Computer Freezes During Blender Render

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi everyone,

I hope this is the right forum for this question, if its not I am truly sorry. The problem is that when I try and render something in Blender it starts normal with the buffer window showing it, and it even starts to render something, the computer just freezes up after a few minutes.

No other aspects of Blender are affected, and all my computer games run perfectly (I am very careful about virus scanning etc and the computer is only newly reinstalled), so I’m not sure whats wrong.

I really tried to solve this problem by searching online for answers, and in this website, but everything I tried relating to the problem didn’t work, and I even tried things that probably weren’t going to work either, I’ve tried:

  • Activating Unified Renderer
  • Disabling nVidia Graphics card Antialaising
  • Changing from 32-bit to 16-bit screen display
  • All permutations of these actions together

The odd thing is that Blender was working perfectly while I was at University, but when I came home, soon after that it started to do this, and even after a fresh reinstall the problem still remains.

That was also around the time I changed from 2.36 to 2.37a, hmmm.

Anyway if anyone can shed any light, or need some questions answered fire away. I really want to get into Blender but if I can’t even render test pictures or render at all it kind of hampers my 3D efforts.

Thanks in advance,

2

Are you talking about one particular file or any file, including the default scene?

If so does it render that scene without Raytracing (with the ‘Ray’ button deactivated in F10)?

Do you get any message in the console?

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3

Well, that sounds bad… Blender render usually doesn’t crash with 2.37a

The problem could be that you have too little RAM. But then it would only crash on scenes with a lot of geometry, and not on simple testscenes.

And another possible solution first: Setting the blender settings to the defaults. Do this by deleting the file “.B.blend” (do a file-search for it)

If that doesn’t help, here are a few questions:

  • Does it always crash/freeze? Also for the standart startup scene?
  • If it only happens sometimes, is it predictable (does it always happen for certain .blends at the same point)?

Else you could just try a workaround like getting a different Blender version, like 2.40alpha2

It would also be good to know your operating system and system specs (CPU, Ram, etc…).

4

Do you have an ATi card?
Are you sure it freezes, or does it reach a certain object that takes ages to render? Does it happen when you delete all objects from the scene and put a cube in?

5

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the replies. From what you have all said I think it must be my memory, as rendering does work for less complex scenes (the scene in question is dupliverted lights to make smooth shadows etc)

My computer is 1.7GHz, with 512MB of DDR RAM, running Windows XP. So is your advice to get more RAM, or is there something more sinister? I didn’t realise this could happen and that any scene I wanted to render no matter how big would eventually finish, and not just freeze!

I mean if this scene can’t render I don’t see how I could create anything half realistic on my computer and still be able to render it. The lights are complex in the scene but its only rendering primitive objects.

I don’t have an ATI Card, I have a nVidia Ge-Force Ti-4600 128MB Graphics card.

My computer is about 4 or 5 years old now, Its due for an upgrade anyway :smiley:

6

Maybe check CPU temperature during render? If its high, than your cooler might not be touching the cpu surface.

If the whole computer hangs it is most likely one of this components failure: CPU, Ram, Power supply unit.

You can try to run some other CPU intense program (Prime95 for example) and see if this is only Blender fault.

7

Hey MassTA,

I think you might have worked out my problem! Yay! lol :smiley:

I brought up my Hardware Monitor and the CPU runs at 54.50 degrees before render, but once rendering starts blender works fine and starts rendering, but the temperature shoots up quite quickly and as soon as it hits 73.00 degrees the comp freezes.

I’ve repeated a few times and its the same temperature it stops at. :-?

All I gotta do now is buy some Artic Silver, and if that don’t help any I’ll have to get one of those water cooling thingie-ma-giggies.

Anyway thanks to everyone for their help!