Hi, I am reporting a bug that results in a complete PC shutdown (no automatic crash report appears). I have found the log from the session where this occurred.
Version: 4.1.14276
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro (connected directly to PC via USB 3.0)
Symptom: Total power-off shutdown. Windows Event Viewer shows Event ID 41 (Kernel-Power) and Event ID 6008 (Unexpected Shutdown). The crash was severe enough that I had to run sfc /scannow to repair corrupted system files afterward.
The log abruptly ends during the disposal of the camera provider. Here are the final lines of the log:
Info 15:20:57.141129 #1 Started void SharpCap.Base.CaptureProviderBase<T>.Dispose(bool bDisposing)
Info 15:20:57.141427 #1 Disposing of ASICaptureProvider
Debug 15:20:57.142462 #1 Started void SharpCap.Base.BaseImageProvider.Dispose(bool disposing)
Debug 15:20:57.142632 #1 Ended void SharpCap.Base.BaseImageProvider.Dispose(bool disposing)
Info 15:20:57.142832 #1 Ended void SharpCap.Base.CaptureProviderBase<T>.Dispose(bool bDisposing)
It appears the system fails exactly when SharpCap attempts to release the ZWO camera driver. Please let me know if there are specific settings or driver versions I should investigate to prevent this hardware-level crash.
Thankis
Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
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*** Please do not post license keys - please report any problems with licensing to 'admin' by private message ***
Please include the following details in any bug report:
* Version of SharpCap
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[If SharpCap crashes, please send the bug report when prompted instead of including the log]
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Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi,
interesting - the last event in the log indicates that cleanup of the camera had completed by that point. SharpCap also deliberately forces any pending log text entries to be written to file at that point, so it's also possible that there should be some additional entries that 'happened' but didn't get recorded in the file before the crash.
There are two main possibilities here
1) A Windows crash caused by some bug in the ZWO camera driver. I think this is relatively unlikely, since that sort of problem would usually trigger a blue screen of death rather than a complete power off, and the event log entries would indicate that (bug check event, not unexpected shutdown). This sort of issue *might* be resolved by using a different version of the ZWO driver and/or a different version of SharpCap, but I haven't seen this sort of crash happening before, so I can't advise on which versions might be better than others.
2) A PC hardware problem that was either coincidental or was triggered by the close of the camera. This is more likely in my experience for a complete shutdown with no blue screen. I have seen a number of reports recently of this sort of problem in mini PC systems, which seem to be related to the mini PC power supplies not being powerful enough to cope under all situations. If the PC becomes very busy and draws a lot of power, the PSU either shuts down in overload or allows the voltage to the PC to drop and the PC reboots.
Has this happened more than once (is it reproducable?) or is it a one off or intermittent thing? If it is intermittent or one off then it becomes very hard to tell if any changes that you make really have an effect or not.
cheers,
Robin
interesting - the last event in the log indicates that cleanup of the camera had completed by that point. SharpCap also deliberately forces any pending log text entries to be written to file at that point, so it's also possible that there should be some additional entries that 'happened' but didn't get recorded in the file before the crash.
There are two main possibilities here
1) A Windows crash caused by some bug in the ZWO camera driver. I think this is relatively unlikely, since that sort of problem would usually trigger a blue screen of death rather than a complete power off, and the event log entries would indicate that (bug check event, not unexpected shutdown). This sort of issue *might* be resolved by using a different version of the ZWO driver and/or a different version of SharpCap, but I haven't seen this sort of crash happening before, so I can't advise on which versions might be better than others.
2) A PC hardware problem that was either coincidental or was triggered by the close of the camera. This is more likely in my experience for a complete shutdown with no blue screen. I have seen a number of reports recently of this sort of problem in mini PC systems, which seem to be related to the mini PC power supplies not being powerful enough to cope under all situations. If the PC becomes very busy and draws a lot of power, the PSU either shuts down in overload or allows the voltage to the PC to drop and the PC reboots.
Has this happened more than once (is it reproducable?) or is it a one off or intermittent thing? If it is intermittent or one off then it becomes very hard to tell if any changes that you make really have an effect or not.
cheers,
Robin
Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi,
Here is additional information surrounding the incident.
The mini pc is a new Beelink SER5 Max with a Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 24 GB of LPDDR5 ram and 500 GB SSD storage running Win 11. The power supply is the one provided by ZWO and was connected to mains power. I had just installed v4.1.14276 to update v4.1.14254 which I had run numerous times with no problems. This incident occurred on the first run of the new version. As stated previously the 294MC Pro was connected directly to the pc in a 3.2 USB port.
