Lockups While Rendering

ChipGallo wrote on 9/16/2002, 12:23 PM
Hello,

I'm getting a workstation lockup (frozen, no mouse control and the drive light stops) during render nearly every time. This is on an Athlon XP 1900 CPU, 512MB DDR RAM, Asus A7N266-E motherboard, 40GB IDE system drive, 80GB Maxtor 7200 rpm video drive, Windows 2000 Pro operating system, Vegas Video 3.0c. At one time I thought I had this solved, and it went for months with no lockup but ... it's baaack.

It locks doing a render as MPEG 2 and with the MS Media 9 beta encoder. I tried defragging both drives, turned off the video hardware acceleration (usually I do this but forgot), turned off the video drive virtual memory and adjusted the system drive virtual memory for 1900MB max. Lockups occur at same time during the MPEG save (17% or so).

After I defragged the drives it successfully completed a WMV file but a second attempt failed. I have added Macromedia products such as the Dreamweaver MX suite and SF Acid 4 recently. Turned off anything I thought might interfere (Asus Probe for instance). There is no anti-virus running and no firewall. The All Aboard internet sharing client is running -- I'll turn that off next.

W2K is at the current service pack. Using the onboard video (NVidia GE2) and LAN. There is an Adaptec SCSI card but the scanner is powered off.

No entries in the System Event logs except for a couple of times in the past few weeks were it reported an error on the primary IDE channel. No drive errors turned up using the MS test tool, which was run prior to defragging.

Ideas or comments appreciated.

Chip Gallo

Comments

shaunn wrote on 9/16/2002, 2:00 PM
you say it always get stuck in 17%...have you tried rendering another different project?(different clips)
If the problem persist then i have no idea why...the best way out is to blame it on the VIA chipset ;)
How is your 4 in 1 drivers by the way? If you already tried the above suggestion it's worth a shot to update them...The brand new ones just came out few days ago. www.viaarena.com
ChipGallo wrote on 9/16/2002, 2:14 PM
This board doesn't use the VIA chipset. See http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7n266-e/overview.htm. Rendering another project isn't a bad idea, which I may try after dealing with what I found so far ...

I found a couple of SF Knowedgebase articles that pertain. Item #1598 and 1575. I forgot to mention the Roxio EZCD software that got installed with the LG dvd/cd combo. Apparently this is a known problem. Tonight I will try updating the ASPI driver software and see what happens.

Chip
shaunn wrote on 9/16/2002, 2:46 PM
Opps sorry...my Bad :)
Just thought that the 266 in the model name was reffering to the KT266 chipset.
Ok so you got an Nvidia Nforce chipset...What I don't understand is what ASPI has to do with anything here...you are not actually burning a CD right? the 1598 and 1575 is for lockups/crash during CD burning...

Anyway sorry for not being able to give anything useful...I hope you solve the problem...good luck.
SonyEPM wrote on 9/16/2002, 3:31 PM
Chip: Is the computer HOT? We've seen some temperature-related problems with Althlon rendering- hard to pin down, but: 17%, MPEG, and excessive heat are the common items. Try turning the computer off for a few minutes, fire it back up and start rendering... does it work?
ChipGallo wrote on 9/17/2002, 9:53 AM
Didn't notice excessive heat but one of the first things I disabled was the Asus Probe software that would have reported that. I have a Volcano CPU fan; also an Antec 1040 case so there should be pretty good air flow and power. I'll check out your suggestion tonight.

Thanks,

Chip
ChipGallo wrote on 9/18/2002, 8:25 AM
The CPU temp went slowly up from 42 to 51C.

Removing the Roxio EZCD 5 basic software cured the lockups. While the software was still installed, I checked for the presence of ASPI drivers and they were not on the machine at all so I didn't try updating them to version 4.71 as the technical guidance from SF calls for.

The render time went down noticeably after the Roxio was gone.

Thanks again for the comments.

Chip
salad wrote on 9/18/2002, 8:54 AM
Chip,
Just curious, did removing the roxio app. also bring down those temps when rendering?
ChipGallo wrote on 9/18/2002, 3:45 PM
The temps didn't change noticeably after removing Roxio. In fact, since the system completed the renders rather than freeze, it ran longer under heavy load (one wmv file took around 18 minutes to render but had titles onscreen and a logo all the way through) so the highest temp was what I quoted.

I have this computer in a corner-style desk with a front door and a cutout in the back, all of which may be restricting air flow. More tests are needed for the cooling part.

Chip
salad wrote on 9/18/2002, 7:26 PM
Hi Chip,
Do you have anything to monitor the case temp with, at least while you run some tests? A good goal is to get the case temp within a few degrees of ambient.
I'm an AMD type myself, and they DO run hotter than P3's and 4's.
I know this forum isn't for OC'ing and case modding, and I'm no expert....plus you've probably heard/read this before, so don't pay me no nevermind, but 51 deg. is just a TAD on the hot side, if that IS an accurate temp reading.
Video rendering actually makes for a great way to warm up the CPU. Open VV, slap some video on the timeline with heavy Xfades, resample, FX, hit render......10 min later...max temp achieved. Same temps as using utilities like CPUBURN, Hotpotato, SuperPI..etc.
I was able to find some hot spots by waving/holding in place an 80mm case fan in different locations, while monitoring temps.

I have the 1.4 T-bird. Room temp this summer is around 77-78 F./case temp 80-82 F / OC'd to 1.6, my CPU temps while rendering video never go over 104 F(40 C.). I too have a corner desk, and I'm running out of space.....
When Ram gets warm, it can lock up the PC. Usually, when the CPU gets too warm, you get a....black screen, but ya never know. Case temps.....watch those!

Good luck, and try not to add too many noisy fans(like me), just enough to have fun with programs like VV that...."SMOKE"!!!