This is a problem I faced from the moment I installed Houdini.
For no good reason the Nvidia driver would fail and restart leaving Houdini frozen and black.
Sometimes It would happen after only a few seconds, sometimes after a few hours.

I searched the forums and read everything I could in an attempt to resolve the problem but found little more than off the cuff “Its your hardware” comments.

The system was a Intel Core2 Extreme QX9770 with 16Gig Ram and an nvidia 9800GTX+.

I was using the 78 series drivers and running vista 64

changed the video card to a 9800GT
changed to an 8800Ultra
changed the drivers from versions 69 through to the 81s with no luck.\

Now for all of you out there with this problem…

HERE IS THE FIX
as not using houdini is not an option its too damn fine )

Install the latest nvidia drivers (81.20 when I last looked)
Then download nvemulate.exe from the nvidia developers site
Run it and activate OpenGL 3.0 as it is not activated by default.

good luck and have fun

Didn´t work for me, I am still getting the freeze and the black screen.

Using:

Windows vista
Houdini 9.5.357
Gforce 8800 GT
Nvidia driver 181.20

Any tips?

I'm running that card at home and never had trouble. ATM I'm not there, but try going back to the driver released around Nov/08. I'm pretty sure that's what I'm running(I am 64 bit, I should point out).

If you're getting black screens and system lockouts, that's obviously pretty serious. Technically an app can't do that - that's a driver issue. I've found latest/greatest NVidia drivers are usually dodgy.

Cheers,

J.C.

Thanks for the help.

My only observation is that I am just having problems with houdini, I have other softwares that use openGL on my PC as well and I am not having problems with them.

I have been suffering with this (as I made a thread about it), you are not running anything else in the background are you? Perhaps anything that used Dx9/10?

Running Houdini solo has helped a lot in driver crashes (180.**), but it still happens now and again.
I have a problem of having many things running at once (bad habit), and some of those are dx9 based apps, and closing those has helped a lot.

I´ll look into it, maybe you are right.

Do you have any tips of what could be causing it?

one way of finding out is to shut down EVERYTHING…
almost like Safe Mode
then run Houdini…

then start adding things back one by one…



BTW - loved you in ‘Big’ :wink:

I'm home now, for the record I'm running 178.24 with that card, 64 bit, without troubles. You should be able to get that from their archives. I've heard…things…about the 180 series with certain hardware.

Don't be fooled into thinking newer drivers = better performance.

Cheers,

J.C.

Thanks.

I'll try it

tried all of these with no luck; geting black screens and/or freezing
with constant 50% cpu usage…
using a 9800 GT with the driver JC suggested + nvemulate.
incidently, mount & blade has similar, but less frequent problems with the same setup

Update.

Its the drivers with the card.
8 series cards are fine with windows drivers of all versions.
9 series cards are mostly unusable with ANY driver version.
They become more stable when you use the 185.20 driver and activate OpenGl 3 but Houdini still has trouble with them.

Lets get this clear.
This is a driver problem, but its only a problem with Houdini.
PCs able to run Max/Maya/XSI/Lightwave and C4D for days on end fall over with surprising regularity when running Houdini.

To rub salt into this wound we recently purchased a copy of OSX and did a naughty thing putting it onto the test PC we had been running Apprentice on.
Grabbed the OSX version of Apprentice and what do you know.
2 weeks 24x7 and not one crash.

I know this is a driver problem. but what ever conflict Houdini is having with the drivers is just not happening with other apps.
We had been seriously considering moving to Houdini untill this became apparent.

P.S. this problem happens with the GeForce GTX 295 as well so looks like its all cards 9000 and up

If you're still willing, please give tomorrow's build 397 of 9.5 a try and see if this resolves the issue. Remove NVemulate before testing.

rofl was just about to give 9.5.379 a go
will wait till the new one is up and try it out

twod
If you're still willing, please give tomorrow's build 397 of 9.5 a try and see if this resolves the issue. Remove NVemulate before testing.

nope. less than 5min before the black screen.
tried with 178.24 and 182.08 drivers, without nvemulate.

yes still not fixed on vista 64, driver version 182.06, no nv emulate

thank you
patar

A quick update - we're looking into the problem further. If you happen across any more clues, let us know!

btw heres the error message:

display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered

but after that the houdini screen is black and have to restart houdini

thx
patar

Hm. That seems to indicate that the Nvidia driver either hung or crashed; we'll do our best to workaround the problem.

Thanks for the info!

So hows the development?
any news? before i decide to change back to “old and tired, but reliable” windows XP 64…

thank you
patar

We've verified that the problem doesn't occur on 9800 and GT200 series-based Quadros, so we've ordered a consumer version of the card to test this issue. It is looking more like we'll need some sort of driver workaround for the problem.