unexpected windows re-boots during very long renders

[epsilon]

Hi all,

this is a question to those of you how do very long (animation) renders, i.e. where you need stable up-times of your PC and the TG program running on it contiuously for several days or weeks.

Unfortunately, during such renders every couple of days I am experiencing unexpected sporadic shutdowns where the computer reboots during the night and anything rendered so far is lost ...

Is this a common problem in long-time rendering or is it just a problem with my specific hardware/OS setup ?
So what could be the reason for this re-boots and what could be done about it ?
Could the re-boots be triggered by the OS (windows 7) itself for certain updates (if so, how could this be deactivated?)
Or is this possibly a problem with instable power supply ?
(CPU overheating can be excluded as possible cause as the core temperature never reaches critical levels)

Thanks a lot in advance for any help

eps.

 

[ajcgi]

This is likely a hardware thing I'm afraid.
The machines here are on 24 hours a day and there are periods where some of them have spent literally days rendering just one frame of an animation. Ordinarily there should be no reboots or shutdowns.

The Win7 updates you mention may be doing it. Also, check for automatic updates on any other software such as antivirus, anti-spyware, heck even Steam if you're at home on a gaming machine. In all cases set to something like "Tell me about these updates but don't download or install them." There are guides to changing these things online. It's dead simple.

If you have a cheap power supply or one that's old it may be doing it too, but in the case of hardware... test it using a cpu stress testing program. Back when 2 core processors were new and exciting there was a program called CPU-z that would load the cpu to 100%. Leave it on full wack with all your fans going full tilt and see what happens. That way you can see for certain if it's a hardware issue relating to non-driver specific things.
It's not so much the core temperature that's the issue so much as the stress that puts on the rest of your system.

Alex

[mhaze]

I had this turned out to be power saving settings

[jaf]

I am fighting a similar problem right now -- not a reboot, but my OS hard drive goes into PIO mode from ultra DMA 6 during the night when I'm doing long renders (atapi errors 9 & 11.)  Since this can mean the drive is failing, I've ordered a new one plus a quality SATA III cable.

However, I haven't ruled out my system, so I've been shutting down anything I can that initiates disk activity.  There's scheduled task, auto updates, indexing, etc.  You may be surprised how many services that are active when your computer is idle (just running TG2.)

Anyway, a good place to look is the event viewer logs (if win7 has those -- I'm still on XP x64.)

[Upon Infinity]

It could be the update settings on your computer.  When Windows updates itself, the default settings are to download, install, and reboot the machine.  Try switching your settings to something other than Install Updates Automatically.  Worked for me.

[Dune]

I'd advise a separate pc, unattached to anything, running only TG. Works a dream for me.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

used to have this same problem with terragen a couple years ago,
both with the automatic windows update and computer/monitor settings
computer would go to sleep after a amount of time, logging me out, as well as problems powersave mode on the display.

most of my renders take a long time and usually do them overnight and into the next day if necessarily.

[epsilon]

Thanks a lot for all the replies !

After implementing all the suggested measures (virus scanner, windows update etc.) the re-boots did not occur again so far (knocking on wood ;-)

In addition I found the following link particularly helpful
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_update/how-to-turn-off-reboot-after-automatic-update/43b2abf8-6820-49df-a149-657190fdeb93

As I am using Windows 7 ultimate running a workstation class hardware it really never occured to me that such a '(semi-)professional grade' operating system would simply shut down the machine
without any user confirmation nor further notice  ... but apperanetly this is what actually happens whenever Windows encounters an update that is rated 'critical' ... unless this behavior is not explicitely deactiavted as describe in the above link :-(

Anyway thanks again for sharing your helpful suggestions and information on this topic
 
eps.