Crashes with Ntdll.dll

[Steffen Dünner]

Hi guys,

every time I close MODO 801 SP3 it crashes with a Ntdll.dll error. It's just after closing it, not while working with MODO.
If I don't load the V-Ray plugin / kit everything is back to normal again and MODO doesn't crash.

The funny thing is that only my work system (Win8.1, 32GB RAM, GTX780, ...) shows this behaviour while my home system (Win7, 12GB RAM, GTX780, ...) is completely stable.
I don't understand the role V-Ray is playing in this case and what usually causes this kind of crashes. Maybe a recent Windows update? Is there any way to find the culprit?

Cheers
Steffen

[vladimir.nedev]

When it crashes, does it say it generated a dump somewhere ? If you can upload the dump I can run it through a debugger and maybe see what crashes.
I haven't tested the final SP3 release yet, maybe it is something with it. Or maybe it is something with Windows 8. Did it work before SP3 on Windows 8 ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

I will try to find a dump if I can. The crash started to occur some days before the X-Mas holidays, maybe caused by a Windows Update (?). Before that the Win8.1 / MODO SP3 system was stable and didn't crash.
I will now reinstall MODO SP2 and test if it also crashes.

Funny enough, Eric Mootz (plugin developer you might know) has the same problem with his 2 MODO plugins but wasn't able to find a cause so far.

Cheers
Steffen

[Steffen Dünner]

Hmm... no mention of a crash dump. Only this (sorry, it's a german Win8.1):

Problemsignatur:
Problemereignisname: APPCRASH
Anwendungsname: modo.exe
Anwendungsversion: 801.0.7.7509
Anwendungszeitstempel: 547cd8cc
Fehlermodulname: ntdll.dll
Fehlermodulversion: 6.3.9600.17476
Fehlermodulzeitstempel: 54516b13
Ausnahmecode: c0000005
Ausnahmeoffset: 00000000000300ac
Betriebsystemversion: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.256.48
Gebietsschema-ID: 1031
Zusatzinformation 1: 4548
Zusatzinformation 2: 4548b2df78fa6bd1ea24cef2dc60de69
Zusatzinformation 3: 5c9d
Zusatzinformation 4: 5c9d277371228012c688fddf30a1221d

Oh, and MODO SP2 also crashes with a similar output.

[vladimir.nedev]

Can you try it with an older V-Ray for MODO nightly build. For example, from December 1st 2014.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

OK, the December 1st build doesn't crash.

I'll try some more builds to find the point where the crash starts to occur.

Thanks
Steffen

[vladimir.nedev]

Can you try the builds from 18.12.2014 and 19.12.2014. The build from 19.12.2014 is the first that will load the V-Ray RT CUDA plug-in.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

OK, I found it: The last nightly build that doesn't crash is 25398. This is the build from December the 18th.

Cheers
Steffen

[vladimir.nedev]

So it is most likely the RT GPU CUDA V-Ray plug-in. Can you try updating to the latest nVidia driver ? Maybe this will help.

Otherwise, thank you for taking the time to find the first broken build, if updating the driver doesn't fix it, I will have to
get my hands on a Windows 8.1 machine and see what exactly causes the crash.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

I'm already on the very latest nVidia drivers (347.09)

And thanks for your super fast support

Cheers
Steffen

[vladimir.nedev]

We couldn't reproduce the crash on one of our Windows 8.1 machines ( which had the latest nVidia drivers too).
Can you give me some more info - does the crash occur, if you just open MODO and then close it ?
Or do you first render a specific scene ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

The crash occurs even when just opening and directly closing MODO. No render has to take place.
I also can't reproduce a crash on my Win7 home system.

[vladimir.nedev]

I haven't used Windows 8.1, and I am not sure if the crash dialog is similar to Windows 7. But in Windows 7,
there is a "View details" button that also shows where Windows saved a "mdmp" dump file of the process that crashed.
Can you send me this "mdmp" file, so I can look at the process stack when the crash happened ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

I will try this tomorrow (as I'm @home right now).
I will also try to reproduce this crash on a system with identical specs and Win8.1 tomorrow @work.

[Steffen Dünner]

Today I installed V-Ray for MODO on a colleague's machine with identical specs, same Dell workstation model, same OS, same graphics card&drivers and his MODO doesn't crash after closing, even with the latest nightly build.
I also have no button to write a dump file.
The only thing I noticed is that when I rename the "rt_cuda.dll" in "C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\MODO 701, 801 for x64\vraysl\" to something like "rt_cuda.dll.test", MODO doesn't crash after quitting. So it clearly has something to do with my machine's config in combination with CUDA.

Other applications that use CUDA don't crash and work like expected BTW.

Cheers
Steffen