Pixinsight keeps crashing

[Skipper Billy]

Help !! I have used Pixi for many years and have just installed it on a new more powerful machine. Every time I use it it freezes and has to be restarted. Nothing intensive - even clicking on a drop down menu will cause it to freeze. Doesn't do it every time but more often than not. I have uninstalled it and removed all trace in appdata etc and reinstalled it many times but still the same error. Any ideas where to look for a fault log etc ?? At the moment I cannot use it at all. The machine spec is as follows..... (Pixi no help at all - 'must be machine specific issue'.....)

[Oddsocks]

Common PI - Hardware clashes appear to be graphics cards and monitor resolution settings.

Visit the Nvidia website and find the latest driver for the card, don’t rely on Windows to find it for you, Microsoft are always at least a year behind the manufacturers drivers.

If that doesn’t help and you can reach the PI prefs have a play with the UI scaling factors, some combinations of particular screen resolution settings and monitors have been reported to freeze PI, there is a way also to start PI from the command line that disables graphics acceleration altogether and that has been a work-around in the past.

Can’t remember where I read that, think it was in the help section on the main PI website, not the forum, if I can find it again I’ll come back here and post a link, or repeat the method to do that.

Not aware of anything else ATM.

[Skipper Billy]

Thanks for the suggestions @Oddsocks

I have uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and reinstalled them and tried every permutation of the UI scaling without any success. Even just launching the programme and clicking a drop down menu will crash it.

One strange thing I have found is that whilst Pixi is crashed all other programs work perfectly well - I can search Google for a solution whilst it is crashed !!

The other weird this is that once crashed , if I leave it for a few minutes it comes back to life and from thereon seems more stable - I cant explain that!!

I have run ram tests - no issues.

The last thing I can try now is disabling any on board graphics.

I regret upgrading to a powerful computer but really appreciate your help.

[Skipper Billy]

PS - I found the suggested command to start the programme when issues are encountered but it just opens a blank white screen 😞 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=raster

I have run out of ideas now.....

[teoria_del_big_bang]

How frustrating !

With computer problems I am afraid I am not much help but by the sounds of it the program is not actually crashing as if it does come back to life then it cannot have crashed as I do not think PI has the intelligence to restart itself (from my very poor knowledge of these things) so sounds more like a temporary freeze and so I would think no point looking for a fault log as it would not create one if indeed it has such diagnostics, sounds like PI will not know there had been an issue.
Can it do this "Freeze" at anytime or is it just when running certain processes or scripts ?
 

I have had similar issues twice now on my desktop, but perhaps not as bad but sometimes PI would work just fine and then sometimes I noticed a certain process was taking ages and if I then licked on anything on the PI desktop it just said not responding, but if I waited (ages) then it did start responding again.
After a lot of looking for the reason I found that the processor was running hot (loaded THIS small program to see temperature of CPU)  I cant remember exactly how I cured that, I think I changed how the fans cooled (maybe full speed all the time) and found the CPU had been overclocked slightly and so slowed that back down.
The second time it happened was after I upped the RAM from 16 to 32GB but I just bought two new memory cards and eft the original two in and apparently this can be very hit and miss and really all 4 cards need to be matched and so bought all at once. I reverted back to the original two memory cards (in correct slots as they are also paired) and it worked again.
So maybe check al the 4 memory cards are matched.

Other suggestion is if you always loaded to the default directory on C to try loading on the second SSD drive.

Clutching at straws a bit I know but maybe worth checking.

Steve

Edited December 20, 2022 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Oddsocks]

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

PS - I found the suggested command to start the programme when issues are encountered but it just opens a blank white screen 😞 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=raster

I have run out of ideas now.....

That was one of the options I remembered, there were another two commands, 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=software

forces the graphics card to use opengl version supplied with PixInsight itself and 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=ES

forces the card to use Windows default opengl, ~ES is the default opengl when starting PI normally.

One thing you could try as a test that might take the graphics side out of the equation would be to install MS Remote Desktop on the new computer and unplug the monitor then remote in from the old computer, or a laptop, and run PI headless, if it still freezes then it can’t be the local graphics acceleration environment because that is not used when remoting in via MS R.D.

If this is a dedicated image processing machine do you really need to run only Windows on the new computer? If not how about putting a Linux partition on just for PI since that always is their reference OS?

Other than the above does anything show up in the Windows event logs? You can filter the logs in the event viewer for errors and warnings and there are separate logs for the hardware and software environments, which helps pin down where to look.

Clear the logs first then run PI until it freezes/crashes, note the time and go back to the logs to see if you can find matching timed events, any logged error codes can then be searched on the Microsoft support website for help.

William.

[Skipper Billy]

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Can it do this "Freeze" at anytime or is it just when running certain processes or scripts ?

Yes - sometimes in the middle of intensive things like WBPP but sometimes just by clicking on a drop down menu!

The CPU runs about 31º when doing 'heavy' things and the 4 RAM sticks are all identical and from the same batch.

Your suggestion about a different installation location is worth a try!!

Thanks for your help Steve - much appreciated. If I find the solution I will post it here - it might help someone in the future!

