fix it or just take it back to the supplier (I am sure it is under 1 year old). The question is....if I take it back, how do I demonstrate it is an overheating issue and not PI that is causing it. Any dealer will just say 'take off PI and all will be fine....it must be PI's fault'

Any thoughts?

Cheers
         Simon

[georg.viehoever]

Hi Simon,

I have been trying the HDRWavelet with PI1.5.6 and your image on my Toshiba Satego X200 Laptop with 2 GB of memory and Vista 32 bits. No success (i.e., no blue screen) . The task manager also shows no shortage of RAM during processing.

I guess trying your laptop in a cooler environment might be something you want to try-if the overheating is the root cause. I also have seen graphics card drivers causing all kinds of system instabilities. Did you update your graphics driver? Just guessing...

Kind regards,
Georg

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Georg,

Yes, the graphic card driver was one of the updates on the HP Health Check...so that has been done.

I used to have a Dell laptop with 1.25GB RAM and HDRWavelets worked fine on that...so that would agree with your finding about plenty of RAM being available.

I have almost finished constructing a Peltier cooler box for my Canon DSLR....so maybe I should use my new found knowledge and build another one for the laptop. 

Thanks for everyone's help on this issue though.

Cheers
         Simon

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Juan,

I have been getting some very extensive help from HP regarding my laptop crashing to bluescreen everytime I run HDRWavelets in PI. It might be the operating system needs re-installing...but we are still diagnosing some problems.

In the System Requirements part of the PI website it says "On Windows XP, we recommend our users to edit the BOOT.INI system file to add the /3GB parameter." Can you give me any more info on this....like how do I do this? Where do I add the /3GB parameter? I'm running Win XP Pro.

It probably is not reelevant but I just need to do everything possible to eliminate all the possibilities along the way.

Cheers
         Simon

[Simon Hicks]

OK...I've found out how to edit the Boot.ini file......

this is what I have now....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

Do I just add the /3GB bit to the end of the last line...like this?

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer /3GB