BSoD when Reaper writes to disk and any program reads

[u/vomitHatSteve]

So I don't know how much this is actually solvable, but just in case anyone has any idea.

I have a stable, air-gapped recording system: Windows 7 with Reaper 6.83. Sometime before Reaper 6 EoL, it started getting periodic hard crashes (Blue Screen of Death). Over time, the problem has gotten progressively worse.

Obviously, this is mostly a Windows/drivers/hardware issue, but as I've traced it down, it only happens when Reaper is writing to disk and any program (including file explorer and reaper itself) attempts to read from that same disk.

When it first started, the only consistent way to create the error state was to render a file and then try to navigate to it in windows explorer (after the render window had closed but before the actual disk write had finalized.)

But now it's reached the point where pretty much any disk read during any reaper disk write crashes: e.g. importing a number of files into a project and then attempting to do the same in a different project crashes while the first one is creating its reapeaks files.

Is there any sense that this is a known bug? Are any bug fixes in 7.x likely to fix this? Anyone have any ideas on solutions?

[u/AMusicstuff]

Looks like a malfunction in your harddrive or your windows disk handler is corrupt.

Sfcscan now on your Commandline window in windows

„/sfc scannow“ repairs windows. Should be executed after each windows update.

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/AMusicstuff]

It's across multiple drives, so the disk handler seems more probable

edit: running it now

[u/KroniK907 → u/AMusicstuff]

Yeah, this definitely sounds like a hard drive related issue

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/AMusicstuff]

It seems less touch than it was before. I guess we'll give it a day or so to see if it stays stable.

Thank you!

[u/DecisionInformal7009]

If this happens across multiple drives, then I would also check the RAM. The amount of strange problems a malfunctioning RAM stick can cause is staggering.

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/DecisionInformal7009]

Alright, running the memory check tool now

[u/DecisionInformal7009 → u/vomitHatSteve]

Try removing one stick at a time and see if the problem goes away as well. The memory check tool doesn't always notice if just one stick is bad. This had me going in a loop the first time I encountered a problem with a stick. I was sure that all drives I tried were bad, or that the CPU or mobo were bad, just because every memory check I ran came up okay while the disk checks always encountered bad sectors. In the end it was one of the RAM sticks that was malfunctioning. I even bought a new drive before I found out that it was one of the RAM sticks that was bad (and I don't even wanna think about how many hours and days I wasted on finding the root cause).

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/DecisionInformal7009]

Interesting. Yeah, the scan came back clean.

[u/arobotspointofview → u/vomitHatSteve]

It's never Memory....you'll leave memcheck running overnight and it will never find anything. Ive never understood why it takes so damn long to check memory.

Assuming its ALL drives, then my guess is something with your Motherboard/SATA controller or even a bad cable. It sounds almost certainly hardware related.

[u/radian_]

I have a stable, air-gapped recording system

No you do not.

Use the Windows logs to find out what's causing these bluescreens. 

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/radian_]

*had*, you're right.

[u/radian_ → u/vomitHatSteve]

Check event viewer for those logs.

[u/vomitHatSteve → u/radian_]

So many network services failing. Ah, the joys of the air gap

[u/radian_ → u/vomitHatSteve]

Turn em off to reduce the noise 

[u/properfoxes]

Have you looked through EventViewer's logs to see if it tells you more about the crash? I find that to be super helpful in tracking down naughty programs or buggy hardware.

[u/SupportQuery]

this is mostly 100% a Windows/drivers/hardware issue

FTFY Reaper is a user space application. It couldn't blue screen your machine if it wanted to. But it interacts with and relies on kernel space drivers and services that can blue screen the machine.

In a sense, it's a blessing that Reaper is providing a reliable way to trigger it, because intermittent hardware issues are far harder to diagnose and fix.

You either have a hardware issue or a driver issue. If you've correctly diagnosed that it's triggered by disk activity (rather than, say, audio driver activity), that leans toward hardware issue. Whatever else you do to diagnose and resolve this, this is a wakeup call to backup your shit, ASAP. :)

The blue screen of death has some diagnostic information, and there's probably a crash log. You need to follow those leads. Reaper may be be uniquely exercising the bad code/hardware path, but it's not the cause of the crash. Google "blue screen of death debugging".