i have a dell 7730, work station / laptop, nvida quarto p3200 graphics card, i have sent this to the dell repair shop in huston two times now, they said this last time that they replaced the card and the mother board , both times they did a windows 10 reinstall, it still has a blue screen crash when i open rhino, just a blank rhino file left open for five minutes and crash. i’m not using any add on programs with rhino.
Does it crash ONLY with Rhino, but not if it’s just been sitting with some other program not being used?
Does it stay usable long enough to run the Rhino SystemInfo command? If so that would probably help quite a bit in diagnosis.
It crashes when rhino is open and nothing else is open.
A Windows blue screen crash is Windows crashing.
Applications like Rhino are running in an isolated memory space to eliminate that as a possibility.
This would generally indicate a hardware problem.
I would ask the Dell shop to swap out the system RAM too.
When they “replaced the card”, was that the NVIDIA Quadro and the VRAM on it?
Major computer makers provide free hardware testing program. If you run the program, it will find faulty hardware.
This is most likely the graphics card driver. Check to see if an update is available on nVidia’s website.
If no update to the driver for your card is available, the next thing to try would be to adjust the OpenGL level slider in Rhino’s options one notch to the left and see if this works around the driver issues you are seeing.
I installed the latest driver, 516.94-quadro-rtx-desktop-notebook-win10-win11-64bit-international-dch-whql,
There is something wrong with this computer, if they did replace the mother board like they said, then it’s something else and rhino is not liking what ever it is.
If I didn’t get the extended warranty, I’d be dead in the water right now, so at least I have the option to send it back to them for a third time,
Thanks for your help,
I am sorry that you are having problems.
Very few pieces of software are capable of blue-screening a computer. [The only modern one I have seen was the severe DRM in LeCroy’s WavePulser software.] Usually, it is a serious hardware or driver problem. As the others have offered/mentioned, make sure all the drivers are up to date.
As someone who has build and configured over 100 computers, and still help my friends with theirs, my mantra for working on system problems is: do not react. Act. Usually, if the computer crashes, my first instinct is to quickly do the worst thing. It’s not easy to fight this instinct–when your computer, with all your data on it Bluescreens, but it’s easy to compound the problem.
Disclaimer and common sense: Before doing heavy work on your computer, I recommend doing two backups on it, on separate drives/media. If the computer is not running well, and Bluescreening, you risk data loss. Personally, for me, as my choice, I would run a drive check after any Bluescreen, to make sure that there are no logical, organizational issues with the file structure.
If you reinstall the nVidia drivers(only), you might do a custom install, and choose to delete the current nVidia settings by doing a “Clean Install” of the nVidia Drivers only. Note: this is for the nVidia drivers-ONLY. THIS IS NOT A CLEAN WINDOWS INSTALL!!! I usually do not recommend uninstalling the nVidia drivers, Windows would likely just reinstall the driver, downloading it as necessary–even if you didn’t want it to.
Also noting that nVidia has 2 classes of drivers. They have a “Feature” or “Game-Ready” driver, which fresh unknown, unreported, bugs–and a “Studio” driver, which will have old unpatched, known bugs. I am sorry for my sardonic humor, but it’s important to appreciate the irony.
I would also check to see that in every way that Rhino will “Prefer” the “nVidia High-Performance GPU” in the nVidia (Optimus) settings. Also, now, Windows wants to take care of GPU assignment. You can check in your settings, search for GPU, and make sure that Windows will also assign it.
Also, in the nVidia settings, you might try to set the GPU to power savings, or at least adoptive, that will let the GPU run cooler, perhaps try that for the CPU, by clicking on the battery, and setting it to Power Savings. This option isn’t available for W11, likely so that Microsoft can mine bitcoin on your machine without you knowing about it?
It also might be helpful to try a video game, to stress the GPU, though Rhino will stress both the CPU and GPU. Often, they share the thermal mass of both heatsinks, or there is one. They think that either you are using the CPU, or the GPU, but not both.
[Also, after a year or two, dust can collect in the heatsink. The thermal compound make start to degrade. Gamers often re-paste their GPUs, though your computer has been in service.]
