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Affinity Photo Frequent BSODs


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As a new user, I was really hoping Affinity Photo would release me from Photoshop after twenty two years.  Sadly, it looks as though it’s not going to happen. Every time I open AP, I can work for ten minutes or maybe an hour before the software crashes and I get a BSOD, this is usually a CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT, there has also been MACHINE CHECK EXCEPTION and WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR. The BSOD can occur when performing even the simplest tasks such as using the Selection Brush or copying and pasting a selection.

I have methodically been through and tried every suggestion offered in the AP forums and online, I have methodically been through and tried every option in Performance Preferences. The longest time the software worked - about an hour - was running it in Windows 8 compatibility mode, with the renderer set to WARP, Precise Clipping disabled, and CL disabled.

FYI I do not have Capture One installed.

Desktop tower specs - more than enough power and memory in all respects - are as per the attached screenshot.  I also attach the latest crash file.

ac59a3e8-40c1-454e-a20b-c48b16e17d94.dmp

To rub salt into the wound, I have just finished a six-hour Photoshop session without a hitch.

I sincerely hope there is a solution/fix, if not, I will no option but to uninstall AP for the last time and carry on with PS.

Richard H

Screenshot 2022-06-02 132928.jpg

Screenshot 2022-06-02 134033.jpg

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31 minutes ago, Richard H said:

and I get a BSOD, this is usually a CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT, there has also been MACHINE CHECK EXCEPTION and WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR. The BSOD can occur when performing even the simplest tasks such as using the Selection Brush or copying and pasting a selection.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

The .dmp file seems to indicate a problem in libraster.dll which is (I think) part of the Affinity application.

However, the Affinity applications cannot directly cause BSOD errors, as they run with application privileges, and BSODs indicate that something running with elevated (System) privileges has had a fault. When you get a BSOD it generally either means you have a hardware issue, or more likely (with the Affinity applications) a GPU Driver issue.

Have you checked to see if your GPU drivers are up-to-date?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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Many thanks for the prompt reply. I forgot to say in the original post, I'm using the latest version of AP and that all drivers and Windows 10 are up-to-date. From reading other forum topics, I understand using the "warp" setting in Performance Preferences is a Windows application that bypasses the GPU, or am I getting that wrong? I checked whether there is anything amiss with overclocking and BIOS settings and everything appears normal. This is quite a mystery as heavy duty programs such as Davinci Resolve 17, Cartoon Animator 4 and of course PS, all run without issues.

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53 minutes ago, Richard H said:

I understand using the "warp" setting in Performance Preferences is a Windows application that bypasses the GPU, or am I getting that wrong?

I think you're right, and I missed that you had WARP set in your Preferences.

As you mentioned a BSOD with WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR, have you tried searching the web for that failure? For example, according to https://www.lifewire.com/fix-whea-uncorrectable-error-4689907:

Quote

WHEA uncorrectable errors are usually associated with faulty hardware, but they can also be caused by driver conflicts, missing Windows updates, and even overclocking.

 

56 minutes ago, Richard H said:

This is quite a mystery as heavy duty programs such as Davinci Resolve 17, Cartoon Animator 4 and of course PS, all run without issues.

Different programs exercise different capabilities of the system, and of the drivers. And thus some programs may fail when others run (or seem to run) perfectly fine.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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5 hours ago, Richard H said:

Every time I open AP, I can work for ten minutes or maybe an hour before the software crashes and I get a BSOD, this is usually a CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT, there has also been MACHINE CHECK EXCEPTION and WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR. The BSOD can occur when performing even the simplest tasks such as using the Selection Brush or copying and pasting a selection.

Your computer may throw clock_watchdog_timeout blue screen error frequently when you are using the wrong, faulty, or outdated GPU drivers. Affinity is sadly very picky and unstable in terms of GPU drivers here in this regard.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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44 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Affinity is sadly very picky and unstable in terms of GPU drivers here in this regard.

But is it the fault of the Affinity applications, or of buggy GPU drivers? Affinity may be using more of the capabilities that the drivers are supposed to support, but sadly don't.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But is it the fault of the Affinity applications, or of buggy GPU drivers? Affinity may be using more of the capabilities that the drivers are supposed to support, but sadly don't.

