[nevaeh]

Hello,

For some reason I'm getting crashes at startup since updating to Kodi v19.1 from a functioning v19 portable installation. Since it's just a "testing" installation I use to see how stable new builds are before I move to them, I decided to ensure it wasn't a configuration, corruption or database issue, so I installed a fresh portable installation of v19.1 but it still crashes on a completely fresh/new install. Sometimes I get to the main screen for a couple seconds before it crashes and sometimes I just see the Kodi Matrix splash screen before it crashes.

This is the first time I'm posting in the help section, so I hope I did the debugging correctly, I followed the "Log file/Advanced" on the Kodi wiki and had to create an advancedsetttings.xml since Kodi crashes before I'm able to do any configuration.

Debug Log:
https://paste.kodi.tv/tuwomupade.kodi

Please let me know how I can assist further.

Thank you,
Brandon

[PatK]

Your debug log was done well, alas doesn't show the issue. Noting: Intel® HD Graphics 530 adapter A suitable upgrade choice for the Intel HD Graphics 530 Desktop is the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, which is 907% more powerful according to blurbs I've read. It's the shared gfx memory that is the likely culprit, but atm keeping a portable installation for testing is the best scenario. If you want to try tweaking the settings manually in the guisettings.xml of your userdata folder, I've listed my settings pertinent to the issue. Change "true" to "false" would be the operative.

    <setting id="videoplayer.adjustrefreshrate" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usedisplayasclock" default="true">false</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.errorinaspect" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.stretch43" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.rendermethod">4</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.hqscalers" default="true">20</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usemediacodecsurface" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usemediacodec" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usedxva2" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usevtb" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="winsystem.ishdrdisplay" default="true">true</setting>

[nevaeh]

Your debug log was done well, alas doesn't show the issue. Noting: Intel® HD Graphics 530 adapter A suitable upgrade choice for the Intel HD Graphics 530 Desktop is the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, which is 907% more powerful according to blurbs I've read. It's the shared gfx memory that is the likely culprit, but atm keeping a portable installation for testing is the best scenario. If you want to try tweaking the settings manually in the guisettings.xml of your userdata folder, I've listed my settings pertinent to the issue. Change "true" to "false" would be the operative.

    <setting id="videoplayer.adjustrefreshrate" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usedisplayasclock" default="true">false</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.errorinaspect" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.stretch43" default="true">0</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.rendermethod">4</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.hqscalers" default="true">20</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usemediacodecsurface" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usemediacodec" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usedxva2" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="videoplayer.usevtb" default="true">true</setting>
    <setting id="winsystem.ishdrdisplay" default="true">true</setting>

So I spent probably a good half hour trying to type something as a reply but I have to admit, I really suck at properly conveying what I'm thinking over a message board.

Any chance we can connect via Discord or Microsoft Teams, or whatever your preferred chat/meeting app is so I can bounce some system information, troubleshooting steps performed, etc.?

It's also important to note that this issue seems to be intermittent for some reason, I can try opening the application 50 times and it'll crash every time so I give up and try again in another hour and it opens fine every time.

Thank you,
Brandon

[Klojum]

Any chance we can connect via Discord or Microsoft Teams, or whatever your preferred chat/meeting app is so I can bounce some system information, troubleshooting steps performed, etc.?

Well, there is/was IRC, but it seems that the entire Freenode-empire is crumbling down the last couple of days.

[PatK]

intermittent for some reason

And that's going to be very hard to diagnose. I suggest keeping the debug log, and using multiples to compare differences between crash/stable. I suspect that gfx memory allocation is at the root of this incongruity. As @Klojum mentioned, it seems the internet is being moderated and tied along with free speech, but feel free to bounce anything you like in this thread.

[brazen1]

Try eliminating portable install on D: in case something is corrupting on that drive or your system just doesn't like it for some reason.

Instead, rename your working installed Kodi userdata folder to originalKodi so it can't be overwritten.  Now you have a blank slate and your working Kodi userdata folder is essentially backed-up.  When you start Kodi, it will create a new Kodi userdata folder just like a first time start free of any user adjustments like incompatible add-ons for v19.1. 

When it starts and has no errors, we will confirm Kodi core is working as well as your system accepting it and can continue diagnosing once this is determined.

So, there's no confusion for the OP, this is the location of your Kodi userdata folder C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Kodi
Kodi should be installed to C:\Program Files\Kodi.  There is no problem overwriting to this location with any version of Kodi.

[nevaeh]

intermittent for some reason

And that's going to be very hard to diagnose. I suggest keeping the debug log, and using multiples to compare differences between crash/stable. I suspect that gfx memory allocation is at the root of this incongruity. As @Klojum mentioned, it seems the internet is being moderated and tied along with free speech, but feel free to bounce anything you like in this thread.

Completely agree regarding moderation/censorship, but also agree we can't get into that on a public message board.

Could you help me understand how you arrived at shared graphics memory allocation? That would imply that the Kodi team between 19.0 and 19.1 changed how it allocates shared video memory and that this could affect anyone with an onboard Intel or AMD GPU (which I would assume is most of your user base), I'm just not following the logic trail that now after years of using Kodi, this specific version has issues with shared graphics memory allocation on an Intel Skylake system.

