TP crashing windows

Started by nikita, December 23, 2006, 03:55:00 PM

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nikita

You may already have heard of this bug:
- The Tech Preview stops working, ok that's no news
- Windows stops working properly too

You can't open the task manager and if you can it's useless.
Programs don't start anymore.

I usually try to log off and on again if possible.

Is that a known bug? I'm not the only one having this problem from time to time.

Oshyan

Can you reproduce this reliably?

- Oshyan

nikita

No, but it has never happened before I used TG2TP and several (at least 4) people on terradreams.de reported the same thing.
FrankB thought it wouldn't be TG2 causing the problem since none of the alpha testers ever had it.

3DGuy

I have not had it render my windows useless, but after a crash it often leaves my videocard in an odd state. Like it's become very slow. If I move or minimize windows I can see al the steps where normally it's all smooth motion. Changing the display depth from 32 to 16 and back to 32bits again solves that (iow, the card gets a reset).

Oshyan

I had a similar sort of thing last night where I had trouble closing TG2 and it was affecting other programs. I keep Task Manager open at all times to monitor resource use and end programs when necessary, so I was able to get that to come up just by switching tasks. But I can see I might not have been able to bring it up otherwise. I did manage to get TG2 to end after a while but it took a minute or two. Once it finally quit then other programs were back to normal and I simply started it up again and continued working. But it's definitely an odd problem. It seemed to me like it occurred after a long-ish period of working with it. Would you say your experiences and those at Terradreams have been similar?

- Oshyan

nikita

Quote from: JavaJones on December 25, 2006, 01:43:18 PMIt seemed to me like it occurred after a long-ish period of working with it. Would you say your experiences and those at Terradreams have been similar?
Yes.. I've been working with the program for hours when it happened first. I'll ask the others from terradreams to report their experiences here too.

JohnnyBoy

#6
I have had the same problem a few times. I figure it's a memory leak because it happens after working with Terragen for hours. It can take up to 5 minutes to close the application down.

I am able to open other applications when this happens however, but this may be because I'm using a dual core CPU?

nikita

I'm using a dual core too. I didn't try all applications, but at least the ones in the start menu don't work. Or maybe they start extremely slow. A memory leak could be the problem. I also hear users stating that TG  leads to memory disappearing in task manager but i never checked that.

nikita

Now I had the problem again - after closing photoshop everything worked fine again. So I suppose it could be some memory problem although tgd says it doesn't need more than 30MB of ram.

All in all there are 150MB ram "missing" - no process uses it but someone IS using it. Now I don't know how much Windows itself is taking up without mentioning it in the process-List.

Fierys

It can be hardware problem. As yet I havn't experienced it, even when I opened two TG2's and rendered in them different scenes simultaneously. TG2 always closes in a second (I use graphic card integrated with motherboard).

datey

what i would like to know then is...why does TG2 always crash..? where as previous version and my main one now does not do this...? ive given up using TG2 it just seems to eat all my memory where other terragen does not...in fact can play games etc while rendering there...i dare not do anything else with TG2...
kim

efflux

This is what I get every single time I use TG2. In fact I never close the program. It closes itself and the whole operating system. I can't see any pattern to it.

SuperNova

The reason Windows crashes i probably because the pagefile usage in TG2 is HUGE. If your runt out of space this can cripple some critical tasks and windows will crash.
There are a few ways, other than getting the latest hardware, too speed things up though. I will probably post a tweak guide (i will focus on a bit older computers since they need it the most) later on so keep your eyes open!

nikita

Quote from: SuperNova on December 29, 2006, 07:34:19 AMThere are a few ways, other than getting the latest hardware, too speed things up though.

Thats good news since I already own a core 2 duo pc and 2GB ram  ;D TG seems to use the pagefile even though there's a lot of ram unused.. but that might be a windows-caused problem

Quote from: SuperNova on December 29, 2006, 07:34:19 AMI will probably post a tweak guide (i will focus on a bit older computers since they need it the most) later on so keep your eyes open!

8)

VorpalBlade

I'm having the same problem. Drop down menus stop working, some of the properties panels vanish and unable to close programs.

Also, I tried doing a hot key save so that I could save what I had worked on and when I rebooted and reloaded the project it gave an error indicating that the file was not configured correctly. So it may not be wise to save your project while seeing this bug.