PSA: Bluescreens with old dongle drivers and new NVIDIA drivers

[Art48]

Hi,

Just saying this if someone got problems with bluescreens on overnight rendering.
I invested more than a week in tracking down this issue and in the end it was a WIBUKey driver from 2013.
It works fine with any NVIDIA driver lower than 320.18. I suspected the graphics driver at first but in the end it was the dongle driver. Updated it to the most recent driver/software and got no more bluescreens.
It propably would not have taken such a long time to track down if I only knew why windows wouldn't create any DMP files...

Anyways, I just thought I might post this here in case anyone else having the same issues (as I know some people do due to my incredible Google-Fu).

On a side note: How often does VRay check for a license? I always got a bluescreen from 30min up to 1.5 hours in the rendering.

[vlado]

The license server reads the dongle periodically, I think every few minutes, certainly much more frequently than once in 30 mins.

Anyways, thanks a lot for the pointer - very useful information!

Best regards,
Vlado

[AJ Jefferies]

I think you may have just fixed a problem that's been plaguing one of our machines for the last few months! Thank you

[Art48]

If you didn't try already, try the Display Driver Uninstaller, I used it in case the driver had hiccups, it's a good clean install.

[pixela]

Sorry if I am asking a funny dumb question (I am not good in hardware, drivers etc)
Isnt the WIBU key driver is updated with every upgrade in Vray? (Yoı mention yours is from 2013, is this possible if you install new builds?)

I am having blue screen problems since yesterday and 3dsmax crashes during renders. My RAM is 32 GB and when I check the task manager, it reads that only 24GB of RAM is being used. So I thought this might be the problem. But I am on the latest version of Vray so I assume my WIBU has up-to-date drivers.

If no, please
tell me how I can update the drivers.

[Art48]

With a new VRay update there only is the occasional license server update, not the dongle drivers. With that ChaosGroup has nothing to do.

The VRay License server is for managing licenses, the Dongle driver is from the dongle manufacturer and is there for windows to reckognize the dongle and know what to do with it. VRay only accesses the information on the dongle then.

Edit: You can get the most recent drivers here: https://www.wibu.com/downloads-user-software.html
Chose the runtime software.

[vlado]

Well, we should actually package more recent drivers with our installation; it is already planned for the next service pack.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Art48]

Oh okay, that's good to know!

[Jeroen Prins]

You might have saved my life Art48!
I'm having bsod since two or three weeks. Every big project failed to render.. and even small ones. I was forced using a renderfarm.
I was just planning to do hardware tests and try to figure out what causes this, when i read your topic.
I updated the drivers and till now i didn't have any failures.

fingers crossed! Tnx!

[pixela]

Thank you for the clarification

With a new VRay update there only is the occasional license server update, not the dongle drivers. With that ChaosGroup has nothing to do.

The VRay License server is for managing licenses, the Dongle driver is from the dongle manufacturer and is there for windows to reckognize the dongle and know what to do with it. VRay only accesses the information on the dongle then.

Edit: You can get the most recent drivers here: https://www.wibu.com/downloads-user-software.html
Chose the runtime software.

[Art48]

You might have saved my life Art48!
I'm having bsod since two or three weeks. Every big project failed to render.. and even small ones. I was forced using a renderfarm.
I was just planning to do hardware tests and try to figure out what causes this, when i read your topic.
I updated the drivers and till now i didn't have any failures.

fingers crossed! Tnx!

Please report back if it's still stable after an overnight render. In my case it was an interaction between the NVIDIA drivers and the dongle drivers. At least that is it what I suspect. But it is stable now and I wasted enough time on this **** to start ruling out everything else.

[Art48]

Mine runs stable for 4 consecutive days of rendering, the problem is 100% solved by the steps provided.

[Jeroen Prins]

Good to hear your computer runs great!

Unfortunately i've got a bsod and a computer restarts last night and this morning..
Also experiencing autodesk errors during rendering.
So my problem could be something else. I'm afraid i have to do a very good hardware check..

[Art48]

Sad to hear

[Art48]

An update: Recently (I don't know, maybe 1-2 months ago) our machine started with the bluescreens again. Now today I've had enough and reexamined the situation :P. And to my surprise apparently some VRay update snuck in an old driver AGAIN! I am a bit infuriated at the moment and I updated the driver to the most recent one again (6.4) and monitoring the situation if the bluescreens are gone again. What I know for a fact though is that to fix the issue I installed a driver from the end of the year 2016 and it worked fine from that point on. The only way a driver from 2015 could make its way in again was by VRay update and before installing the newest one now I noticed that I had one from 2015 on the system. I don't remember the exact version - sorry - but please vlado have a second look at what driver version you distribute with the recent VRay patches since it is most definitely not the most recent one.
I will report back once I got reliable data on the msot recent driver but since this was the same issue last time and I checked the windows BSOD logs and the driver DLL showed up I guess that is a fix.