My new Windows 10 computer has crashed a few times, always during a Terragen render. Sometimes Terragen crashes but does not bring down the whole computer. However, the whole computer has crashed during rendering with a plain blue screen mentioning a "thread exception not handled" error. It might not be related to Terragen at all. Has anyone encountered this behavior?
Terragen often requires a lot of memory to function. If you do not have adequate RAM, or precautionary methods to prevent crashes on your system in the event of low memory, TG can use up that RAM fairly quickly and will CTD or in some rare instances cause a Blue Screen crash.
I would advise enabling kernal dumps. If a Blue Screen crash happens again, you can located and send the kernal dump to Matt who would have a much better idea about what is actually causing the crash, but likely related to memory.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/enabling-a-kernel-mode-dump-file
Since you have had a blue screen crash, I do advise you to chkdsk on your main harddrive, and perform a defrag (if not a SSD). Terragen's temporary files can become corrupted during Blue Screen crashes. If these files are left unchecked it can cause HDD damage.
Thanks for the tips. The Windows crash log identified a particular Windows system file as being corrupted. I worked through the issue with a technician. I think the problem is solved. If not, I may have to reinstall Windows. My guess is that Terragen was just working the computer hard and exposed the problem--but did not cause it.