Crash Windows 10 Pro

Bugs, glitches and unexpected behaviour.
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grndvl1
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 23, 2022 4:19 pm

Crash Windows 10 Pro

Post by grndvl1 »

Hmm this thing works with 1.6 except a glitch in the deNoise where you can't apply due to Keep button not selected. So I upgraded to latest 1.8 and it won't run, well it runs but at some point it crashes but haven't found a pattern yet. I changed thed virtual memory to slide between 2.5G and 10G but it still crashes. Using a Lenovo T420 with 16G of RAM
hixx
Posts: 250
Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2019 3:36 pm

Re: Crash Windows 10 Pro

Post by hixx »

Hi,
Did you already try to run ST without GPU acceleration? Usually small VRAM can cause crashes - most internal GPU have just a few GB
You can do this by adding an empty config file named 'openclforcecpu.cfg' inside the ST folder
This will:
  • Force selection of CPU not GPU
    For use in the StarTools GPU version when there is misbehaving OpenCL GPU hardware/drivers
    On the bottom of the splash screen at startup it shows whether it is using your CPU and GPU, or just the CPU
cheers,
Jochen
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admin
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Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:51 pm
Location: Melbourne
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Re: Crash Windows 10 Pro

Post by admin »

Hi,

I sent you this via email already, but just in case (or in case someone else is in the same situation), I'll repost it here;
With regards to the old 1.6 not letting you apply denoising, a message to the effect of the module being in "preview mode" will have come up as soon as you launched it. Final denoising is only allowed at the moment you switch signal evolution Tracking off; only at that specific time has StarTools had the longest time to monitor noise development. Later versions of StarTools (1.7+) removed the ability to launch Denoise in "preview mode" altogether.

As for the crashes, there are a number of things to take note of, particularly since your machine is 11 years old and, frankly, rather underpowered;
  • Please make sure you have sufficient space on the drive you are running StarTools off. StarTools routinely streams multiple gigabytes of data signal evolution tracking data to and from the drive.
  • Please make sure you have allocated at least 2x to 3x as much virtual memory as you have physical memory (e.g. in your case that would be 32GB to 48GB; 10GB may not be enough!). "Unlimited" would be preferable however.
  • From the above you may have gleaned that StarTools is not your typical image processing application; it is extremely compute-heavy and an unapologetic resources hog. In the case of a large dataset, it will happily bring 64-core Threadrippers to their knees. As such, if there are any hardware weaknesses, StarTools will exposes them, way before normal applications would (ST is a perfect torture tool to test overclocking stability for example). Particularly since your machine is quite a bit older, please make sure your laptop does not overheat (if the fan is maxing out right before any crashes, this could be an indication). 11 years is a very long time for dust to build up and thermal paste to dry out. Please also make sure your memory passes stability checks.


From the error message you cited in your support request, it appears your system lacks OpenCL drivers, however given the age of your system, such drivers will indeed not make much difference, as Intel's iGPU hardware acceleration from that era was not any faster than just using the CPU. I would indeed advise using the non-GPU version.

If the crashes persist, can you please let me know;

1. what you were doing at the time of the crash, whether they can be reproduced consistently at that specific point, and how the crash manifests itself (does the app close, or is there a message, etc.)
2. the size of the dataset you are processing (e.g. X by Y resolution)
3. whether processing a smaller dataset (use the Bin module) helps
I hope this helps & wish you clear skies,
Ivo Jager
StarTools creator and astronomy enthusiast
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