BSODs during rendering

[Dimiter.Enev]

Hi there,
Every now and then I'm having BSOD during rendering and it really started to affect my workflow (overnight batch rendering sessions interrupted), so I started investigating and testing.

Win7 x64, 3dsMax2013, V-ray 3 (crashes started since April 2016, so all versions released after that date)
i7-5960x, 980ti, sabertooth x99, G.Skill F4-2666C15-8GRKB (4x8GB)

99% of the time the cause is NT Kernel & System or NVIDIA Windows Kernel.
Here is a screen from BlueScreenView:


I updated BIOS and every driver I found, experimented with removing some windows updates, tested RAM with memtest (3 full cycles) - no problems found, but still have BSOD during rendering only (all other applications, games etc. work without problems).
I realized that these BSODs started around the time I got a new monitor - Acer Predator X34 and it's my main suspect now. Unfortunately there is only one driver released for it so I can't change it.
Sometimes (although very rare) the screen goes black when I try to resize some window during rendering, but slowly all elements reappear and rendering continues normally (I thought this is normal, because of the 100% load everything is a bit laggy, but I'm nor sure now).

I wondered if someone had similar issues and using this monitor. Maybe it has something to do with G-Sync.. I'm still experimenting to find the source of the problem, but since it doesn't happen on every render it's going slow.
Any ideas are welcome.

Regards,
Dimiter

[vlado]

What is your CPU temperature? Is it possible that the CPU is overheating? Is it overclocked?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dimiter.Enev]

Hi Vlado,

It's usually around 55-65C on Load (Custom water loop) so temperature shouldn't be a problem.
I had tried with and without overclock, tried a bit more voltage on CPU for stability, even tried lowering the frequency of the RAM and it still crashes.

Regards,
Dimiter

[anthonyh]

hi,
as a general rule i always set 3dsmax cpu priority to low in case other system resources are fighting. it also allows me to render from 2 max`s at once when i need. it might help ? it`s only when i don`t do this and have too many programs open/rendering that i can get blue-screens.
anthonyh

[LudvikKoutny]

When I got ntos kernel crashes it was always due to one of the ram sticks failing. It happened mostly during rendering as rendering fills more of RAM than average work does. What usually helped was turning off the PC, removing all the sticks except one, and trying to boot into windows. It would not boot or last long with the faulty one, so I would then replace that one.

But it's just a guess, it can be dozen other things too

[Dimiter.Enev]

Thanks for the advises guys. I will give the low priority trick a shot, I'm wondering if it will affect the render times.

Vlado, I was thinking, since we now have the option to pause and resume rendering, isn't it possible v-ray to make some auto-saves along the way, so the render can be resumed from some point in case of a crash?
I had a 6 hour render crashing on me on the last few buckets and had to start over, so such option will be priceless for me (saving every 1 hour will be totally ok if it takes too much resources and slows down render times).

Regards,
Dimiter

[radoslav.platikanov]

Resuming already works that way. In bucket mode, each bucket is saved to the file as soon as it's ready, so it should be able to resume after a crash in all cases. You just have to enable the resumable rendering option before rendering. In progressive mode, you also have to set the Autosave interval.

[Dimiter.Enev]

Thank you very much Radoslav!
I didn't realize it can be used that way.
This can save me a lot of time until I resolve my BSOD issue.

[Morbid Angel]

bsod during rendering can be either cpu or ram fault. You can pull out your sticks of ram and test them one by one. If the error occurs it may be the cpu (I had this happen once, its rare but possible).

[Deflaminis]

If you are getting a BSOD in Max, it's a hardware problem. I would check to see if there are any firmware updates for your hardware, and then I would make sure MS didn't install some generic driver for an important piece of hardware, start with the network card. If that fails, RAM or CPU is usually the culprit, from what I've seen.

[Dimiter.Enev]

RAM was my first suspect, but when I checked the dates these BSODs occurred I realized that it all started when I changed my monitor (I had no problems with the same configuration with different monitor).

On a (kind of) related note - at first I had started to use the monitor USB hub for the v-ray WibuKey dongle, which often caused Windows to freeze or BSOD at startup only (I guess some of the first .dmp logs are from this issue).
I had contacted WibuKey support and they confirmed that using the dongle in monitor or keyboard USBs often causes these kind of problems and after I moved the dongle to the PC USB port there were no more freezes and BSODs at startup.

[vlado]

Huh I didn't know that. Thanks for this information, it's very good to know! And apologies for your troubles.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

Huh I didn't know that. Thanks for this information, it's very good to know! And apologies for your troubles.

Best regards,
Vlado

Very odd indeed as I used dongles in monitors for years! What kind of monitor did you have? I noticed only one issue where dongle would drop out every now and then, and eventually one of the monitor usbs stopped working all together. I moved the dongles directly into the server (which is also my workstation) never had problems after that.

[Dimiter.Enev]

Huh I didn't know that. Thanks for this information, it's very good to know! And apologies for your troubles.

Best regards,
Vlado

You are welcome Vlado, no need to apologize.

Dmitry, it is Acer Predator X34.

Here is the reply I got from Wibu support back then: "Please connect your WibuKey on another USB-Port directly on your PC, because there are known Problems with recognize the WibuKey on a Monitor- or Keyboard USB-Port."

[Art48]

If the error persists or if anyone tried this and it didn't work:
For me it was outdated Wibu drivers which caused BSODs for nearly a year until I found out what was the cause. Downloaded most recent version of the drivers and the issue is gone since then.
AFAIK the new drivers are already bundled with VRay since a couple of SPs.