Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

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Geoff_OPELS
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Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#1

Post by Geoff_OPELS »

I'm running windows 10 on a fast, modern PC with 4 TB storage. I operate a QHY600M with 1 second exposures, full frame (9400x6500). It worked fine for 6 months. I downloaded the latest SharpCap v4.08564 64-bit, and I downloaded the latest QHY600 driver. Now, with the new SharpCap, Windows crashes every roughly 20 minutes, giving a "Blue Window" stating, "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart for you." I have tried different settings of the "USB traffic" (0, 20, 30, 40, 60). But it still crashes. My Windows box does not crash, except when SharpCap is running (I've tested). Does anyone have ideas about how to prevent these crashes? Thanks! Geoff
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Re: Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

if you are getting a blue screen when running SharpCap it's very very likely to be down to a bug in the camera driver - applications like SharpCap can't crash the whole of windows (just themselves) unless there is also a bug in the camera driver that is triggered by something SharpCap does.

You could try going back to the older driver from QHY, but I suspect that you might then get the 'you need to update your driver' message which comes from the QHY SDK if it finds an old driver.

You should also try to report the blue screen crashes to QHY. Your PC should save a crash dump file every time you get a blue screen, which can be analyzed to find out what went wrong. Sharing this with QHY should help them understand what is going wrong - see this page for details on how to find the crash dump : https://www.technlg.net/windows/windows ... ydmp-file/

If you share the crash dump file with me (it will be quite large, so upload to google drive, dropbox, etc and send me the download link via private message), I can run an analysis on it to confirm if it really is a crash in the QHY driver, but I can't do anything beyond that really.

cheers,

Robin
Geoff_OPELS
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Re: Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#3

Post by Geoff_OPELS »

Thank you very much, Robin. Your suspicion about the QHY driver makes good sense. I attempted to operate the QHY600M by using FireCapture, and it worked. Images arrived with the full frame (9400x6500) at 1 fps. (That's as fast a frame rate as I ever got from SharpCap.) Going back to SharpCap, it still did not "see" QHY600M in the list of cameras, even after clicking "Rescan for Cameras". This success with FireCapture exonerates the camera itself, the USB 3.0 cabling, and the computer. I don't know where FireCapture gets its QHY driver. I will try to reload the QHY600 driver, hoping SharpCap can "see" the camera. If not, I will contact the QHY folks. Thanks again. -Geoff
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Re: Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

I suspect that Firecapture may simply have an older version of the QHY SDK, which means that it can talk to the older driver.

If you right click on the QHYCCD.dll file in the SharpCap install folder and choose Properties, then Details, you can see the date of the SDK version - in the screenshot below it is 23rd October 2021. Do the same for the file in FireCapture and compare the dates.
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (39.6 KiB) Viewed 1152 times
I usually try to keep SharpCap up to date with the latest from QHY within a week or two of QHY releasing it - that means that you get the latest bug fixes and new model support from QHY, but you also get any new bugs that have been introduced by mistake :(

cheers,

Robin
Geoff_OPELS
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Re: Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#5

Post by Geoff_OPELS »

Robin - You were exactly right! The QHYCCD.dll file in the Firecapture folder was dated "13-Jan-22 10:58PM" (i.e. 2 days ago), and the camera functions in Firecapture. But the QHYCCD.dll file in the SharpCap folder was dated "23-Oct-21 8:38 PM", i.e. nearly 3 months older. I copied and pasted the 13-Jan-22 version of QHYCCD.dll into the SharpCap folder, and it now SharpCap works! Thank you soooooo much, Robin!

As a bonus, SharpCap is achieving 4.0 fps (!) reading the full frame of the QHY600M - 9600x6422 pixels. 0 frames dropped. Somehow, SharpCap is now reading the QHY600M 2x faster than before. Just phenomenal. Thank you again!
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Re: Windows crashes giving "Blue Window"

#6

Post by admin »

Hi,

I think that the date you are reading from firecapture is the date that the file was copied into that folder, but anyway it is definitely a different version to the one that SharpCap uses and it sounds like it works better with the 600M.

cheers,

Robin

Update : I just downloaded Firecapture and had a look - the DLL they are using is from June 2020!
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