The laptop I'm working with does have a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1060 as well, so maybe if I can reproduce the issue I'll switch over to it and see if there's a difference but it would still be concerning that it would only affect Intel integrated GPUs.

It's unfortunate that I can't give you much more to go off of, I made the mistake of updating my Intel graphics drivers in addition to upgrading Kodi to 19.1 so we really have two variables at play here...I may try to see if I can get it to crash again (because of course it's currently working) and maybe roll back my Intel drivers to an older version and see if the problem goes away with an older driver. I think we can rule Windows Updates because those don't run unless I tell them to (perks of Windows 10 Pro and Group Policy) and the last updates that were installed was on 4/21/2021.

I'm starting to wonder if this is an Intel graphics driver issue, do we know if the display driver directly determines how shared memory is distributed or is that Window's responsibility? If it turns out to be driver related (which wouldn't surprise me given the history of Intel graphics drivers), would there really be no recourse outside of hoping Intel fixes their buggy driver or does the Kodi dev team have a direct/indirect line of communication with the Intel graphics team?

Apologies for the wall of text!

Thank you,
Brandon

[nevaeh]

Try eliminating portable install on D: in case something is corrupting on that drive or your system just doesn't like it for some reason.

Instead, rename your working installed Kodi userdata folder to originalKodi so it can't be overwritten.  Now you have a blank slate and your working Kodi userdata folder is essentially backed-up.  When you start Kodi, it will create a new Kodi userdata folder just like a first time start free of any user adjustments like incompatible add-ons for v19.1. 

When it starts and has no errors, we will confirm Kodi core is working as well as your system accepting it and can continue diagnosing once this is determined.

So, there's no confusion for the OP, this is the location of your Kodi userdata folder C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Kodi
Kodi should be installed to C:\Program Files\Kodi.  There is no problem overwriting to this location with any version of Kodi.

I appreciate the response.

Part of my troubleshooting was to move it from the D drive to the C drive in both my "Downloads" so the drive doesn't seem to be at play here. I did not however try a full installation instead of a portable, so I will try that if/when the problem manifests itself again.

I also wanted to clarify that when I say "fresh install", I really mean fresh install with no userdata, it's just whatever the Kodi installer installs, in addition to creating the shortcut with the -p argument to make it portable. This is usually my first troubleshooting step to rule out Kodi gui settings, bad databases, bad plugins, bad skins, etc. I always start with a blank slate to verify if problem lies with my configuration.

Thank you,
Brandon

[nevaeh]

Sorry for the triple post but I don't see an option to edit my own posts, am I just blind?

Since 19.1 is currently opening correctly, is there any value to giving you folks another debug log so that you compare them to maybe help determine why it's crashing or at least the spot in the initialization that it's crashing?

[DarrenHill]

Sorry for the triple post but I don't see an option to edit my own posts, am I just blind?

Nope, you're still a newbie level account due to your post count.

That level doesn't have edit privs available to it - it's a generic anti-spam measure.

[PatK]

In that last post there was a clue 'dual gfx engines'. I've seen this before and never got to the bottom of the cause, in most cases shutting out in bios or some other method of decommissioning the other gfx engine was the fix, and given the fact you have an idle 'dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1060 as well' I would be jumping all over to use that. Using system memory in the graphic field brings problems of speed and allocation limitations, majority of users have dedicated gfx cards with allocated gfx memory. If my memory serves, there is a way to specify one gfx engine or the other try using the Control Panel first to see if you can turn it on/off in your Device Manager.  It should be listed as a Display Adapter.

[nevaeh]

In that last post there was a clue 'dual gfx engines'. I've seen this before and never got to the bottom of the cause, in most cases shutting out in bios or some other method of decommissioning the other gfx engine was the fix, and given the fact you have an idle 'dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1060 as well' I would be jumping all over to use that. Using system memory in the graphic field brings problems of speed and allocation limitations, majority of users have dedicated gfx cards with allocated gfx memory. If my memory serves, there is a way to specify one gfx engine or the other try using the Control Panel first to see if you can turn it on/off in your Device Manager.  It should be listed as a Display Adapter.

Over the weekend I ended up moving over to my gaming desktop, which has a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1070 and a disabled Intel GPU in BIOS so that Windows is not even aware of it. I also did a fresh load of Windows 10 Pro, installed Kodi in portable mode and it opened without issue, however this morning I'm now getting constant crashes on startup again, so it's not related to dual graphics or Intel drivers.

At this time I'm just going to consider Kodi 19.1 unstable, hopefully the Kodi development team can reproduce it at some point on their workstations and a fix comes down via 19.2, otherwise I'll continue sticking with my 18.9 until the bugs in 19 are worked out. Sucks too, because I was really happy to see SMB 3 network discovery.

[PatK]

consider Kodi 19.1 unstable

Looks like others have seen a 19.1 issue fixed by reversion to 19.0 in some cases.

[jjd-uk]

Could be the issue discussed from Post#10 at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid3039181

[nevaeh]

Could be the issue discussed from Post#10 at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid3039181

Yeah, I ended up reading the Github crash thread here: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/19778 and downloaded the test build: KodiSetup-20210525-fd5acfb5-Matrix-x64 and the crashes went away so this can be marked solved.