Computer Crashes Often and I am Unable to Render my Video Project in Adobe Media Encoder

[Loriene]

There are multiple problems that have occured on my computer since around, or maybe later than, March 8th of this year.

Basically, if I use intensive programs, my computer crashes. Before these problems occured, my PC was completely fine and could render projects at at most 3 hours. It never crashed.

One of my main problems is that I cannot render my video project through Adobe Media Encoder, even though I was able to render video projects just fine before. The video project, which lasts for about 12 seconds and uses the plugins twitch, magic bullet looks, and s_shake along with 3D camera, stops rendering a minute into rendering it through Adobe Media Encoder, showing an unknown error in the log. Even if I cut the project in half and render from the middle, it still crashes a minute into rendering and this time, and shows “Windows has encountered a critical problem and will restart automatically in one minute. Please save your work now.”

This message occured more often before I tried removing all threats through Malwarebytes, because I suspected it might be a virus. It still occurs sometimes, especially if I’m using more than one program at a time.

• When I am using more than one program at a time, for example, Chrome and Adobe After Effects, both crash after leaving them on for a while.
  
  
• Even if I’m not using intensive programs and I’m just using two browsers, both will crash after some time.
  
  
• Even if I’m using only one program, if I leave the PC on for a while and it goes into sleep mode, often it I’ll have to log back in and I can type my password, but I won’t be able to press enter. After waiting a while, the PC crashes and restarts itself.
  
  
• A more recent problem that’s popped up is that even if I just use Chrome and leave just 4-5 tabs open, Chrome will crash a few minutes later. When I try to open up Chrome again, it crashes immediately and then my whole computer crashes.
  

Not to mention, the MP4 files that I had renamed to MOV worked in Adobe After Effects prior to this problem. Now, they won’t work in Adobe After Effects and show as missing video files. I usually like using MOV files because they don’t glitch in After Effects like MP4 files do.

So far, I’ve downloaded Malwarebytes, Panda Dome, Microsoft Security Essentials and Avast to scan and get rid of problems with viruses on my computer. I also updated my drivers with Avast. The problems still persist.

I suspect that it could be because my CPU overheated, because my PC always makes loud noises while it’s rendering, and I render video projects often. However, my video projects are always under 15 seconds.

I’ve also checked to see how high the temperature of my CPU goes up when I render in Adobe Media Encoder, and it will only go up 66 degrees at most. It stays between 50 - 66 degrees.

Specs:


Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 (32 bit)


Processor - AMD Phenom™ 9500 Quad-Core Processor, 2200 Mhz


Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT


System Model - GX612AAR-ABA m8330f


RAM - 3.00 GB (Memory Type: DDR2 [PC2-5300])


Any help is appreciated! I will provide more computer specs if asked ^^

 

[Cycloid Torus]

You have a wonderful older machine which has served you well. If it were mine, I would think it is time to have a thorough maintenance overhaul and clean install, but before any of that, it is critically important that you make a full backup of your system, a complete record of all your license codes and key codes (especially your OS) and to make a secondary backup of all your data files (and a backup to that is also a good idea). I use Belarc Advisor (available as a download at Techspot) to make an inventory of each of my systems.

Let me know how you feel about taking this on.

An alternative might be to invest in a newer system (what is your region?).

Otherwise, I would recommend that you try BlueScreenView (available as a download at Techspot) and Reliability History ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-reliability-monitor/ ) in an effort to find any bad modules.

Your machine is, I believe, and HP Pavilion... have you tried the HP diagnostics available at their support site?

 

[holdum323]

Hi Great advice by @Cycloid Torus. Here's a couple of great articles about crashes.
https://www.howtogeek.com/163452/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-blue-screen-of-death/
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-fix-a-blue-screen-of-death-2624518
Let us know how things go. A clean install; as was suggested, can solve a lot of problems. Make sure you have the latest updates. You can find them here. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...sp1-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-update-history

 

[holdum323]

Hi here's another great article by HTG about the event viewer that might help you with a BSOD or a PC crash.
Let us know how things go! Hope I have helped a little.
https://www.howtogeek.com/123646/ht...ndows-event-viewer-is-and-how-you-can-use-it/
Here's quote from the above link by HTG.
RELATED: Everything You Need To Know About the Blue Screen of Death

At this point, you’re probably wondering why you should care about Event Viewer, but it actually can be helpful if you’re troubleshooting a specific problem. For example, if your computer is blue-screening or randomly restarting, Event Viewer may provide more information about the cause. For example, an error event in the System log section may inform you which hardware driver crashed, which can help you pin down a buggy driver or a faulty hardware component. Just look for the error message associated with the time your computer froze or restarted—an error message about a computer freeze will be marked as Critical.

 

[Rich M]

"At this point, you’re probably wondering why you should care about Event Viewer, but it actually can be helpful if you’re troubleshooting a specific problem"
Exactly it is a tool for finding answers to problems and that is when I would consult it if I actually had a problem.

 

[Loriene]

You have a wonderful older machine which has served you well. If it were mine, I would think it is time to have a thorough maintenance overhaul and clean install, but before any of that, it is critically important that you make a full backup of your system, a complete record of all your license codes and key codes (especially your OS) and to make a secondary backup of all your data files (and a backup to that is also a good idea). I use Belarc Advisor (available as a download at Techspot) to make an inventory of each of my systems.

Let me know how you feel about taking this on.

An alternative might be to invest in a newer system (what is your region?).

