Random Crashes while using GKnot

[Jerethi]

Hi, folks.

So, I've been experiencing this random problem every now and then and I can't for the life of me figure it out. I decided it's time to post a question about it.

This is all happening on an Athlon 1600+ running Windows XP Professional SP1.

Every now and then, I'll leave Gordian knot to do its thing overnight. The next morning, I turn on my monitor to a blue screen. Since I'm overclocking my FSB, I figured I'm overheating and locking up. I cleaned all my fans, restored some air culation, and all seemed dandy. It was working great for a while. Then after a couple weeks, it happened again! I've never had so many blue screens before, and it only happens from time to time while I'm encoding a video with Gordian Knot. Coincidentally enough, this started happening after I upgraded to .027.

I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing similar problems, and if so, what you did to fix it. I've done a fresh install of everything, and I'm praying this will work, but I doubt it. Are there any specific features to any of the programs that came with .027 that I'm not unaware of (I know for example that the newest version of Virtual Dub may have issues?)

Can anyone shed light on this annoying problem that admittedly only happens sometimes but is nontheless baffling?

Many thanks!

[binky the stunt cat]

one would also recommend returning your system to stock speeds. Since you may inadvertantly be frying your CPU/RAM, and the GK instability may mearly be a byproduct of the frying.

[CaPPyD]

What does the message on the blue screen say? It's gotta be telling you something, which will enable us to determine what the problem is...

[Jerethi]

I'm not exactly sure what the error message said, but it's essentially a "stop" command. It probably is an overheat (although I can't imagine why this would be a problem almost exlusive to .27, because I honestly never had this problem with earlier versions).

If it happens again I'll go with the stock clock speeds for a while and see if that helps.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[W98SD]

Yeah I got a similar prob when I OCed my FSB, what I did was just reset it back to its stock setting and just leave it like that for the 2-3hr rip. My symptoms included blue screens and system hangs, but I got tons more sys hangs than anything else.

[Jerethi]

The part that bothers me the most is that it seems to be a problem that only cropped up after I upgraded to Gknot 0.27. More specifically, only seemed to get system hangs when Virtual dub kicked in.

Last night I downgraded Vdub to 1.14.11 and let the system run for the night, with my FBS OCed. Low and behold, the next morning, there was no blue screen.

I have a nagging feeling that there's something in Vdub 1.14.13 that my computer doens't like.

Any thoughts?

[W98SD]

Interesting, my system never really had any problems when I OCed it. Games, benchmarks, you name it, it all ran fine on my rig but GKnot never liked my tweaking. I tried everything from reformatting to messing with GKnot and it always "choked" on my system when I OCed it. And this issue was always there it was not brought on by 0.27 at least with me anyway.

[Jerethi]

That more or less describes as well. My rig is rock solid when I OC it, but it was only until I started used gknot 0.27 that it started rejecting it.

I may have found a temporary solution in the post above, although we'll see how long it lasts.

[hakko504]

Originally posted by W98SD
Interesting, my system never really had any problems when I OCed it. Games, benchmarks, you name it, it all ran fine on my rig but GKnot never liked my tweaking. I tried everything from reformatting to messing with GKnot and it always "choked" on my system when I OCed it. And this issue was always there it was not brought on by 0.27 at least with me anyway. That's because most applications don't use 100% of the CPU, at least not for a very long time. Games are much more intensive on the graphics adapter than the main CPU. With video encoding we're talking 100% CPU for hours and hours. That is bound to detect errors that won't show up otherwise since the CPU gets much hotter.

[manono]

Hi-

I can confirm what hakko504 says. I just got a new motherboard, and naturally I wanted to push the CPU as far as I could. There were no problems benchmarking with SiSoft Sandra or 3DMark2001 SE or anything else. I start encoding and an hour later VDub crashes. The answer was to turn down the FSB.

One thing you might try is keep an eye on the heat buildup with MBM or some such utility. Athlon users, in particular, have to watch for heat buildup. Make sure you have a clear path for the heat to escape (no ribbon cables in the way), put on more or better fans, use heatsink grease instead of those stupid pads, etc., if you want to continue to OC.

If you get these random crashes, and want to hold GKnot or VDub responsible, then run Prime95 overnight. You'll almost certainly get errors. Your system must be 100% stable to encode video.

[Jerethi]

Just an update;

I've let Gordian Knot run twice so far through the evening, both times with VirtualDub 1.4.11. Not lockups. I can say with some conviction that there is some new process, feature, tweak, I don't know what, in VirtualDub 1.4.13 (don't know if the same holds for the newest version) that was causing all my lockups.

My next question is this -- is there a noticeable change in the quality of the compressed video, depending on what version of VirtualDub one is using (e.g. 1.4.11 vs. 1.4.13)?

[hakko504]

Originally posted by Jerethi
My next question is this -- is there a noticeable change in the quality of the compressed video, depending on what version of VirtualDub one is using (e.g. 1.4.11 vs. 1.4.13)? No, because the actual compression is made by the DIvX (or XviD) codec, not by VD. VD will only prepare and feed data to the codec for compression.

[iliasstr]

Well, I had some crashes using the last version of Gordian knot. Just when 1st pass completed. Not the whole system, just virtualdub. I installed version 0.26 beta again and now it works just fine! It works, so I leave it be! ;)