Ping error when using only my machine

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am new to the technical side of rendering so I'll try my best to explain my problem. Back-burner seems to choose randomly whether it wants to render or not. It will get anywhere from midway to 90%+ way through the Rendering process (after gather final gathering points) a render then throw a Ping error message at me and restart rendering. I have tried rendering the file in stripes just in case it was a memory issue. This image is not huge as it’s only 2481 x 1749 pixels. The last stripe crashed throwing the Ping error again. I have taken a screen cap of the error log. I know there is already a post about the Discover_Servers, but would love an update on that too. The only effect on this image is volumetric lights and the boxes failed when it was rendering the carpet where there were no effects interacting with it. The render then tried to render the stripe again and it worked this time.

I look forward to your thoughts and help.

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

This is actually a Windows error that is just showing the error code in Backburner.  Something is preventing your machine from accessing the manager machine or routing to the manager machine.  If you have an IT department, it may be worth getting them involved on this one.  Are you using Windows 10?

Since everyone has vastly different network configurations, this is tough to solve from my end.  There are no notes about this internally, but a Google Search shows some results for this in Windows.  Might be worth a look.  When did this start happening?  (After Creator's Update?)  

Best Regards, 

[Anonymous]

Hello Alfred,

Thank you for the warm welcome.

I'm doing this on only my computer. Just so I know what to say to IT. I tell them Backburner is having an issue pinging back my own machine? Yes I'm using Windows 10. I saw that Backburner assigned a new IP address now after the Creators Update. This was mentioned in a few previous posts. Could this be causing an issue?

It happened a little bit before the creator's update but now it's significantly worse. Though like I said it's hard to pinpoint the issue because it chooses files at random. Even simple scenes have crashed. I will get in touch with my IT department. Though I'm sure they might have some questions for you as well, so please don't close this chat. (I'm the only one who uses 3ds Max here.)

Please keep me updated if you find any answers on your end.

Thank you!

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

QA is looking into these backburner errors people are seeing but I don't have a timetable on that.  I wasn't aware that the manager and server were both on your local machine.  In that case it may be related to group security policies, or maybe DHCP?  (Hard to say here, just guessing.)  I am away on vacation until July 10th starting in about an hour, but we can setup a teamviewer session if you'd like sometime that week.  I can chat with IT and we can put our heads together to see what might be causing it.  

In the meanwhile, you might remove all mention of backburner from any 3rd party firewalls, Windows Firewall, and Windows Defender and see if perhaps they are getting blocked.  I don't have a lot of confidence that will work but it's my best suggestion currently.  The 'unreachable network' may point toward an issue with how Windows, the DHCP or WINS configs, or domain servers are communicating.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

Yes please, I wouldn't mind a Teamviewer session because this is putting a serious dent into my productivity. I will attempt to remove it from 3rd party programs. (Again I'm not tech-y so I'll do my best.) Though I just found a fun radial button saying render on this machine only / server only versus the previously checked button saying render on all available machines. I rendered the same scene over the weekend and it didn't produce an error. (Then again like I mentioned this problem decides to show it's ugly head randomly and when I'm in a rush). I wouldn't be surprised if this button fixed the issue. I'll throw more tests at the machine whilst you're away. 

Thanks for your help!

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I have seen a couple reports of this and there seems to be some issues with Backburner with the Creator's Update.  Right now QA and Development are looking into it but so far there are no answers.  You'd mentioned that it worked over the weekend... I wonder if this is a problem with too many concurrent connections on the network.  Since few people are likely at work over the weekends, it might be why it was rendering fine there.  

Are you finding the problem is back now that the office/studio has more people there?  (I.E.- during the week?)  Or, have your tests with that radio button been successful?   Thanks!

I can setup a TeamViewer session but I cannot promise that the issue will be resolved as a result.  I would be happy to try however.  There is a good chance this needs to be fixed by development or MS with a CU patch.  Until QA and development finish investigating it's hard to say.  Just let me know!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

Hope your holiday was nice. To be honest I had no issues last week. Then my machine must have known you were back (or that I needed these renders desperately) because it crashed on my 3 renders last night with another ping error. I'm wondering if I might be over taxing the system? I was rendering at A4 size but there were no volumetric lights or any effects. I'm currently re-setting them up as stripes with hopes that maybe that will work and with that radial button on. The one that crashed was un-striped with radial button on. Though I had issues before with the stripes before as I believe I mentioned in a previous post.

