Crashing every time I load

[simonmason]

My BI was running fine for two years, updates, etc. Then in early Jan I noticed it was started to crash. I upgraded to 5.5.4.4 and it seemed to be working better. But then the crashing began again. Now I can't even start it without it crashing. Disk space looks good, nothing changed - newer machine dedicated. And nothing changed in BI setup at all. I could post the crash report from the reliability monitor but I don't think those things provide much useful information?

I looked in the log folder under Blue Iris and it is empty. Which I assume means I didn't have logging turned on. I wouldn't have done this by choice so I assume it installs with a default to no logging?

Any thoughts on where I should go from here? Happy to post other information as needed. Thanks.

 

[Flintstone61]

Maybe try turning off "intel" hardware acceleration, on 50% of the cams. And see if it gets any better. When my bi machine updated, and began freezing and glitching, somebody mentioned that Hardware acceleration may not be needed.
So now I think of 18 cameras. only 4 are on H A

 

[Flintstone61]

Or turn of Intel H A in global settings to knock em all off.

 

[simonmason]

I can't get into settings in Blue Iris. It crashes before I can do anything. Or are you talking about some other settings on the computer or the cameras themselves? Thanks.

 

[wittaj]

You will need to get into the Windows registry and start deleting/modifying stuff to get into BI again. You can do a search here for things to look for in the registry key.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I would do a complete re install.
Start with a clean install of window 10.
Install the last stable BI. Version.
Manual redefine each of your cameras.

If it still crashes then you have a hardware problem.

 

[SouthernYankee]

It is strongly recommended to NOT copy the registery setting, if there's a problem in the setting you will just create the problem again. Everything just be clean.

 

[CCTVCam]

I would do a complete re install.
Start with a clean install of window 10.
Install the last stable BI. Version.
Manual redefine each of your cameras.

If it still crashes then you have a hardware problem.

If the suspect here is Windows, use the DISM tools to repair Windows in palce. Highly effective, quick and with no downside I've found.. Once Windows is eliminated, you can go onto to looking at removing BI.

 

[simonmason]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I started by uninstalling and reinstalling. BI then loaded and didn't crash immediately after this. I let it run overnight and it had crashed by the morning. Incidentally it is not showing as an application crash in the Windows Event Viewer.

I checked the Windows reliability report - I am all Mac except for this one PC for Blue Iris. It seems to show that BI started crashing on Dec 30 - although my reliability report is only showing about a months worth of data. I googled that and it seems to be a bug with no apparent resolution.

The reason I didn't realize it was crashing was because I use Blue Iris Tools that was restarting the app. It was supposed to notify me by pushover but that appears not to be working - something else to check.

In the crashes I see that it happened approx once per day for several days in ndll.dll. Then it started crashing 30+ times a day in blueiris.exe - around the time I upgraded.

I am chasing down a couple of things at this point based on suggestions above and other threads:

I have a couple of Wyze cameras that are not really in use that I will disable - I bought more to play around with.

I have hardware acceleration on - presumably I want to use that if I can but not if it is crashing

I have Reolink cameras using RTSP and someone posted that switching them to RTMP solves crashing problems.

Stepping back through versions prior to 5.5.4.4 - I know that all versions are available to download here Blue Iris Updates - Official Thread but is there any list of stable versions?

Would be interested in guidance as I diagnose. Thanks as always.

 

[wittaj]

Many people have reported issues with recent updates using Hardware Acceleration, so turn it off.

HA is not needed now with the substreams option. Make sure you have done EVERY optimization in the wiki. You probably don't wanna hear this, but get some better cameras LOL. Reolinks are notorious for missing motion in Blue Iris (along with just poor video). Same with Wyze.

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage

Blue Iris uses a lot of CPU time. In most Blue Iris installations, your CPU is the limiting factor which determines how many cameras you can have. As such, it is extremely important to optimize your configuration to ensure you can get the most out of your system while consuming the least...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[simonmason]

Understood on the quality of the cameras. This is not a mission critical setup - just home use and mostly for seeing when packages get delivered and cats want in - etc.

So I disabled hardware acceleration and it told me to restart the cameras. I proceeded to restart them one by one and then BI crashed about 5 cameras in. Now it doesn't run for more than a few seconds and crashes again.

So after some very quick clicking each time I was able to disable all cameras.

I had each camera setup as two cameras - HD and SD. I think I did this because the option to record both streams wasn't available at the time? and also because HD recording on the Reolink is flaky for the previously mentioned issues.

So I disabled all SD that was using RTMP and I am going to let it run for a while and see what happens.

I still have hardware acceleration turned on - DirectX VA2 - not sure if I should turn that off?

Also I have to figure out why Blue Iris tools wasn't notifying me.

Thanks everyone for all of the help - it is great to have a community like this.

 

[Flintstone61]

I like 5.4.7.11
It's been stable for my HP and my Dell
I don't get fancy, just straight up motion detection, with Deliveries, and traffic in the parking lots.

 

[Mike A.]

Doubt that it is based on your description but the Wyze cams… Are you running the RTSP beta? If so and you have audio enabled, then that can cause BI to crash. Normally though you’d see that in a big way and right away when adding the cam.

 

[simonmason]

I do have audio enabled but have not had any issues with them. If I have any more problems I will disable them. Thanks for the pointer.