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Forum: VirtualDJ Technical Support

Topic: Serious Computer Crash on Workstation PC on Analysis of Music Library
Hello everyone, I'm having a serious issue running Virtual DJ on a powerful Windows 11 PC and I hope I can get some guidance/help with this. When I open the program and try to analyze my music library, it crashes my computer completely and causes it to shut down. It occurs every time I try to load or pre-analyze my music library. After some troubleshooting, I noticed that my motherboard throws a "red Q-LED" error (which indicates a CPU issue) while it analyzes the library (right before shutting down abruptly). Also, I checked that the CPU goes from 2% to 100% on Task Manager before shutting down. Just to be clear, it doesn't shut down nicely, it's like the power gets disconnected. This basically makes Virtual DJ unusable for me. I was about to purchase Virtual DJ Pro but I'm glad I decided to test the software first with Virtual DJ Home.

For context, I am primarily a producer and have access to a mac laptop and powerful workstation pc. The mac is a 2018 MacBook Pro laptop running macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) with 32 GB RAM and an Intel Core i7 CPU. This mac is rarely updated and still runs Virtual DJ Home Free version 7.0.5 with zero issues. I am able to load and analyze my 70GB local music library with no latency, high CPU usage, or overheating. This older mac with decent specs works perfectly fine.

The problem is with the workstation PC. The PC itself is incredibly fast and responds well under very heavy load of other music and production software - due to it's high specs (which I will detail below). I mention this since I think a lot of people might assume Virtual DJ crashing and shutting down a PC might be related to missing some hardware or running the software below minimum spec requirements. Also, I don't have any controllers connected when this happens and I am also not running any other programs at the same time. The CPU temperature is approximately 52 degrees Celsius so it cannot be an overheating issue. I believe it is related to the CPU spiking from 2% to 100% (it spikes in like the fraction of a second) because the crash and shut down happens during this spike while Virtual DJ analyzes the library. The crash happens almost immediately after clicking on analyze. All Virtual DJ settings are currently defaults and my music library is located on an internal NVMe SSD drive. Finally, this machine has all power-savings options turned off and runs in high-performance mode.

Here are the specs:
- Virtual DJ Version: Virtual DJ Home v2023
- Operating System: Windows 11
- CPU: Intel i9-12900K
- RAM: 128GB
- GPU: RTX 3080 Ti 12GB
- Motherboard: AsUS ROG Strix Z690-A
- Power Supply: 13000 W

I really hope someone here has some idea of what could be happening because it makes no sense that this machine wouldn't be able to run Virtual DJ. Not sure if there is bug on the newest v2023 version (I have not tried any other Virtual DJ versions). I would appreciate any suggestions. I have not dabbled with the settings since I'm not sure what, if anything, should be changed.
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 9:31 am
With a 13000w power supply you're probably frying the CPU :)

Seriously, can you try this while online to see if VDJ sends a crashlog before the machine shuts down? Probably not but you never know.

 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 9:52 am
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
You can check the windows system event viewer to see if any more details have been logged, but it does sound like a problem with the cpu or power supply to the cpu.

You could try with other stress testing software like AIDA64 as well:
https://www.avast.com/c-cpu-stress-test#aida64
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 10:12 am
kradcliffe wrote :
With a 13000w power supply you're probably frying the CPU :)

Seriously, can you try this while online to see if VDJ sends a crashlog before the machine shuts down? Probably not but you never know.

Thank you for your suggestion! I'm trying to wrap my head around the possibility of the PSU frying the CPU in this case since it happens only when I run batch analysis of my music library on Virtual DJ. This powering off issue has never happened to me with other programs on large projects. The machine is fairly new (has around 1 year of age) and has been under heavy load before.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken but my understanding around PSU wattage is that the power supply will only output what is needed from the connected hardware - not more, even if it's capable of doing so. What you mentioned about the CPU getting fried by the PSU is more likely if the PSU is faulty or if its a really cheap/untrustworthy brand. The PSU in my build is a SeaSonic PRIME PX 1300 W, which has an 80 Plus Platinum certification with 92 % efficiency at 50 % system load. Is there anything I could do to investigate this further? I do get a bit worried about damaging the CPU every time I try to do the batch analysis.

As for the crashlog, I've actually been connected online to my account on VDJ this whole time. How can I check if a crashlog was generated? I never get any error messages. I just right click on music library folder, then "batch" and "analyze for bpm" and after a split second... bam computer turns off and doesn't even restart. I have to press the on button again.
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 11:14 am
It was a joke. You posted 13,000w instead of 1,300w
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 11:26 am
Adion wrote :
You can check the windows system event viewer to see if any more details have been logged, but it does sound like a problem with the cpu or power supply to the cpu.