I was in-house reviewing settings in the new version. I had reviewed all of the settings in File > SharpCap Settings and hadn't changed anything. I opened Live Stacking and paused the stacking process as I saw no reason to have the camera stacking when I was just reviewing settings. I had reviewed all the tabs leading up to the Enhancement tab. In that tab I clicked on a setting and that's when the computer crashed. I was shocked and unfortunately don't remember what setting I was attempting to review.
I am currently updating the ZWO native driver from v3.25 to v3.27 and the ASCOM driver from v6.5.32 to v6.5.35. I am also considering lowering the USB Turbo setting from the default 80 to 50 or 60. I do not plan to try and recreate the event as I had to run sfc /scannow to repair corrupted system files afterward. I am also considering purchasing a new power supply from ZWO.
I don't know if the above sheds any light on this incident but I am open to any suggestions you may have.
Thanks
Here is additional information surrounding the incident.
The mini pc is a new Beelink SER5 Max with a Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 24 GB of LPDDR5 ram and 500 GB SSD storage running Win 11. The power supply is the one provided by ZWO and was connected to mains power. I had just installed v4.1.14276 to update v4.1.14254 which I had run numerous times with no problems. This incident occurred on the first run of the new version. As stated previously the 294MC Pro was connected directly to the pc in a 3.2 USB port.
I was in-house reviewing settings in the new version. I had reviewed all of the settings in File > SharpCap Settings and hadn't changed anything. I opened Live Stacking and paused the stacking process as I saw no reason to have the camera stacking when I was just reviewing settings. I had reviewed all the tabs leading up to the Enhancement tab. In that tab I clicked on a setting and that's when the computer crashed. I was shocked and unfortunately don't remember what setting I was attempting to review.
I am currently updating the ZWO native driver from v3.25 to v3.27 and the ASCOM driver from v6.5.32 to v6.5.35. I am also considering lowering the USB Turbo setting from the default 80 to 50 or 60. I do not plan to try and recreate the event as I had to run sfc /scannow to repair corrupted system files afterward. I am also considering purchasing a new power supply from ZWO.
I don't know if the above sheds any light on this incident but I am open to any suggestions you may have.
Thanks
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Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi,
I asked our good friend AI (Google Gemini in this case) what would be the likely cause of the event ID 41 in the event log. It leaned 70% to 30% in favour of it being a hardware issue (power supply or overheating) and suggested looking at the Bugcheck code in the details of the events. If the bugcheck code is zero then Windows had no idea that it was crashing and that is likely hardware. If there is a non-zero code then tha may point to what caused the crash (in cases where the crash was too serious to show a BSOD). See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troub ... 41-restart
cheers,
Robin
I asked our good friend AI (Google Gemini in this case) what would be the likely cause of the event ID 41 in the event log. It leaned 70% to 30% in favour of it being a hardware issue (power supply or overheating) and suggested looking at the Bugcheck code in the details of the events. If the bugcheck code is zero then Windows had no idea that it was crashing and that is likely hardware. If there is a non-zero code then tha may point to what caused the crash (in cases where the crash was too serious to show a BSOD). See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troub ... 41-restart
cheers,
Robin
Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi,
Additional AI evaluation:
Since you were specifically using SharpCap v4.1.14276 and viewing Live Stacking settings, the Event ID 41 likely resulted from a software-driven system freeze that forced an unexpected reboot. Even without changing settings, just opening the Live Stacking window can engage high-demand system resources.
While Event ID 41 itself is just a record that the system didn't shut down properly, the context of your activity suggests these specific software-related causes:
GPU Hardware Acceleration Conflicts: Live Stacking in newer versions of SharpCap (4.1+) often utilizes hardware acceleration. If there is a conflict between SharpCap and your graphics drivers, it can cause the entire system to hang or crash.
Driver Crash or Timeout: Accessing Live Stacking settings can trigger a camera or graphics driver initialization. If the driver fails to respond (TDR - Timeout Detection and Recovery), the kernel may crash, leading to a restart.
Memory Management (Buffer) Issues: There are known reports of bugs in SharpCap 4.1 involving crashes when "Disposing of locked buffers" specifically while using or shortly after pausing/closing Live Stacking. This can sometimes lead to a "dirty" shutdown if the system stops responding.