 

[Skipper Billy]

45 minutes ago, Oddsocks said:

That was one of the options I remembered, there were another two commands, 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=software

forces the graphics card to use opengl version supplied with PixInsight itself and 

C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe --opengl=ES

forces the card to use Windows default opengl, ~ES is the default opengl when starting PI normally.

One thing you could try as a test that might take the graphics side out of the equation would be to install MS Remote Desktop on the new computer and unplug the monitor then remote in from the old computer, or a laptop, and run PI headless, if it still freezes then it can’t be the local graphics acceleration environment because that is not used when remoting in via MS R.D.

If this is a dedicated image processing machine do you really need to run only Windows on the new computer? If not how about putting a Linux partition on just for PI since that always is their reference OS?

Other than the above does anything show up in the Windows event logs? You can filter the logs in the event viewer for errors and warnings and there are separate logs for the hardware and software environments, which helps pin down where to look.

Clear the logs first then run PI until it freezes/crashes, note the time and go back to the logs to see if you can find matching timed events, any logged error codes can then be searched on the Microsoft support website for help.

Some great suggestions there - the two command lines do succesfully open the programme so I will try those tomorrow and then hammer Pixi to see if either works well.

I will try the Remote Desktop as well. Linux would be a last resort for me (never used it - too intimidating for a thicko like me!)

There is nothing in the logs relating to Pixi.

The people at Pixi seem to have a downer on Nvidia cards and almost always suggest AMD cards - I have an AMD card at work I could borrow to see if that helps.

Thanks for your help William - much appreciated. If I find the solution I will post it here - it might help someone in the future!

[Oddsocks]

3 hours ago, Skipper Billy said:

One strange thing I have found is that whilst Pixi is crashed all other programs work perfectly well - I can search Google for a solution whilst it is crashed !!

The other weird this is that once crashed , if I leave it for a few minutes it comes back to life and from thereon seems more stable - I cant explain that!!

That can be explained and might be a clue, if a shared DLL used by PixInsight was the cause of the crash, Windows will have attempted itself to restart PixInsight and loaded a default version of the same DLL from it’s backup folder which doesn’t have the same bug.

Was your Windows OS bundled with the new computer or a stand-alone OS installed separately?

If you haven’t yet tried, run the Windows built-in test and repair tool DISM to check and repair the Windows Image, and the system file checker tool SFC /Scannow to check and repair any Windows system file errors. Both of these tools are run from an elevated command prompt window.

If you don’t know how to use DISM or SFC /Scannow on Win 10 this web page describes the process, the only DISM commands needed normally are Check Health and Restore Health, the other DISM options are more complex and require a physical ISO image of Windows and are only rarely used by the end-user. SFC /Scannow is always run after DISM, not before.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

Dism and SFC /Scannow are both still relevant to Windows 11 again, DISM should be run first because SFC references files that DISM monitors and repairs, many web pages still seem to tell you to use these two tools in the wrong order.

https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/run-sfc-and-dism-in-windows-11.html

HTH.

William.

[discardedastro]

Does PI freeze or crash? If it's freezing, then it's likely gotten stuck waiting for something. Network drives that no longer exist, disk issues, etc.

It could of course just be software in which case the tips above are good.

Unlikely to be graphics if it gets as far as rendering the UI initially, but possible - try a GPU benchmarking tool like Furmark and see if that falls over.

You can use a tool like Process Monitor to see what file accesses etc PI is trying to do when it hangs/crashes: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

 

[Skipper Billy]

Well it might be a bit previous but I think I have cracked it!!!

The DISM and SFC routines didnt flag anything up.

Furmark didnt even make the GPC sweat

12 hours ago, discardedastro said:

Does PI freeze or crash? If it's freezing, then it's likely gotten stuck waiting for something. Network drives that no longer exist, disk issues, etc.

 

The above comment set me off thinking - always dangerous!

Since this machine was built and set up I have noticed that in File Explorer if I drag a folder across some unused mapped network drives then the system freezes - it does it every time and I measured the time is freezes for - 110 seconds. I measured the time that Pixi freezes and it too is 110 seconds.

I have deleted the unused mapped network drives and so far I have had it running WBPP with drizzle and all sorts of intensive stuff without any issues.

I hope this has fixed the problem.

I cant thank you all enough for your suggestions and generous knowledge sharing.

Best wishes to you and yours for a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

David.

 

[Oddsocks]

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

Well it might be a bit previous but I think I have cracked it!!!

Best wishes to you and yours for a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

David.

 

Good to hear that it's solved, fingers crossed, and one to remember for the future, it's bound to surface again somewhere else!

Best wishes to you and the family also David.

William.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Fingers crossed that was the issue and well done with the investigating.
Also, if this is the cause then worthwhile knowing for future reference.

Happy Christmas and happy Processing to yourself too 🙂 

Steve

[Skipper Billy]

Quick update. I stress tested Pixi really hard last night for several hours whilst backing up my 90gb local files to a NAS drive ie really making the machine sweat and there were zero issues.

[old_eyes]

Glad you solved it. And a very useful tip when upgrading/moving computers. Now I come to think of it, it might explain some oddities I experienced when setting up a new PC. Anyway - have a good New Year, and clear skies.

[f33n3y]

Had the same problem. Removing unused mapped network drive fixed it for me too, thanks!