Other than that, certain other software like Davinci Resolve, Blender, etc. usually demand much more of a GPU. So if those run smoothly on the Op's system with the current GPU drivers, it is probably more of an Affinity problem.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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The results of my day with AP and also AD are no and yes. Have I been able to get either program to work on my desktop tower, no. No matter what I’ve tried, rolling back drivers, updating to the latest, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers and programs, running scans, memory tests, conflict troubleshooting etc. etc., every time after a few minutes there it is again, the dreaded BSOD: CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT.

The yes part of the day was my idea to install AP and AD on my travel laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad 3 with respectable but obviously much lower specs than the tower: Intel 6405U 2.45GHz processer, 4GB ram, 128GB SSD storage, integrated GPU, Windows 10 Home. Both programs worked, albeit slowly, but flawlessly for hours at a time.

What does one draw from this, AP and AD don’t like Windows 10 Pro? Is my bespoke build tower set up – ok you may laugh, but I don’t know what else to think – too “high end”? Having said that, if AP and AD don’t like the Nvida Quadro P4000 GPU, why will they still not work when I change the Performance Preference to “warp”?  What can the conflict be? A friend suggested I install the programs on his new Windows 11 high-spec Dell XPS 17, it will be interesting to see what AP and AD make of that.

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Are you getting anything from the Windows Event Log around the time of the BSOD? That may provide more information about what's going on.

I'm not sure exactly what effect switching to WARP has. It does some processing using software, not the GPU, but I don't know the details of what that means. Obviously the GPU must still be involved somewhere in getting the image on to the screen.

14 minutes ago, Richard H said:

Is my bespoke build tower set up – ok you may laugh, but I don’t know what else to think – too “high end”?

Probably not, but you may have some hardware, firmware, or overclocking issue that you aren't finding with your other applications. The list of what can cause that BSOD error is pretty long: https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/clock-watchdog-timeout-error-fixed/

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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5 minutes ago, Richard H said:

Since I've not needed it before, don't actually know where to look for the Windows Event Log.

See for example ...

... you have to check the Application specific logs too there!

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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Many thanks v_kyr, most helpful. Going through the events there is a common link, a hardware error, as per the attached screenshot. I can try and post the detail view if it is of any help. FYI It doesn't seem to matter whether Performance Preferences are set to "warp" or to my default GPU, so it appears to be something else. 

APCapture2.JPG

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Does the "Details" tab there shows more concrete data information?

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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  • Staff

Hi @Richard H,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums :)

Sorry to see you're having trouble & our apologies for the delayed response here!

As Walt previously confirmed:

On 6/2/2022 at 3:01 PM, walt.farrell said:

However, the Affinity applications cannot directly cause BSOD errors, as they run with application privileges, and BSODs indicate that something running with elevated (System) privileges has had a fault. When you get a BSOD it generally either means you have a hardware issue, or more likely (with the Affinity applications) a GPU Driver issue.

The Affinity applications aren't able to directly cause a BSOD error - however it's certainly possible the app is using hardware/software that other apps aren't using, which triggers the issue within Windows.

I'd recommend also using Windows Reliability Monitor as this may contain more information as to the cause of this, however the error messages/event viewer screenshots provided do seem to point to a potential hardware issue.

It may be the internal iGPU within your Intel CPU causing this issue, so please make sure these drivers are also up to date, alongside your Nvidia drivers. Equally, please check for any BIOS updates from the manufacturer, as these can also reduce BSOD errors.

I hope this helps!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Dear Dan C,

 Thank you for the information about the Reliability Monitor and suggestions. The attached reports make interesting viewing, prior to installing AP & AD on 23 May 2022, the reliability picture is good with only minor blips, two concerning Acrobat Notifications which I can’t remember even noticing. After AP & AD installation the days are full of critical problems. There were three calm days, 27-29 May, but this was due to using Photoshop to finish a work project, and not touching AP.

