QLab 3 computer crashing

[Michael Long]

I can't say right now whether this problem is with QLab, the computer, or something else entirely, but I thought I might mention it here in case anyone else has experienced it before. To start, the problem was just that one projector would seem to lose connection for a second, flashing to the blue screen, then immediately return to normal. But recently that has evolved into the flashing blue screen causing the computer to crash and restart. It only crashes while QLab is playing video, but besides that I see no pattern in the crashing.

We are using a Mac Pro with 2 Nvidia cards. We are running two identical projectors. I don't have time to list all the specs right now because we are in rehearsal, but let me know if any specific information may help.

--
Michael Long
Projection Designer - Philadelphia

[Sam Kusnetz]

Michael Long wrote:
>
> I can't say right now whether this problem is with QLab, the computer,
> or something else entirely, but I thought I might mention it here in
> case anyone else has experienced it before. To start, the problem was
> just that one projector would seem to lose connection for a second,
> flashing to the blue screen, then immediately return to normal. But
> recently that has evolved into the flashing blue screen causing the
> computer to crash and restart. It only crashes while QLab is playing
> video, but besides that I see no pattern in the crashing.

I have to say, that sounds an awful lot like a bad VGA cable to me. We
have not received any other reports of something like this happening.
That isn't to say that it's impossible that QLab is to blame, only that
we have no other evidence of such. It certainly has never been reported
that QLab somehow can cause a hardware problem which causes a crash.

If you swap out cables, adaptors, etc., does the problem persist?

Cheerio
Sam

--
Sam Kusnetz
QLab Support Operative
s...@figure53.com

[fishmonkey]

last week i experienced QLab 3 crashes when a video projector at the end of a Cat 6 HDMI extender went offline and then came back again (most likely because of a bad connection although somewhat worryingly i could not be sure of the cause).

not full kernel panic crashes however...

[micpool]

This may or not be relevant but I had a problem with dual NVIDIAs a couple of years ago.  Here is a summary in case anything applies  to your case.

" a quick email in regards to the crashing issues with one of our Mac Pro machines.

 

After swapping out the hardware and restoring a fresh image to the machine (Mac Pro Mid 2010) the problem persisted. After doing some more testing here on an identical system we swapped out the Nvidia Quadro 4000 for a GTX285, which seemed to resolve the issue.

 

We then replaced the Quadro card and updated the OS from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8 and loaded the new Quadro and CUDA drivers for it. After doing this the problem did not return, so it appears to be an issue with the Quadro driver in 10.6.7.

 

Nothing is logged in the console around the time of the lockups other than the occasional message about dropped audio frames.

 

Interestingly we have been using the same system image since January and this is the first time we have had this issue, however it only seems to occur when loading a lot of content in the Animation codec, which obviously puts the system under massive strain, which i don't think anyone would have done before mic on these particular machines."

Mic

[Michael Long]

Thanks for all the advice! It was some sort of hardware problem: we swapped computers, and the symptoms have gone away. And it wasn't the video cards, because we put the previous cards into the new machine. Whatever it was, glad it's gone now.

--
Michael Long
Projection Designer - Philadelphia