Visible to Intel only — GUID: GUID-13242FE7-D620-4416-875F-942A1304A913
Visible to Intel only — GUID: GUID-13242FE7-D620-4416-875F-942A1304A913
Best Practices: Resolve Intel® VTune™ Profiler BSODs, Crashes, and Hangs in Windows* OS
Scenario
When you use Intel® VTune™ Profiler to profile target applications on Windows systems, if you experience problems with an unresponsive UI or tool crashes, the following suggestions can help you get better clarity on the root causes. Verify if one of these scenarios apply to your environment. If you need further assistance, contact us to get help.
BSOD from Incompatible Intel® VTune™ Profiler Driver or Windows Update
Intel® VTune™ Profiler runs well on a Windows system. After an update to the OS, Intel® VTune™ Profiler crashes for certain analysis types, while others are unavailable.
Sometimes, the latest version of Intel® VTune™ Profiler may be one update behind the latest version of Windows OS. The changes contained in the Windows update can then cause an incompatibility with VTune Profiler drivers, particularly with the stack sampling driver for hardware-event based sampling (HEBS) collections. Ideally, you should upgrade to the latest version of Intel® VTune™ Profiler after every time you update Windows OS. This ensures that all relevant drivers are installed.
When you install Intel® VTune™ Profiler on an unsupported version of Windows, the installer does not install incompatible drivers. This disables HEBS and stack collection. However, you may still be able to run hotspots or threading analyses that use user-mode sampling. If you proceed to upgrade Windows to a newer, unsupported version, the user-mode sampling collections attempt to use unavailable drivers and cause Intel® VTune™ Profiler to crash.
BSOD from Driver Conflict
A BSOD occurs due to a driver conflict that affects Intel® VTune™ Profiler drivers.
Sometimes, there can be a conflict between Intel® VTune™ Profiler drivers and graphics or third-party drivers. This can likely happen if the Intel® VTune™ Profiler drivers are out of date.
VTune Profiler UI turns Unresponsive or 'Hangs'
During symbol resolution stage, Intel® VTune™ Profiler stalls or hangs without any response.
Several reasons can cause Intel® VTune™ Profiler to hang during the collection and finalization phase.
When symbol resolution happens in the finalization process, Intel® VTune™ Profiler may have to retrieve and process large .pdb files. If used within Microsoft Visual Studio, Intel® VTune™ Profiler uses the Visual Studio settings to find symbol files and any additional paths provided in Intel® VTune™ Profiler settings. However, if Intel® VTune™ Profiler uses a symbol server, the resolution waits on updates and therefore slows down. Depending on the size of the .pdb files, this may cause Intel® VTune™ Profiler to stall or hang.
Certain processes like virus scanners or synchronization/back-up utilities can interfere with data collection and finalization in Intel® VTune™ Profiler. Virus scanners can cause problems in the process that Intel® VTune™ Profiler uses for software-based analysis types, such as threading. Some synchronization utilities can cause finalization to fail if the backup happens as Intel® VTune™ Profiler is processing it.
Intel® VTune™ Profiler Crashes during a Collection
Intel® VTune™ Profiler crashes in the middle of a collection operation.
A crash can happen if Intel® VTune™ Profiler attempts to instrument or attach to a privileged process or service.
Other Techniques to Enable Data Collection
Intel® VTune™ Profiler does not perform data collection in some specific situations.
Certain specific actions can cause data collection to fail. See if one of these suggestions helps to resolve your issue.
Problem | Suggestion |
---|---|
User-mode sampling for Threading analysis is too slow or creates too much overhead. |
Run Threading analysis with Hardware-Event Based Sampling (HEBS) and context switches enabled. This provides the context switch data necessary to understand thread behavior. |
Hotspots analysis is unavailable with HEBS and stack collection enabled. |
Disable stack collection. To correlate hotspots with stacks, run a separate hotspots analysis with user-mode sampling enabled. |
Intel® VTune™ Profiler hangs or crashes when attaching to a running process. |
Run Intel® VTune™ Profiler with the application in paused state. Resume data collection when the application gets to an area of interest. |
Data collection crashes when using the Instrumentation and Tracing Technology (ITT) API. |
Create a custom analysis. Disable the checkbox to analyze user tasks, events, and counters. Identify if the API is causing the crash. |
Get Help
The suggestions described in this topic can help resolve several crashes or stalls. If you are still facing issues, contact us so we may better assist you.
Contact Customer Support.
Discuss in the Analyzers developer forum.
See if the issue has been addressed in the Intel® VTune™ Profiler release notes.