Yesterday, Monday June 6, I thought for a while I had finally found the BSOD solution. Going through the Affinity Forums again, I came across one concerning problems caused by a graphics tablet, and that unplugging it solved the trouble. I duly unplugged my wireless Intuos Pro L, and just to be sure, all external drives and ShuttleProv2 controller as well. Result? Both AP & AD worked well for most of the day, until that is, when opening an image in AP and simply adding brightness and contrast to it, bang, BSOD #1 CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT (fatal hardware error). Restarting, I opened the same JPEG image did the same brightness action, BSOD #2, restarting again this time trying a different image with a simple object selection, BSOD #3. Just to be clear, the images I used when the BSODs occurred were the same as those used when AP was working perfectly earlier in the day. So, the tablet theory was not the hoped for answer after all. FYI I have double checked, all drivers are up-to-date, Windows updates are current. My crash logs are automatically sent to Affinity.

APReliabilty1.JPG

APReliabilty2.JPG

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@Richard H: v_kyr asked above whether you had checked the Details tab for more info when looking at the Event Log. I could ask the same for the errors in the Reliability Monitor. Please check the details to see what they say (and, if you're willing, please show us, too :) ).

Again, the Affinity applications cannot directly cause a BSOD, but they can reveal issues in the hardware or issues in the drivers, by the amount and kind of work they cause during their processing.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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@Richard HHi,

Are you sure you installed this version of your graphics card?

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/189746/en-us

Because when you look at the nividia log of this card it had al sorts of issues in the past, to name a couple:

Fixed Issues in Version 515 U1
 

  • [Adobe Premiere Pro]: NVIDIA Image Sharpening stranded in stale state
  • [Dassault]: Invalid format error when DXGI_FORMAT_R8G8B8A8_UNORM_SRGB is used with DX/OGL interop
  • [Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE] VK/OGL interop crash with dedicated memory allocation
  • [Maxon Cinema4D][Redshift][Adobe Photoshop]: Redshift crashes Cinema4D on material thumbnail generation when system resources are used by Photoshop

 

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Many thanks All media Lab, I downloaded the driver version you refer to a couple of days ago.

Walt and v_kyr happy to share crash details, attached is one from the Events Log, the other from the Reliability Monitor, both refer to BSOD CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT. If you would like to see anything else let me know, really keen to get to the bottom of this mystery.

APCapture3.JPG

APCapture6.JPG

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6 minutes ago, Richard H said:

the other from the Reliability Monitor,

Thanks.

That one is especially interesting, I think, because it specifically says your hardware has a problem.

Here's one thread relating to that error: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/repeated-live-kernel-events-124-193-and-bsod-1a/25740a89-f2b8-47c5-8b94-cf36e4c8e30a

And another: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/livekernelevent-124/4465d9d6-58bd-4c60-a0fb-b3602381a795

There are a bunch more you can find using an appropriate web search.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • Staff

Many thanks for all the further information provided here, unfortunately this does appear to be a potential issue with your local drivers/hardware, as the Kernel crash you're seeing can't be directly generated by Affinity. The Affinity apps run in “user mode” which means the kernel of the OS is protected from crashes directly from the application.

Hopefully you are able to locate and resolve this issue yourself, however it may be worth checking for a local PC specialist to in-person diagnostics.

Another option you may want to try, to generate more in depth logs surrounding BSODs - https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Many thanks for all the help and suggestions. I freely admit I am not a "computer whizz", and have always relied on specialist expertise to provide me with computing hardware solutions based on my requirements. My current specs configuration, as shown in my first post, serves me well, and I am very reluctant to start tinkering with the proverbial spanners. Because my nuts and bolts knowledge is limited, one big question still bothers me: if all the apps on my system have worked from the day they were installed and continue to do so, why should AP and AD be the exception, what makes them so different from other apps? 

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1 hour ago, Richard H said:

Because my nuts and bolts knowledge is limited, one big question still bothers me: if all the apps on my system have worked from the day they were installed and continue to do so, why should AP and AD be the exception, what makes them so different from other apps? 

As has been mentioned, it is because not all apps use the same hardware features in the same way, if at all. So it is entirely possible that after an update AD, AP, & APub might try to access some hardware level function via some driver interface that none of your other apps have ever done.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks RC-R, what you say makes sense. It's just frustrating that I can now get AP and AD to work successfully for several hours, presumably using the functions and drivers you refer to, only for the apps to crash/BSOD, when doing the simplest of tasks.

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8 hours ago, Richard H said:

only for the apps to crash/BSOD...

Just keep in mind that as has been mentioned, apps can crash but they cannot directly cause a BSOD (AKA a fatal system error or system crash).

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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