ST keeps crashing

[sjako65]

I have been using ST since 2 years, almost never a software glitch, until the last weeks.

Almost every time I do a wipe and press keep, the system stops responding. In task manager it says 0% cpu, memory 5%.

I would say in 80% of cases.

Sometimes it does the keep after the stretch but then stops in contrast module. Same problem and same info from task manager.

Right now it is unusable for me unfortunately.

My system has not changed, I use several smaller and bigger files from different CMOS data. from 4 to 40 Mb. there is no difference. Even old files from DSS and Siril that worked fine before, now crash. Format is integer, no changes whatsoever.

System is a power machine: AMD 16/32 CPU, 128 GB RAM, 4 TB SDD. Nvidia 2080ti.

Weird problem, I updated the graphics drivers, uninstalled and re installed different versions of ST. Even the RC from last year, the stable version and the bleeding edge. All show these error in more or less the same situations.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Dick Bakker

I started using PI...I know...and in there no crashes even with huge datasets. So it is not a memory error either. I prefer ST but right now I have no choice.

[Mike in Rancho]

Hi Dick,

Any other details of your rig you can add? GPU version obviously, but - Windows? No changes at all?

If PI can do big number crunching, but ST is crashing, I might lean towards GPU since PI isn't very (or at all?) accelerated in that way.

If you are in Windows and had ever changed the TDR, you might double check that.

I just upped my laptop from Win 10 to 11 a week ago. I don't really use it for ST much anymore, but while some settings carry over with the upgrade, others are reset. So, it turned my touchscreen back on even though I had it disabled (hardware issue, never worked right) in Device Manager. And I just looked at the Registry Editor and found that my custom TDR settings for ST were missing. So I put them back in.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[sjako65]

Hi Mike,

Thanks, but no. Nothing changed at all. The rig ran perfectly since I upgraded it 8 months ago.
The CPU and GPU are blazingly fast:32 threads and a fast NVidia card.


I just did a clean restart of my PC. And it happens immediately again in the gpu and non gpu version of Startools.

Can't get anymore further than wipe,autodev and when hitting keep again, the dreaded Startools is not responding shows up.

Very sad.

Dick

[Mike in Rancho]

Bummer. I guess nothing resulting from a patch Tuesday gone wrong, then.

And a non-gpu crash adds to the mystery. I just gave a first test (of 1.8MR) on the newly upgraded W11 laptop and it didn't crash out.

Ivo might have a way to trace this out after he sees the thread. As you have a rather state-of-the-art rig, others may run into this too so the underlying snag would need to be found.

[admin]

Hi Dick,

With the info provided, I can't see anything that would stand out as problematic. It is an odd (and atypical) problem indeed.

Besides hardware failure (ST tends to show up hardware failure far more readily than something less strenuous like PI), the only thing I can think of is a corrupted 'license' file. I just resent you your license, so you have a fresh copy. You can also try deleting the license and run ST in trial mode to see if that stabilizes things.

Other than that, I fear it may be time to start stress testing your system with various stress test; Prime95, and memtest86 for starters. Furmark can also be a good test even though we know the GPU does not seem to be an issue - it is a test that also stresses the PSU which can cause instabilities.

It goes without saying that you should disable any overclocks or other performance enhancements for the time being.

Finally, please make sure you have ample room on the drive you are running ST from, and please make sure there are no applications running that may interfere with StarTools' ability to write to disk. Less reputable AV software (such as Norton) will happily interfere with applications' abilities to write to disk at will.

Please let us know how you get on!

[sjako65]

Hi Ivo,

I ran prime95 torture test, no problems. The system is not tweaked in any way.
I also use it for a gaming rig, and it performs without problems.

Installed new license file, and it now does the wipe, then I do autodev. Press keep and ...nothing. ST stops responding. 0 procent CPU 2 procent MEM. Only help is to go into taskmanager and end ST.

Happens in bleeding edge and stable..

[sjako65]

I think I nailed it down...

I removed ESET security anti malware, runs already ages on this PC but after removing it, it seems ok..
Must be that it sees ST as a threat after an update perhaps. Anyhow I will test it without ESET the coming days and let you know.

Dick

[sjako65]

After removing all startup apps and the ESET antivirus it happens again.. same thing after autodev or contrast module it hangs.
In all versions, including bleeding edge.
This is crazy.

So it is definitely not any other software running, no hardware issues. Only thing I can think of is a weird thing after windows 10 update?

[Mike in Rancho]

The mystery deepens.

Kind of odd that you are getting hangups too. Most ST crashes I've had are just vanishings - killed by Windows rather than needing a force stop by Task Manager.

So, other than a patch Tuesday, what could have happened in the past couple weeks? Maybe a download of the new 1.9 preview?

How have you set up your ST "installs"? ST being stand-alone of course, it just resides in its folder with sub-folders wherever you extract it to, no Windows program files or program data.

I always keep mine in my downloads folder as-extracted, and I don't rename anything so the main folder retains its revision number. I just copy the license file into the distro folder, and then create a shortcut on the desktop to start the program (I do have to rename that so I know which one it is, since I have multiple ST versions).

When you uninstalled did you just full delete/empty recycle the ST folder(s), other than saving any log files you want to keep?

I wonder if there's a report you can find - as I think certain such things are generated when you force stop a program.

[admin]

After removing all startup apps and the ESET antivirus it happens again.. same thing after autodev or contrast module it hangs.
In all versions, including bleeding edge.
This is crazy.

So it is definitely not any other software running, no hardware issues. Only thing I can think of is a weird thing after windows 10 update?

Thank you for trying all this Dick. It sounds like a disc access issue.
If the system hangs "in-between" modules (e.g. after hitting "Keep"), this means that signal evolution Tracking is doing its thing and writing massive amounts of data to disc (can be multiple GBs). This should normally complete quite quickly. In your case it appears it doesn't complete at all?
It sounds like something is going wrong on your particular configuration. Disc access is slow or is stalled by something (hardware failure or software intervention).

Are your drives healthy?
Is there enough space available?
What happens if you run StarTools in Adminstrator mode?
Have you got any other drives you could try running StarTools from?
And can you confirm you are extracting all files (including resources file) when trying other StarTools versions?

So far, I have not had any other reports of this strange issue happening, and cannot replicate this issue on other Win 10 machines. It appears to be an issue that is unique to your system.