GR7.0.1 repeatedly causing BSODs

Brigman

Upgraded last week and finally had some time to start exploring yesterday. And while I'm liking the changes, especially the graphical representation of the signal path, and from what I've heard of the new amps and effects, very interesting. Unfortunately I'm not liking the four system hangs + BSOD & reboot that have occurred in a single evening.

IIRC the stopcode in all cases was WATCHDOG_TIMER_TIMEOUT - and the system hung up for a few seconds prior to the error screen.

Edited to add: Another one tonight, EXCEPTION_ON_INVALID_STACK, while using one of GR7's new presets - so it can't be an old preset played through GR7 causing issues.

Using a Core i9 12900K/Z690 system on Windows 11 running Guitar Rig in standalone mode through a Rig Kontrol 3, using the High Performance power plan as I would with earlier versions of GR. System is 24/7 stable and will pass any stress test thrown at it. GR6 and GR5 are completely stable using the same presets that have been in use during the BSODs so the issues must be GR7 specific. This is really annoying. Shelling out is fine for new features and functionality but only if it actually functions and doesn't cause a stack of frustration. Anyone else?

Eddie_NI

Hello @Brigman

we are very sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with Guitar Rig 7. We have not encountered anything like you described on our Windows systems. Can you narrow down which presets cause the problems for you?

Brigman

Hi Eddie/NI people, thanks for the response.

So I've switched back to GR6(.4.0) primarily since this problem manifested and haven't had a single stability issue.

Tried to spend some time with GR7.01 again this evening and again a BSOD after maybe 30-40 minutes. This time I was using the Ultra Articulate Heavy preset (pretty much stock - with the flanger/filter/delay switched out). CPU usage with this preset sits around 5-6% in the GR meter.

The actual crash results in a fraction of a second's audio being caught (and cycling) in the speakers - so an output buffer problem? If so, what's different about GR7 processing vs GR6 when using the same preset?

Incidentally on a possibly related point, please add me to the group of users not happy at Rig Kontrol 3 controller support being dropped from GR 6/7. Having to kludge it back via the old version of Controller Editor is time-consuming and haphazard. It would be one thing if you had produced an updated floor interface with new features/functionality and a compelling reason to purchase - I'd almost certainly buy one. Simply dropping it - for no obvious reason - removes a lot of what made the earlier versions of GR so attractive - especially live - and moreso with other vendors creating attractive reasons to jump ecosystem.

JesterMgee

BSOD is almost always something with hardware, tho software can cause it to manifest.

I had this kind of error before, watchdog timeout and was nothing with NI software, it was overclocking I had on my CPU and this was on a system that had been stable with this configuration for almost 10 years suddenly I started getting this issue so I had to disable the overclock after trying new heatsink compound and a new cooler, likely changes in the silicone and processor over time caused this to happen and it was no longer able to run at 1.5Ghz over the stock speed.

This can also sometimes be the case with features nowadays such as EXPO or XMP which are overclock profiles in the BIOS to basically push the stock frequency/voltage of memory to faster speeds. Most RAM these days has a stable base clock of I think 4800Mhz so when you buy ram that says it is 6200Mhz what that means usually is it can likely be overclocked using EXPO/XMP to achieve that speed but I have found even on a modern AMD Ryzen 7900X system this is sometimes still unstable with some RAM/MOBO combinations so disabling this and running at the 4800 is rock solid and usually equates to little noticeable loss in performance (which I would always take a hit if it meant better stability).

If your machine is a tower, especially if you built it yourself, check your BIOS and if you are doing an overclock (given you have a "K" version processor) disable that first and see if that helps, also check what speed your RAM is operating at. It is unlikely GR7 is the actual issue with this error, likely just what is showing your system has an issue somewhere.