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Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:11 am
by Edwin.k.
Hi all,
Octane keeps crashing on me and unfortunately not only because of the node-drag-bug

It just closes, i do get any warnings what so ever.
I'm not stressing my pc or anything.
Is there a way to get an error report?
Running an Alienware m17x laptop
4gb ram
Nvidia 280m GTX SLI (1024mb)
Windows 7 home pro 64 bit.
(latest drivers ocourse, also tried some 'older' ones).
Kind regads.
Btw, the minutes it does work Octane is a blast !!!
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:42 am
by radiance
Hi,
can you be a bit more specific, we'd need to be able to reproduce the issues...
try making one or more procedures to make it crash so we can investigate ?
Radiance
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm
by Edwin.k.
Well it's a bit difficult to pinpoint the problem.
It can happen after 10 seconds when, for example, zooming in and out.
But it can happen after 4 minutes as well when i'm just clicking the ui.
Sometimes, not always, i get a message telling me my videocard is no longer responding.
It could be laptop related. The M serie is a bit different then the desktop cards.
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:03 pm
by radiance
Hi,
yeah this is an Windows OS issue which happens with very slow video cards.
Windows has a watchdog timer that closes all applications that consume the GPU more than 3-4 seconds.
So when running octane on a slow laptop GPU, and you get extremely low FPS,
sometimes this happens.
we recommend using octane on systems with more beefy GPU's so if you're serious about using octane professionally,
i'd invest in a decent desktop system with a GTX200 or higher series GPU.
Radiance
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:20 pm
by puppyhouse
VERY slow cards?
this is discouraging. His card is rated very fast for laptops. Isn't there anyway to
bypass this windows shutoff?
thanks
ps Does anyone know if you can add an extra card to a laptop through an express
port?
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:21 pm
by Edwin.k.
Hi Radiance,
i would if i could but i have
two GTX280m's (SLI) installed.
Not sure if the're anything faster at this moment:
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/geforce_m_series.html
ehm...nope

Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:55 pm
by radiance
sorry but i thought you had a slower laptop chip.
it's hard keeping track of things when you need to reply to a hundred posts after waking up in the morning
there seems some posts here about disabling the watchdog timer:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?show ... ntry949608
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/di ... meout.mspx
if you want to try it be my guest, just be carefull you don't mess up windows.
if you end up resolving the issue, please post your procedure here so we can share it with other people who have the same issues?
Radiance
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:08 pm
by radiance
also, it's a good idea to put your hardware setup(s) in your signature,
like this it's easier for us to answer questions, it's quite hard remembering what GPUs everyone has
i added a note the forum rules about this...
please keep me updated on the watchdog thing,
it seems the watdog timeout is far lower in newer windows 7 versions. (according to those posts i linked to above)
Radiance
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:13 pm
by Edwin.k.
Keeping track of that many posts is tough no matter what time of day
I'll look at the Microsoft site an report back.
thx
Re: Octane keeps crashing, error report?
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:05 pm
by Edwin.k.
Shame,
this doesn't seem to apply anymore in Windows 7 (64bit).
Only vista and XP seem to feature the reg-settings.
Can't quite understand why it's not running smooth on my laptop.
Slow fps (max 3) should not happen with 128 cuda cores per card right?
Ah well.