I'm running 3 GPUs in my system and it's crashing quite often - sometimes one card stops working, sometimes the keyboard becomes unresponsive too, but usually the display stays on the screen. It's usually the same card that stops working if it's just one that stopped, but today it's two of them. I suspect the power supplies are not stable enough and I have better ones on order. But today I noticed 18 (!) Windows 10 notifications saying:

Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware. Application hsgamma_FGRPB1 has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware.

At that point it was running Einstein Gamma, but they also do Milkyway. 3 cards, 2 WUs each, a 50% mixture of each project, sometimes it's running all one project, sometimes 1 WU of each on a card.

Does this mean anything to anyone? A google search just suggests checking drivers, RAM, etc. I know all of that to be fine. It's a fresh install with the latest drivers and Boinc and updates. Memtest has tested the RAM as ok. Virtually nothing else on the system but AVG and MSI Afterburner (to control GPU fan speeds). They are not overheating, I keep them below 70C. They're all connected to one 4 way riser with USB leads.

Windows will block apps if it detects that the applications are causing your GPU drivers to crash. So, that notification is just a by-product of your GPUs crashing.

I would recommend only running one project or the other on your GPUs at once, I believe running both Milkyway and Einstein work units on the same card simultaneously could be causing the crashing.

Obviously if you've got your GPUs overclocked or undervolted that could also be the source of the crashing.

Also for AMD cards the latest drivers are not very stable, I would recommend the "Pro Software for Enterprise" drivers instead, they are much more stable and better suited for compute workloads like BOINC tasks. I know for my Radeon VIIs, the latest 2020 Adrenalin drivers caused them to crash every couple of hours at complete stock, once I switched to the Pro drivers I had no issues.

Windows will block apps if it detects that the applications are causing your GPU drivers to crash. So, that notification is just a by-product of your GPUs crashing.

I would recommend only running one project or the other on your GPUs at once, I believe running both Milkyway and Einstein units on the same card simultaneously could be causing the crashing.

Obviously if you've got your GPUs overclocked or undervolted that could also be the source of the crashing.

Also for AMD cards the latest drivers are not very stable, I would recommend the "Pro Software for Enterprise" drivers instead, they are much more stable and better suited for compute workloads like BOINC tasks.

I've just installed a newer Radeon driver I didn't know was available (autoupdate seemed to have forgotten!), if that still fails, I'll try a much older one (in another forum it's been suggested the 2020 ones are unstable).

Most times I've seen it crash, only Einstein is running. Due to the weird MW server thing of not handing out work while work is being returned, it tends to give up getting MW and download huge amounts of Einstein and work on that, hence when it does get MW, it concentrates solely on that as it's not been doing enough of it. I rarely see both projects running at once, and I don't recall ever seeing a crash while it was. When it crashes, the screen usually stays on, so I can see what it was doing at the time of the crash.

About to install a better PSU which might help.

All GPUs are running at stock settings, but I can't guarantee they were with the previous owner as they're second hand. It does tend to be one card more often that crashes, maybe it's faulty?

Thanks for suggesting Enterprise, I'll try that.

I've just installed a newer Radeon driver I didn't know was available (autoupdate seemed to have forgotten!), if that still fails, I'll try a much older one (in another forum it's been suggested the 2020 ones are unstable).

Most times I've seen it crash, only Einstein is running. Due to the weird MW server thing of not handing out work while work is being returned, it tends to give up getting MW and download huge amounts of Einstein and work on that, hence when it does get MW, it concentrates solely on that as it's not been doing enough of it. I rarely see both projects running at once, and I don't recall ever seeing a crash while it was. When it crashes, the screen usually stays on, so I can see what it was doing at the time of the crash.

About to install a better PSU which might help.

All GPUs are running at stock settings, but I can't guarantee they were with the previous owner as they're second hand. It does tend to be one card more often that crashes, maybe it's faulty?

Thanks for suggesting Enterprise, I'll try that.

I'd check out this thread regarding MW not requesting tasks properly, it's a long-standing bug with Milkyway, but if you use this guy's modified boinc client, it beautifully fixes the problem.
https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=4532

If the cards were faulty I would think they would crash instantly upon putting any sort of load on them, so I don't think they're faulty. You could try underclocking the offending cards by 50 or 100MHz to see if that resolves the issues. I'd probably try the Enterprise drivers first though.

I've just installed a newer Radeon driver I didn't know was available (autoupdate seemed to have forgotten!), if that still fails, I'll try a much older one (in another forum it's been suggested the 2020 ones are unstable).

Most times I've seen it crash, only Einstein is running. Due to the weird MW server thing of not handing out work while work is being returned, it tends to give up getting MW and download huge amounts of Einstein and work on that, hence when it does get MW, it concentrates solely on that as it's not been doing enough of it. I rarely see both projects running at once, and I don't recall ever seeing a crash while it was. When it crashes, the screen usually stays on, so I can see what it was doing at the time of the crash.

About to install a better PSU which might help.

All GPUs are running at stock settings, but I can't guarantee they were with the previous owner as they're second hand. It does tend to be one card more often that crashes, maybe it's faulty?

Thanks for suggesting Enterprise, I'll try that.

I'd check out this thread regarding MW not requesting tasks properly, it's a long-standing bug with Milkyway, but if you use this guy's modified boinc client, it beautifully fixes the problem.
https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=4532

If the cards were faulty I would think they would crash instantly upon putting any sort of load on them, so I don't think they're faulty. You could try underclocking the offending cards by 50 or 100MHz to see if that resolves the issues. I'd probably try the Enterprise drivers first though.

Yeah the cards tend to run about 6 hours without crashing, I agree they're probably not broken. I'm strongly suspecting PSU problems - the voltage is too low, and one of the cards drops 100MHz half the time unless I increase "power limit" in the MSI Afterburner settings (which causes even more instability). The strange thing is, if I drop it 100MHz, it then starts dropping a further 100MHz and so on. Doesn't make sense. I'm going to get everything on decent supplies first, then if it keeps failing I'll run cards seperately to see if I can narrow down what part is causing the problem. It's running on Enterprise Radeon drivers now aswell.

Yes I've conversed with Joseph Stateson before about this. I have enough complications without installing new clients. When I only want Milkyway running, I don't mind a 10 minute gap between runs of 2.5 hours, and I then just stick Einstein to be a priority 0 task, so it fills in the gap until MW is ready again. If I'm running both with equal priority as I am just now, then it doesn't matter anyway.

I'd really like to know why they don't sort this problem at the server though. Is it deliberate? Is there a bug? Has somebody set things up wrongly?

I'd really like to know why they don't sort this problem at the server though. Is it deliberate? Is there a bug? Has somebody set things up wrongly?

We've discussed this issue ad nauseum before. Assume it is server configuration settings that the project scientists and administrators haven't set correctly since no other projects have the issue.

Past track record when the project updated the server software was iffy. Took several months to get basic functions back to normal because the software configuration changed greatly from the previous version.

---

I'd really like to know why they don't sort this problem at the server though. Is it deliberate? Is there a bug? Has somebody set things up wrongly?

We've discussed this issue ad nauseum before. Assume it is server configuration settings that the project scientists and administrators haven't set correctly since no other projects have the issue.

Past track record when the project updated the server software was iffy. Took several months to get basic functions back to normal because the software configuration changed greatly from the previous version.

Amazing they can't fix something so simple. Maybe they don't care if the WUs are flying back in fast enough.