simono

In the meantime we have figuered out where this strange mix of old lamps and new lampes has come from. This laptop was upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. The promise given was new lamps for old. At the time, however, quite a lot of new lamps were simply not available and the new Windows did its best to accommodate old drivers. In the aftermath neither Microsoft, Intel nor Driver Easy managed to really rectify the situation.
If we would have formatted the disk and installed Windows from scratch last week, the problem would have vanished. But if a user is on a single machine and is the proud owner of three dozen or more applications requiring three dozen or more activation codes this is not a feasible path.
I expect that most of your trial customers using a machine that had been upgraded to Windows 10 will have had similiar problems and - rather unfortunately - decided not to buy a non-functioning product. But at least Affinity starts up now with your mod in place.

Hi Mark
DDU does resolve the issue.
The only problem is that the average user will be scared to death by just looking at the 1980-type user interface with all its options, settings, warnings and disclaimers. If this hadn't been on my "old" system I probably wouldn't have plucked up the courage to start it myself.
Having run it - it takes quite a long time - Affinity Photo started normally and even allowed using acceleration.
After that, the Intel driver update utility told me to update my graphics driver to Feb 21, which I did. This also took a supiciously long time and had to be run in two stages. It seems that DDU is not quite up-to-date.
At the end of the day - all was well. The latest driver was in place and Affinity Photo was running perfectly.
There is just one funny thing. The DDU people present themselves as partners to Driver Easy and highly recommend Driver Easy. That's just the utility that I had in place and that did not suceed in keeping my graphics driver cum supporting stuff in running order.
Just for your info, my "new" HP system is also up and running. The bluescreen of death problem when running Affinity went away after I performed a BIOS update. Also quite an adventure. 😊
Thanks for your help and info.
(Please take heed of what I wrote about allowing the user to choose the graphics platform.)

Hi Mark
DDU does resolve the issue.
The only problem is that the average user will be scared to death by just looking at the 1980-type user interface with all its options, settings, warnings and disclaimers. If this hadn't been on my "old" system I probably wouldn't have plucked up the courage to start it myself.
Having run it - it takes quite a long time - Affinity Photo started normally and even allowed using acceleration.
After that, the Intel driver update utility told me to update my graphics driver to Feb 21, which I did. This also took a supiciously long time and had to be run in two stages. It seems that DDU is not quite up-to-date.
At the end of the day - all was well. The latest driver was in place and Affinity Photo was running perfectly.
There is just one funny thing. The DDU people present themselves as partners to Driver Easy and highly recommend Driver Easy. That's just the utility that I had in place and that did not suceed in keeping my graphics driver cum supporting stuff in running order.
Just for your info, my "new" HP system is also up and running. The bluescreen of death problem when running Affinity went away after I performed a BIOS update. Also quite an adventure. 😊
Thanks for your help and info.
(Please take heed of what I wrote about allowing the user to choose the graphics platform.)

According to the Oxford dictionary - and my humble knowledge of the english language - cr*p simply means very bad and is in no way vulgar. So please kindly refrain from giving me english lessons.
And do not forget - I have paid for this product and have just invested about 5 hours into trying to find out what the problem could be.
It also took some time to find the crash reports. They were not where I had assumed they would be.
CrashReports.zip

So there we have it. The other night a poltergeist came down the chimney and switched off all my file extension displays. Ergo - dependenciesGui.exe.config became dependenciesGui.exe.
The real "dependenciesGui.exe" works.
However I cannot find anything wrong. Nothing in the DLL hierarchies seems to be missing. In other words, all is well and any malfunction must be a fata morgana. Or at least, not the result of a missing component.
To sum it up - all I really know is that all available Intel graphics drivers newer than 2018 do not work for openCL on my (old) machine. This statement holds for the latest driver pulled in by the special Intel utility I downloaded off their website for finding and installing Intel drivers.

997 starts up ok.
If you try to enable HW acc. in Pref. - note: the checkbox is enabled - you get a message telling the highly estimated user that he, she or it is sitting on a crappy Windows version. 😊
Hmm.
Isn't that always the case?

That's the version that Intel installed. "Latest version".  18.02.21  27.20.100.9316

The new driver - Feb 2021 instead  of Jan 2021 - displays exactly the same problem. Cltest croaks on the platform count and Affinity Photo deos not get past the squid.
In the meantime I have migrated to a new laptop. 800 Euros. Interestingly enough Affinity sees the two graphics platforms -  separated by a comma. However, the user has no choice option to select a specific card..
Peculiar.
Of course, everything works - approx. twice as fast as before. Affinity, Filmora and even Topaz Sharpen.

And here's the dump.
https://www.magentacloud.de/share/q19ai5h0so
 

C:\Users\simono\Desktop\procdump>procdump64 -e -ma -accepteula -x . "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo\cltest.exe" all
ProcDump v10.0 - Sysinternals process dump utility
Copyright (C) 2009-2020 Mark Russinovich and Andrew Richards
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Process:               cltest.exe (3772)
CPU threshold:         n/a
Performance counter:   n/a
Commit threshold:      n/a
Threshold seconds:     n/a
Hung window check:     Disabled
Log debug strings:     Disabled
Exception monitor:     Unhandled
Exception filter:      [Includes]
                       *
                       [Excludes]
Terminate monitor:     Disabled
Cloning type:          Disabled
Concurrent limit:      n/a
Avoid outage:          n/a
Number of dumps:       1
Dump folder:           .\
Dump filename/mask:    PROCESSNAME_YYMMDD_HHMMSS
Queue to WER:          Disabled
Kill after dump:       Disabled

Press Ctrl-C to end monitoring without terminating the process.
Checking for OpenCL binaries: Found
Querying OpenCL platform count: [17:17:35] Exception: C0000005.ACCESS_VIOLATION
[17:17:35] Unhandled: C0000005.ACCESS_VIOLATION
[17:17:35] Dump 1 initiated: .\cltest.exe_210228_171735.dmp
[17:17:38] Dump 1 writing: Estimated dump file size is 138 MB.
[17:18:07] Dump 1 complete: 138 MB written in 31.7 seconds
[17:18:07] Dump count reached.