I've attached pictures below the last one just shows where I've canceled the job and re-set it (twice). Not sure if there's anything in there that would help, but I included it just in case.

Whilst you were away I re-rendered the scene that was almost consistently giving me issues and it rendered fine again as a whole image without the radial button on. This was on a Wednesday night.

Again I'm unsure why more people on the network would interfere with a render on my computer with no other computers connected.

I think a TeamViewer session would help even if it's just to help me figure out if it's me or the computer. I am currently based in the UK how should we proceed with this?

Thanks again for your help!

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Thank you, it was nice, I helped my cousin move and proved to myself how old I am getting.  All in all a humbling experience.  

Those screenshots are similar to another thread about a similar issue.  There does seem to be something about the CU that is causing people problems and it's not just Backburner.  

If it rendered fine last week and you're in the UK it probably wasn't an empty office.  So that theory about number of connections is out.  When you say no other computers are connected... are you running the manager and server both on your local machine?  (If you explained that and I missed it I apologize.)  

I can do a TeamViewer session during this week no problem.  I normally work 9-6 Pacific Standard Time.  I'm free all day Thursday and most of the day Tomorrow.  On Friday I am available 11-1 and from 3-6.  Do any of those times work for you?

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

Well I hope you got to relax a bit in there as well.

Yes, I'm following that thread as well. Though I don't know if these two issues are interlinked. As I mentioned earlier I had some hiccups before the CU updates. However, since I am new to the Backburner program it could have been me. Also I started really utilizing Backburner right around the same time as the Update. Also I have been able to render with that warning message last week.

Yes, everything is running locally. I use the software to render multiple different files over night. At this point if you have a suggestion for another free software to do that task I'm open for ideas. I have been rendering in stripes to help "speed up" the process. In other words if one stripe crashes it's quicker to re-render that strip versus everything from the beginning. Error images below. Also after the error occurs it retrys the stripe and it renders fine.

As you mentioned you're free all day Thursday let's aim for that. It will have to be as soon as you get in the office as I am currently 8 hours ahead of you so it will be 5PM here for your 9AM there. I will let me boss know I will be staying late. I actually will be going on holiday as soon as we finish Thursday until the following Thursday. Let me know if Thursday the 13th 9AM sharp (your time) will work for you or if you want to rearrange for next week.

Thanks again!

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Sounds like a plan.  Let's meet at 9:05 a.m. Thursday.  You can email your information to Alfred.DeFlaminis@autodesk.com.  This will make it easier for me to find it as my forum replies end up in a single folder group.  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and others reading this thread.  

Today I had a team viewer session with Cru.Design.  I was able to get a look at her Event Viewer logs and I noticed a couple errors which may affect networking.  The following windows issues were listed in the Event Viewer.  If you are lurking/reading and are having this issue, please check for the following errors.  You can email me your event viewer logs to Alfred.DeFlaminis@autodesk.com or send me a PM with a link from WeTransfer or something and thanks for doing that.  I have edited out personally identifying information in the information below to protect privacy, thank you for your understanding.  

1) Event 8003, bowser:  The master browser has received a server announcement from the computer X that believes that it is the master browsser for the domain on transport NetBT_TCPIP.  The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced. 

2) Event 4321, NetBT:  The name "X": 1d" could not be registered on the interface with IP address XXX.XXX.XX.131.  The computer with the IP address XXX.XXX.XX.13 did not allow the name to be claimed by this computer.

3) Event 4319, NetBT:  A duplicate name has been detected on the TCP network.  The IP addresss of the computer that sent the message is in the data.  Use NBSTAT -n in a command window to see which name is in the Conflict State.  (When I did that, it was a group and a computer which had the same name.)

4) Event 16392, Bits-Client:  The BITS service failed to start.  (Possibly unrelated, unsure.)