Otherwise, I would recommend that you try BlueScreenView (available as a download at Techspot) and Reliability History ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-reliability-monitor/ ) in an effort to find any bad modules.

Your machine is, I believe, and HP Pavilion... have you tried the HP diagnostics available at their support site?

Sorry for the late reply! I'm planning to do a clean install of my computer, but I'm confused on how to go about doing a clean install on my computer that was originally a Windows Vista Home Premium but upgraded to WIndows 7 later on.

I also read you would need the installation CD/DVD to install Windows again, is it possible to do a clean install without it?

In addition, I backed up only 7 gigabytes of just documents, since the only thing I have currently is a flash drive with only 7.5 gigabytes of storage. I figured I would just re-download all my softwares after a clean install. I also backed up all my drivers. Is that sufficient enough for a clean install?

Sorry for all the questions, clean install just confuses me in general ^^;

 

[Loriene]

You have a wonderful older machine which has served you well. If it were mine, I would think it is time to have a thorough maintenance overhaul and clean install, but before any of that, it is critically important that you make a full backup of your system, a complete record of all your license codes and key codes (especially your OS) and to make a secondary backup of all your data files (and a backup to that is also a good idea). I use Belarc Advisor (available as a download at Techspot) to make an inventory of each of my systems.

Let me know how you feel about taking this on.

An alternative might be to invest in a newer system (what is your region?).

Otherwise, I would recommend that you try BlueScreenView (available as a download at Techspot) and Reliability History ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-reliability-monitor/ ) in an effort to find any bad modules.

Your machine is, I believe, and HP Pavilion... have you tried the HP diagnostics available at their support site?

Sorry for the late reply! I'm planning to do a clean install of my computer, but I'm confused on how to go about doing a clean install on my computer that was originally a Windows Vista Home Premium but upgraded to WIndows 7 later on.

I also read you would need the installation CD/DVD to install Windows again, is it possible to do a clean install without it?

In addition, I backed up only 7 gigabytes of just documents, since the only thing I have currently is a flash drive with only 7.5 gigabytes of storage. I figured I would just re-download all my softwares after a clean install. I also backed up all my drivers. Is that sufficient enough for a clean install?

Sorry for all the questions, clean install just confuses me in general ^^;

 

[Rich M]

Impossible to help you without knowing more. Sounds like hardware problem to which you are trying to apply software solutions. If the pc is a Vista pc have you replaced the hard drive and/or power supply? If this is original hardware its a waste of time to reinstall Windows as it probably won't complete install on what might be a 10 year old hard drive anyway. If it is an HP you can buy restore disks for around $20 from HP to do a clean install or you might have a restore partition on hard drive but again no sense in trying pc is too old if original hardware. Most likely time to move on which is the cheaper and better solution buit I can't even say that because we just don't know enough to do so.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

@Rich M ...um, I am running an 8 year old Dell Precision T3500. The high end older machines are still usable and useful. On other (old, but still running) machines, I also have 10 year old PATA drives which continue to work without issue. Really good quality stuff can run for decades - just ask my '92 Volvo.

 

[Rich M]

Thanks fo the info and of course there are exceptions to anything but an 8 year old hard drive is just something I would not use or recommend for anything meaningful. An 8 year old Delta power supply, which was junk on day one surely has degraded into useless by now. BTW are you sure this pc is only 8 years old because Vista was way past its prime then and Ddr2 memory I can't remember being sold on new pcs in 2010 either? That said I have never seen an 8 year old pc with original hardware run in anyway acceptable at any price but then maybe what you and I consider acceptable is very different.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Goal of clean install is to give you a unified OS which is cleared of old drivers and files originally installed from earlier versions of your OS. In addition, it is a good time to thoroughly clean the machine and to renew Thermal Interface Material (aka TIM - paste on CPU and GPU which helps reduce running temperature of these components).

Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit: it is time to consider 64 bit - this allows additional RAM which should reduce rendering time to a good degree. Also consider benefit of moving to Windows 10 (64 bit) as security updates for Win7 in January 2020. You may download fresh copies of either Win7 or Win10 from Microsoft directly - but make a copy of your Windows 7 license key which will be required. You may be able to locate and purchase a Win10 license for less than full retail ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/need-legal-cheap-windows-8-license-options/ )

This gets complicated (as everything else) so it is important to define the steps you want to take before you start. I will agree with Rich M to the extent that a new HD might be a good idea. This also means that you can keep the old HDD as a second backup. As to full backup, I use (1) iDrive a cloud backup service (I believe they have a free version) (2) a couple of 32GB flash drives which I rotate (3) several archival CDs (4) Zoolz a second cloud backup service (which may also have a free version) and, finally, (5) my last 3 HDDs. I like WD Black 500GB drives which cost about $45 these days. SATA3 is nice if you have it, but SATA2 works just fine. Buy SATA cable as well - only a couple of bucks. Buy TIM paste as well. Buy several flash drives for OS installation media and backup.

Check HP for the service manual and download it. Download and create installation media for the OS. Confirm you have license keys. Organize materials: fresh installation copy of OS, license key, etc. Review 'cleaning a PC' and 'replace PC TIM' on YouTube.

Look this over, make your plan, share that for comment and suggestions as you wish. While your AMD Phenom™ 9500 Quad-Core Processor, 2200 Mhz and GT 8500 is "slow & old", it can still be useful.

 

[DelJo63]

Adobe has been a PITA for a long while now. There are other STABLE tools to do your work and I would investigate some before starting down the arduous trail of major system upgrade. Remember the business you're in and it's not techsupport or system maintenance for Microsoft.