Complete system freeze during Nsight Graphics Debugging

Hello all,

I’ve recently started using Nsight 4.7 for graphics debugging and performance analysis. I’ve integrated it with Visual Studio Community 2013 (with the latest updates), and I’m running Windows 7 64-bit. My system has a GeForce GTX 760 with the latest driver (version 353.30). I’m running the host and target on the same machine (i. e. not remotely).

Unfortunately, when running my application through NSIGHT → Start Graphics Debugging or NSIGHT → Start Performance Analysis, I am experiencing a complete system freeze that requires a hard reset of the machine to recover from. The crash appears to happen randomly - I’ve seen it several times and I was using different functions within the Graphics HUD at the time (including no interaction, activating experiment features, or moving HUD panels around). I’m not sure if there is any report or log data that I can pass on to help diagnose this.

My application is equipped with both Direct3D11 and OpenGL 4.3 rendering backends, and I’ve tested the application through Nsight graphics debugging using each backend. As far as I can tell, the OpenGL backend is stable and it is only when the Direct3D11 backend is active that I experience the crash/freeze. Thus it may possibly a Direct3D11-specific issue within Nsight.

Please let me know if this sounds like any known issues, or if anyone has any suggestions for what I could do to help diagnose the issue.

Hi,

Hard to say why, something need to confirm:

  • can you run some other tiny d3d11 sample and see whether you meet the similar freeze? for example the BasicHLSL11 in DXSDK
  • you meet the system freeze when do some HUD operation, right? what happens when you try other feature of Nsight, for example, enter pause&capture mode, and check the Api Inspector, Events windows in your visual studio side.

It’s also might helpful to have your sample to do some local reproduce and investigation.

Thanks
An

Hi An,

I can confirm that the freeze/crash does also occur when running the BasicHLSL11 sample in the DXSDK, which I compiled unmodified and executed through NSIGHT → Start Graphics Debugging. The freeze occurred while I was away from the machine, while the Graphics HUD was displayed and no experiment features were enabled. I had not run the Frame Debugger in that particular session, or moved any of the HUD panels around.

Unfortunately I don’t have any report logs to give you, as Nsight didn’t generate anything in its reports folder. Could you think of anything more I can do locally to narrow it down?

Hi Jmuulian,

I am not sure, but that looks like machine specific, since we have similar machine at office and it works as expected.

Could you check your machine don’t force enable d3d11’s debug layer in global scope? Could you try on another refresh machine?

Thanks
An

Hi An,

I haven’t managed to resolve this issue. My DX control panel is not forcing on the debug layer.

I’ve tried reinstalling my graphics drivers, then installing the newly-released drivers (353.62). I also tried rolling back to the previous version of Nsight (4.6) in case it was a newly-introduced issue. The issue persists in all of these cases, making Nsight completely unusable with Direct3D 11. (OpenGL is still working fine, however).

I’m sceptical that it’s a machine-specific issue, but for the moment I can’t disprove it. Can you think of anything else that I could investigate on my side?

Hi Jmuulian,

Since BasicHLSL11 works fine on all of my machines with latest Nsight installed, hard to say what’s the gap between us.

I am not sure whether you can check your sample’s call stack when it’s running with Nsight, and compare it with the normal run.

Also, do you install your driver in clear way, I mean uninstall the old driver and install the new one.

Thanks
An

Hi An,

I’ve done another clean driver reinstall using the Display Driver Uninstall tool (just to be sure), but no luck.

Thanks for your help, but let’s leave it there for now - I’m going to do an OS reinstall soon and see if that makes a difference. I’ll report back if it does.