Blender Freezing System

JBreits · July 23, 2002, 7:20am

I’m running Blender 2.23 on Windows 2000. The computer has an AMD Athlon XP 1600 (1.4 GHz), 256 MB Ram, 6 GB & 20 GB HDs, and a GeForce 2 with latest drivers. I have Direct X 8.1 installed.

Here is the problem. Blender appears to be causing random but frequent system locks. There is nothing I can do to get out of this but hit the Restart button on the computer. Ctrl-Alt-Del has not effect and the mouse will not move either. The lockups seem to occur most frequently when the program is rendering (especially an animation).

I had seen someone mention on the Knowledge Base that they were having a similar problem and reverting to Direct X 8.0 fixed the problem. Does anyone know if this is a valid solution to this problem? Is there anything else that I can do to fix this?

Thank you for any help,
JBreits

deks · July 23, 2002, 9:14am

No… Change to directX 8.0. Is it a problem? just download and install.

JBreits · July 23, 2002, 9:28am

I’m confused about the “No…”
Does that mean that you don’t know if this is a valid solution?

Have you experienced this problem?
If so, did you revert to Direct X 8.0a?
If so, did it work?

Thanks,
JBreits[/quote]

theeth · July 23, 2002, 10:37am

try using DispView instead of DispWin (in the Display buttons F10).

Martin

JBreits · July 23, 2002, 11:14am

Thanks but I already have tried rendering in DispView instead of DispWin. The problem still exists.

Thanks,
JBreits

theeth · July 23, 2002, 11:17am

Is the animation really long? Maybe it’s a memory problem…

Maritn

JBreits · July 23, 2002, 11:56am

Yes, the animation is fairly large. I’m rendering on full DV resolution 720x480 at 30FPS. The animation itself is 2370 frames long. The computer has 256 MD ram and the .avi is being rendered to a 20GB harddrive with 11GB free. The HD was defragged a week ago.

Could any of this have to do with the problem?

Thanks,
JBreits

theeth · July 23, 2002, 12:49pm

Couldn’t you render it to AVI jpeg instead? This would great decrease the size of the final AVI file.

Martin

JBreits · July 25, 2002, 6:58am

I decided that the problem is realated to my CPU temp.

I installed a hardware monitor and then rendered 500 frames of my animation. I watched my CPU temp climb from 128 Deg F to 139 Deg F. Then I took a big box fan that I have and turned it on the computer. I began to render the entire animation (2370 frames) and the temperature maxed out at 133 Deg F. I’m going to be purchasing a case fan for the computer. Hopefully that will help keep it cool.

Thanks again.
JBreits