You could try with other stress testing software like AIDA64 as well:
https://www.avast.com/c-cpu-stress-test#aida64

I wasn't familiar with the event manager, thanks for mentioning. I just checked and while it does those errors around the time of the shutdown, they are only after the fact. The errors say "previous system shutdown was unexpected" and "the system was rebooted without cleanly shutting down first".

I'm going to give the stress test a try and report back here!
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 11:32 am
kradcliffe wrote :
It was a joke. You posted 13,000w instead of 1,300w


hahaha oh wow I completely missed that, my bad! I was actually contemplating the possibility of that theory for a second there.
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 11:34 am
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
A power supply is rated for its maximum power, so even a 13000 Watt power supply should be able to reliably supply just 20W. (depending on the design it may be a little bit less efficient at that load, but should still work fine)
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 11:40 am
A power supply is rated for its maximum power, so even a 13000 Watt power supply should be able to reliably supply just 20W. (depending on the design it may be a little bit less efficient at that load, but should still work fine)

Thanks for the clarification. I wish I could edit the original post to have the correct 1300 W for the PSU lol

But, I have news. I ran the AIDA64 Stability Stress Test and it crashed my computer the same way (abrupt immediate shuttdown). Ugh I don't know why or how this is happening or what could be causing this. I just had this issue for the first time with VDJ analyzing the library but now I'm guessing the machine hasn't had that heavy of a CPU load before somehow. That stress test is a great troubleshooting tool btw.

Sigh, I'm not sure where to go from here though... does this mean I may have a faulty CPU, mobo or PSU? How do I even know which
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 12:10 pm
Try looking at some online computer forums for advice. It may be some incompatibility between the hardware or as you say a bad CPU or even motherboard.

Is the CPU pasted adequately?
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 12:12 pm
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
If it happens almost instantly I don't think cooling will be the problem (and modern cpu's report high temperatures so usually this would have caused some log in the system event viewer)
My guess would be that a faulty motherboard is most likely, but cpu or power supply could be the reason too.
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 1:09 pm
CPU was pasted adequately when the computer was first built. Temperatures appear to not be high ( around 50 degrees celsius) at the moment the crash occurs.

Is there a way to check if this in fact the CPU or motherboard? The motherboard shows the "red Q-Led" light at the moment the crash happens, which according to the motherboard's manual indicates an issue with the CPU. Is there a way or test to narrow it down to own specific part?
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 2:23 pm
You're going to have to go back to basics with this. Default the BIOS settings. Download CPU-Z (free) and see if the crash occurs when you run both/either of the Bench tests. There are numerous system checking/stressing/burn-in apps out there, perhaps grab one of those.
Never rule out memory as the culprit either.
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 2:44 pm
 

geposted Sun 05 Feb 23 @ 3:28 pm
Thank so much for everyone for the suggestions. I will be trying to run these tests tomorrow after work. I hope I can get some interesting results that can help me pin this down.
 

geposted Mon 06 Feb 23 @ 8:20 am
There is a hardware issue for sure with this problem. It sounds like bad memory or a failing motherboard.
 

geposted Tue 07 Feb 23 @ 2:16 pm
 

geposted Wed 08 Feb 23 @ 1:19 pm
Hello everyone! Thank you all for your help, it really guided me in the right direction and I'm very grateful for you all here. My apologies for being away for a few days, I had some life things that came up and had to leave the testing for today.

I have news. I was able to fix my issue and I will post here the process and the solution to help anyone else that faces a similar situation. You all were right that this was in fact not a VDJ issue since the PC crashed with the AIDA system stability test sent to me here. It just seems like I hadn't had a program push my PC as much as VDJ did during the analysis of my library (so I was going to have this problem at one point or another).

I had XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) activated and after going over the links provided here by Mr DJ Mel, I could related to some of the items mentioned in the forum. I recall having had some issues setting up XMP the first time tis PC was built and I did have to manually change some BIOS settings to get it working.

I turned off XMP in BIOS but still had the crash. I then decided to default the BIOS settings and voila! The AIDA stress test stopped crashing the PC and it was actually running. I then tried opening VDJ and batch analyzing my whole library... guess what? It ran through the whole library and finished rather quickly. I'm so happy! Thank you all again!
 

geposted Sat 11 Feb 23 @ 9:58 am