Rearranging Menus Causes BSOD on Windows 10

[Gibsonion]

Not impressed! This is the first time I've ever had BSOD on Win10 and Affinity Designer just did it twice trying to dock a pop out menu.

1. Yes I'm using the latest version
2. Yes I can recreate, it happen twice in a row doing exactly the same action.
3. Its' only happened in the one document, but not willing to keep killing my OS just to test that.

System details: Windows 10 Pro - latest updates etc.

What happened? - It killed my OS and forced a restart, what did I expect... Not that!

Steps to recreate:

1. Load document
2. Try to drag pop out tabs for character and paragraph options to be docked around the bottom right corner of the screen
3. The menu will start to stutter, the system will lock up and then the OS will exit to the BSOD forcing a system restart.

Screenshots: I could record on my phone but I'd rather not keep blue screening my system unless absolutely necessary.

No unusual hardware

Did it used to work? - Don't know

[walt.farrell]

What are the details of the BSOD error? (That is, what did Windows say had failed.n A screenshot (perhaps via your phone) would be useful for that, unless you wrote it down when it happened.)

By the way, BSODs are (I understand) caused by driver-mode (or deeper, more privileged) code, not by application code. The Affinity applications have no driver-mode code, according to Serif, and so they cannot directly cause BSOD failures.

Given your description, I will take a wild guess that the error was reported against cldflt.sys, which is a driver module for Windows cloud services such as OneDrive. And Microsoft has issued various updates that have caused that problem, and some that have fixed it. When the error occurs, it can affect any application, even potions of Windows itself.

If that is the reported error, then the following FAQ may be relevant:

 

[Gibsonion]

Where would I search to find out if the cause was related to cldflt.sys? I've checked in event viewer and strangely the only errors logged for the time it happened are related to the shutdown of the system being unexpected, which are all referencing events after the cause, not the cause itself. None of which mention cldflt.sys anyway

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, Gibsonion said:

Where would I search to find out if the cause was related to cldflt.sys

The BSOD screen tells you what failed.

I don't know off-hand how to find that anywhere else, though it's probably available in the dump file that Windows created. I think ihave found it there before but I would need to rediscover the details of how to do it. Googling for how to read a Windows dunno file would probably lead you to the tool you'd need to use.

[Gibsonion]

The BSoD only gave me some generic error message like oh dear, there has been an error and windows is is creating a dump file with a sad face emoji lol, but the dump file didn't go past 0% after several minutes of waiting so I rebooted I'll create a phone video of recreating the process as it doesn't seem like I'll get an answer without doing so. I'll be back shortly...

[Gibsonion]

I created a new document, and the problem still occurs, interestingly without realising I first dragged only one tab to the area and the problem did not happen, then when I combined the 2 tabs and tried again, the error occurred almost immediately. The stop code is UNEXPECTED KERNEL MODE TRAP

The driver error is from ntoskrnl.exe (short for Windows NT operating system kernel) an essential Windows component responsible for hardware abstraction, process and memory management, and various other system services.

Here's a link to a video of the problem https://photos.app.goo.gl/NzKpjDQHaJVBd4Pq7

Since nothing else is causing this issue and my system works fine otherwise and I can recreate the problem even in a new document it's a problem with AD. You can claim it's not possible for Affinity to cause BSoD all you want, which maybe true from a purely technical stand point, but it's something that AD is doing that is triggering the issue that is causing the driver to crash. Pretending otherwise is just ridiculous semantics.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Gibsonion said:

Since nothing else is causing this issue and my system works fine otherwise and I can recreate the problem even in a new document it's a problem with AD. You can claim it's not possible for Affinity to cause BSoD all you want, which maybe true from a purely technical stand point, but it's something that AD is doing that is triggering the issue that is causing the driver to crash. Pretending otherwise is just ridiculous semantics.

You may think it's ridiculous sematics, but I've lost count of the number of times on Windows, and even on IBM mainframe computers over my 50+ years of experience there where only a single application was failing, but the cause was something wrong elsewhere in the system software or in the hardware. That application just happened to do something legitimate that the system or hardware reacted to improperly.

For example, one cause of an unexpected kernel trap can be faulty RAM memory on a PC, and whether the error is triggered or not will depend on exactly how much memory is in use, and exact reference patterns that may be specific to one application.

Another cause is faulty drivers, and possibly something that is occurring while you're dragging panels is causing your video driver to do something incorrect.

And I personally experienced the cldflt.sys BSOD, which happened for me only when using Affinity (though many other Windows 10 users reported it in other applications), and was easily recreatable using a specific sequence of actions. And it was a Microsoft problem with an incorrect system update, which Microsoft eventually fixed.

- - - -

Thanks for the video. From looking at it, my best guess is that you have a video driver issue. I would suggest downloading the latest video driver from your video card manufacturer, deleting the current driver, restarting Windows, and installing the new driver.

But for other possibilities I would suggest looking through some of these Google search results:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=unexpected+kernel+mode+trap+ntoskrnl.exe

Serif may have additional suggestions, or another user, but that's all I've got for now. I'm glad you've at least got a repeatable recreation; that makes it much easier to tell when it's been fixed.

[Mark Ingram]

18 hours ago, Gibsonion said:

Since nothing else is causing this issue and my system works fine otherwise and I can recreate the problem even in a new document it's a problem with AD. You can claim it's not possible for Affinity to cause BSoD all you want, which maybe true from a purely technical stand point, but it's something that AD is doing that is triggering the issue that is causing the driver to crash. Pretending otherwise is just ridiculous semantics.

Hi @Gibsonion, as Walt has already mentioned, user-mode applications are unable to cause BSOD, only kernel-mode software (such as drivers etc) can do that. Crashes in user-mode applications just kill the process that was running (i.e. the Affinity app) whereas crashes in kernel-mode software results in an unrecoverable situation for the operating system (which is why the BSOD is shown). 

I would suggest looking at display drivers (perhaps uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version). Note: Some anti-virus / anti-malware or even backup programs install drivers that can result in system instability too.

[carl123]

@Gibsonion

Changing the Renderer setting in Edit > Preferences > Performance to Warp should bypass your video card/driver and Affinity will then just use software to display the app on your monitor.

If you switch to Warp and cannot recreate the BSOD this will help further confirm you have a Video card/driver problem.

Remember to restart the app after switching to Warp

If it works and you need to do some work the Warp setting is OK to use long term it just means your app will run a bit slower than when using a video card 

 

[Mark Ingram]

@carl123, WARP only affects the document renderer, not the user interface - though that does remind me, @Gibsonion could try launching with --no-hw-ui which will disable GPU acceleration of the user interface. This might narrow it down a bit.