C:\Users\simono\Desktop\procdump>dir
 Datenträger in Laufwerk 😄 ist Windows
 Volumeseriennummer: 9ABB-24F8
 Verzeichnis von C:\Users\simono\Desktop\procdump
28.02.2021  17:17    <DIR>          .
28.02.2021  17:17    <DIR>          ..
28.02.2021  17:18       140.858.907 cltest.exe_210228_171735.dmp
17.09.2020  09:18           384.888 procdump64.exe
               2 Datei(en),    141.243.795 Bytes
               2 Verzeichnis(se), 447.301.513.216 Bytes frei
C:\Users\simono\Desktop\procdump>

Hi Mark 
With a functioning driver in place Filmora runs 20 times faster and Affinity photo launches within 25 ms. I have trouble keeping up! 😊😊 😊 And the bellowing fog in the assets bellows around so fast that you get giddy just watching it! 😊
Well, at least it all works, even if somewhat sluggish now and again.
Of course, all the drivers I have display Intel as their source. But where each driver actually came from and how it got in is not quite so clear.I
It is interesting that with the old 2018 driver in place Intel warns me that it might not be a good idea to load the latest driver off their Intel site.

Hi Mark 
With a functioning driver in place Filmora runs 20 times faster and Affinity photo launches within 25 ms. I have trouble keeping up! 😊😊 😊 And the bellowing fog in the assets bellows around so fast that you get giddy just watching it! 😊
Well, at least it all works, even if somewhat sluggish now and again.
Of course, all the drivers I have display Intel as their source. But where each driver actually came from and how it got in is not quite so clear.I
It is interesting that with the old 2018 driver in place Intel warns me that it might not be a good idea to load the latest driver off their Intel site.

With the old 2016 driver in place I get the following warning on the Intel driver download site.
==================================================
Installing this Intel generic graphics driver will overwrite any customized driver from your Computer Manufacturer (OEM).
OEM drivers are handpicked, customized, and validated to resolve platform-specific issues, enable features and enhancements, and improve system stability. Intel’s generic graphics drivers are intended for testing, and we recommend using drivers from Lenovo. Report any issues found with this driver to Intel.
I have read and understand this warning, and wish to proceed.

Just to sum up my situation.
It would seem that Intel is the root of all evil.
The only Intel driver package that works for me regarding openCL is dated 2018. The next three drivers - right up to January 2021 - do not work regarding openCL.
Up to now three things have been updating my system. Windows, Lenovo Vantage and Driver Easy. The latter two I shall simply not use any more.
Now I am left with the problem that Windows is determined to update my system all the time. There is a so-called Group Policy Editor by which - reportedly - one can ask Windows NOT to update ALL drivers - not really the best solution.
I am, however, sitting on Windows 10 Home. The utility gpedit.msc along with supporting packages are not part of the Windows 10 Home edition and Microsoft will not deliver gpedit.msc to Windows 10 Home users. If you want to have and use gpedit.msc you have to purchase an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. There, this utility is included.
On some versions of Win 10 Home gpedit.msc was actually on board. In this case it was possible to pull it out from its hiding place and activate it manually, or even better, by running a specific batch file to do the job for you. The batch file is scattered around the Internet. In my version of Home gpedit.msc is not present and therefore cannot be copied into place.
As a prelim measure I have halted Windows updates for a couple of days to see if I can find a solution to keep the antique graphics driver version in place.
What a mess!

Oh well:
try
{
   lstPlatformIds = clGetPlatformIds(whatever);
   // do any other initialization stuff //
}
except
{
    boolUseGPU = FALSE;
   // tell user to buy a new machine //
}

I have not tested 1.9 oficial again yet. I presume it will not work for me until Mark puts in his crash detection circumvent.
However, he should put in his quick&dirty a little more sophistically. At the moment he seems to be using cl.dat as a sort of flag. If my horrible suspicion is correct, once cl.dat has recorded a bad trial start, the main application - e.g. Photo - will never try to switch on acceleration ever again.
But I guess he knows this himself.
Anyway, he has got it to work for us and that is good.
I think he should be granted a slight salary raise.  😊
 

Crashes on my system.

Crashes on my system.

To quote a famous Speaker:
The "Knows" have it!

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cltest
C:\WINDOWS\system32>cltest.exe fork
Checking for OpenCL binaries: Found
Querying OpenCL platform count:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>

The is only one explanation.
The dutch version has a windmill inside 😂
or
my version is corrupted and half of the file is simply not there.

So, now we have a cl.dat
[DXCore] Beginning compatibility check
[DXCore] Initialised
[DXCore] Retrieving adapter list
[DXCore] Adapter list successfully retrieved
[OpenCL] Retrieving platform IDs
1.0_(Beta).zip

According to the Oxford dictionary - and my humble knowledge of the english language - cr*p simply means very bad and is in no way vulgar. So please kindly refrain from giving me english lessons.
And do not forget - I have paid for this product and have just invested about 5 hours into trying to find out what the problem could be.
It also took some time to find the crash reports. They were not where I had assumed they would be.
CrashReports.zip

Before I read your message, I de-installed 1.9 and then re-installed the older version 1.8.5. Luckily I still had the previous exe in my download directory. Now 1.8 is running again.
When I have time, I'll upgrade to 1.9 a second time and then set the appropriate disable in the XML file to see what happens.