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par2.exe crashing my computer

Posted: May 15th, 2015, 8:57 pm
by alexstoj
Hi guys, first post here so please let me know if this issue has been answered previously. I couldn't find anything on it.

Recently I noticed that I was having problems with SABnzbd, that it would randomly just shut down and require manual startup again.

Last week, I noticed that my computer was randomly rebooting with the blue screen of death. After some troubleshooting, I found that my CPU temp was quite high, and at times the usage was through the roof.

I uninstalled SABnzbd and the CPU temperature immediately dropped by 20 degrees. I reinstalled an older version (0.7.17) and for a while it seemed to be working. However yesterday the computer kept rebooting. After some more troubleshooting, I found the issue to be the par2.exe file. Every time sabnzb was unpacking and repairing a file, cpu usage ran to 100% (in particular the par2.exe file). I have since disabled the ‘Multicore Par2’ option in Config//Switches//Post Processing and changed the special settings values for ‘allow_64bit_tools’ and ‘par2_multicore’ to 0 in the sabnzbd.ini file.

I have since noticed that when a file is unpacked and repaired it uses the par2-classic.exe file instead, and task manager shows this working at about 15% cpu usage when it runs. This seems to have fixed my problem for now, but I don’t understand why this is causing issues. Is there a known issue with the par2.exe file?

Could an admin please look into this and see if this is a software error or something specific to my situation? I am aware that this is listed as a known issue in the sab wiki http://wiki.sabnzbd.org/known-issues but I just want to know if anyone can explain why it has randomly just start causing issues. I have never had this problem before on the 1+ years of using sabnzbd.

My hardware specs should easily be able to handle the par2.exe. Hardware specs are:
Intel i7 3770 quad-core processor, 16GB RAM, Sabertooth Z77 motherboard

Thanks in advance

Re: par2.exe crashing my computer

Posted: May 16th, 2015, 2:53 am
by sander
If a user application can halt or crash an operating system, that is a problem with the operating system or the underlying hardware.

To do a first check, I would run Memtest86+ from a USB stick and keep it running for a few hours. See http://www.memtest86.com/