CPU Spikes during Initialization: Even if paused, the background threads for Live Stacking can cause momentary spikes in CPU usage. These sudden fluctuations can trigger a reboot.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Additional AI evaluation:
Since you were specifically using SharpCap v4.1.14276 and viewing Live Stacking settings, the Event ID 41 likely resulted from a software-driven system freeze that forced an unexpected reboot. Even without changing settings, just opening the Live Stacking window can engage high-demand system resources.
While Event ID 41 itself is just a record that the system didn't shut down properly, the context of your activity suggests these specific software-related causes:
GPU Hardware Acceleration Conflicts: Live Stacking in newer versions of SharpCap (4.1+) often utilizes hardware acceleration. If there is a conflict between SharpCap and your graphics drivers, it can cause the entire system to hang or crash.
Driver Crash or Timeout: Accessing Live Stacking settings can trigger a camera or graphics driver initialization. If the driver fails to respond (TDR - Timeout Detection and Recovery), the kernel may crash, leading to a restart.
Memory Management (Buffer) Issues: There are known reports of bugs in SharpCap 4.1 involving crashes when "Disposing of locked buffers" specifically while using or shortly after pausing/closing Live Stacking. This can sometimes lead to a "dirty" shutdown if the system stops responding.
CPU Spikes during Initialization: Even if paused, the background threads for Live Stacking can cause momentary spikes in CPU usage. These sudden fluctuations can trigger a reboot.
Thoughts?
Thanks
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Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Probably best to have a look at the event ID 41 entries in the event viewer and see if they have bugcheck codes that are non-zero.
To see this, you have to right click on the event, select properties, then go to the details tab.
If those are zero then the system had no idea of any software problem - that points to a hard crash in the hardware, but as your previous post suggests, that is probably triggered by something in the software (high power load or whatever). If they are non-zero then we have something to follow up based on that code.
cheers,
Robin
To see this, you have to right click on the event, select properties, then go to the details tab.
If those are zero then the system had no idea of any software problem - that points to a hard crash in the hardware, but as your previous post suggests, that is probably triggered by something in the software (high power load or whatever). If they are non-zero then we have something to follow up based on that code.
cheers,
Robin
Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi.
After performing a deeper dive in to this incident I have discovered the following:
The BIOS on the Beelink Ryzen 7 with the 6800U processor is locked at 28 watts Total Design Power (TDP). It cannot be changed even with a BIOS update.
Under heavy simultaneous CPU and GPU loads the power budget nosedives which can cause significant performance issues.
The 5 amp power supply provided by Beelink is not sufficient when simultaneous CPU and GPU loads throttle down power then spike as they did when I was in Live Stacking.
So it appears this was indeed a power issue. I have a 6.3 amp power supply on the way for more headroom and will disable graphic card acceleration in SharpCap settings. This should (hopefully) prevent future problems.
My apologies for not diving deeper sooner. Thank you for your time and patience.
After performing a deeper dive in to this incident I have discovered the following:
The BIOS on the Beelink Ryzen 7 with the 6800U processor is locked at 28 watts Total Design Power (TDP). It cannot be changed even with a BIOS update.
Under heavy simultaneous CPU and GPU loads the power budget nosedives which can cause significant performance issues.
The 5 amp power supply provided by Beelink is not sufficient when simultaneous CPU and GPU loads throttle down power then spike as they did when I was in Live Stacking.
So it appears this was indeed a power issue. I have a 6.3 amp power supply on the way for more headroom and will disable graphic card acceleration in SharpCap settings. This should (hopefully) prevent future problems.
My apologies for not diving deeper sooner. Thank you for your time and patience.
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Re: Full System Shutdown during ASICaptureProvider.Dispose (v4.1.14276)
Hi,
no worries - it would be good to hear whether the better PSU helps resolve the issue and whether any of the other changes (like disabling GPU acceleration) have any effect. This is definitely a pattern now with the recent Beelink boxes (probably 4 or 5 cases now - maybe even more), so the more we get to know about the workarounds for the issue, the better.
cheers,
Robin
no worries - it would be good to hear whether the better PSU helps resolve the issue and whether any of the other changes (like disabling GPU acceleration) have any effect. This is definitely a pattern now with the recent Beelink boxes (probably 4 or 5 cases now - maybe even more), so the more we get to know about the workarounds for the issue, the better.
cheers,
Robin