If it ran momentarily but quit, one thing that might help would be lifting the rear of the computer, setting it on something at least 1/2" high, about 10mm, for better airflow.
Something might be blocked/inhibited security-wise. You might try uninstalling Rhino and reinstalling. There could have been a registry hiccup?
Hardware-wise, if you have your page-file working, if it Bluescreens, it will write a crash-dump. There are utilities to read the crash dump, to help learn what exactly might be the problem. There may be in system log entry, as in Right-click on the Windows Start icon/Computer Management/Event Viewer/System
You can sort the log by date and severity. This will take a surprisingly long time, because the Windows Registry is a cesspool. Look for red icons on the left of the list entry. Never mind the Dcom and distributed entries.
If there is nothing really popping out, you might search for a blue-screen reading utility. Please be careful in choosing/downloading.
[That all stated, many laptops run too hot, including my Lenovo P15, Gen 2.]
Enable complete dump, check the BSOD code and stacktrace.
This is unfortunately incorrect. Especially with GPU intensive software it is not difficult for software operation to cause a driver fault resulting in a Windows crash. Yes, sure, technically Windows is crashing, but if the crash is precipitated directly by a specific piece of software running then it’s not a necessarily a hardware issue.
Due to the increasingly complex nature of the hardware, firmware, OS, and software running on computers, and the frequency with which the latter three are updated, it is increasingly likely that a mismatch between version compatibility can, and in fact does, cause blue screen errors. I have most frequently encountered this issue with Revit, and point of fact have seen the resolution be updating Revit as often as updating drivers, but recently encountered this precise problem with Rhino 6 in a client’s environment.
Additionally, and this point is somewhat buried in a later comment on this thread, in some devices, especially laptops, there are settings that control whether the device or a given piece of software prefers the integrated graphics or the separately installed GPU. If the software, especially Revit, is not pegged to exclusively use the installed GPU, then it can attempt to use the integrated graphics and this can result in blue screen errors.
So no, I would not say that blue screen errors “generally indicate a hardware problem”. However, it is important to stress that blue screen errors CAN indicate a hardware problem, and therefore should be taken seriously, investigated promptly, and resolved without delay.
This is a pretty thorough answer. The most likely culprit based on my experience is buried in your answer. In laptops especially software is often told to use the integrated graphics for power saving purposes. With modeling software, I see it most often with Revit, this can overload the system and cause a blue screen failure. Updating both the drivers and software is of course the first step, but insuring that the software is using the installed GPU is an imperative second step to potentially resolving these issues.
I have seen many programs crash; very few Bluescreens. Neither the laptops I buy, nor the desktops I build Bluescreen as much as once per year. Bluescreens are usually indicative of a serious driver or hardware problem. By pestering Rhino really incessantly while it’s busy rendering or starting, the document window will go white, and that’s it.
If systems crash to bluescreen while under load the first two things to check are the thermals and the adequacy of the power supply.
When your system is under heavy load the power supply may not be adequate causing subsystems to randomly not function properly or at all, which in turn will lead to system crashes.
Likewise when heat builds up and doesn’t get transported away as it should (insufficient contact between CPU/GPU and their cooling equipment, cooling equipment not being able to expel the heat or bad aerodynamic design of the housing) circuitry will also start to operate incorrectly.
Both lack of power and too much heat will be fatal and cause crashes.
The very first step would be to blow out all fans, air intakes and air outlets. This includes the fan blades (give them a good wipe after blowing out, then blow out again), all grills around intakes and outlets, all filters, air flow paths through the PSU, but also just your entire casing. Especially for laptops it is important to keep all the bits you can as clean as possible. Since laptops are packed any hindrance of airflow will cause more heat buildup - it also means that you shouldn’t use laptops in bed, on pillows or blankets without properly ensuring all openings free.
If the cleaning job didn’t do it find out your PSU can deliver the power it needs.
Once these two have been dealt with you can start looking into other failing components etc.
Few year ago I had also problem with Blue screen, the problem was in installed plugin. I also replaced motherboard 
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