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I've been scouring the net for more information about this and I did come across an interesting post on the Vray forums.  I'll paste most of it below:

"We are using windows server with Group Policies to map network drives to the workstations. It turns out that when using group policies, by default every 90 minutes or so windows refreshes the group policy - in our case that means remapping the network drives. While on Win7 this hasn't been a major issue, under windows 10 it cases a temporary network outage, which in turn i think has been causes some crashes, and I am certain has also caused problems when rendering. I am guessing that while vray is loading proxies over the network we get the dropout and then it fails loading proxies but continues with the render.

The solution is to edit the group policy settings on the win server and tell windows not to run the policy every 90 minutes. Actually we turned it off so that it only runs on logon. There are other solutions online so if anyone is having a similar problem search for - Win 10 group policy mapped network drive issues or check out this spiceworks link : https://community.spiceworks.com/top...-drives?page=1.

Our Win 10 machines are now running more stable and are rendering as expected without any assets missing."

I've seen confirmation this fixes the Vray DR problems on the Vray forums, but I also wonder if this is the reason for your errors/problems listed in this thread.  I have a couple questions for your IT dept, if you could answer them as best you can I would greatly appreciate it.

1) Do you use a Group Policy in your studio/environment?

2) If so, does the info listed above resolve the issue for you?

3) Do you use UNC pathing or standard pathing for your assets?  (If you don't know, it's probably standard.)  

4) Which renderer do you use?  

Thanks so much!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

I finally got in touch with my IT team. They tend to move a bit slow as it turns out. I suggested your fixes and they decided to give me my own IP to see if it fixed the issue. I did a few renders over the weekend to test the system and I think I got the same error, but it looks different? I have attached a screen caption for you to view. Could you confirm it's the same error? If it is I'll try and get in touch with my IT team to see if we can try one of your suggested fixes. Bear in mind my reply may be slow due to time difference and the speed of my IT Dept so please keep this issue open. 

Also they haven't answered any of your above questions to me either. Sorry.

Thank you!

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

You are now getting the same errors as the people in this thread.  If the network is unreachable that is something about Windows or the group security policy that is causing the issue.  I've uncovered a lot of other problems on Google with people and 4.7 .Net, so right now it does appear to be a bug inside the .Net implementation.  I am still seeking answers but it may be a good idea to check both threads (this one and the one linked in this post) moving forward. Thanks for the update, I will continue to look for information.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

I've been watching that thread and hope to try and implement some of those ideas as possible fixes. I will be going back to my IT team today as I had the same Ping Error occur again while I was rendering yesterday afternoon. though this one seemed to offer some more lines of info with the Error.

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I had a user recently post the steps that helped him fix this problem on his end.  I have a link here, could you please try that for me?  Any confirmation it worked for someone else would be great. 

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

I will try and get in touch with my IT department about this and keep you posted. They've just done some sort of system overhaul and we've had various IT problems since they've done it so I might be low on the list. I'll keep you posted. My current work around is rendering in strips. I will set up a test render this weekend and see if I still have an issue. I know I received the error a couple times a couple weeks ago, but with the strips it happens less. I'll keep you in the loop.

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Understood @Anonymous, thank you for the info and update.  I hope it all goes well and I'll be here if you have any news.  🙂

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello Alfred,

I have finally gotten help from my IT department and yes the fix that is mentioned in the other post does indeed remover the "Discover Server" error for me. However, I am still getting "Ping" Errors. (They have been constant since the last time we spoke.) I have had IT set up my computer to be the least energy friendly computer in the building in that nothing turns off, goes to sleep, or refreshes. To add insult to injury Windows has updated again and I'm unsure if that's messed up anything else. Do you have any other ideas of what might fix this Ping error?  Again I am only using MY computer with Backburner. I have attached an image of the error to this post. Also I have upgraded Backburner to 2018, but am still using Max 2017. Not sure if that would be an issue. I couldn't find the 2017 install for Backburner when I went through the instructions and re-installed it. 

I look forward to your thoughts.

Kristi

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous

Apologies for the late reply, we're doing training all week here at Autodesk for support people and I'm booked pretty solid this week with meetings.  Yours is the first confirmation on a fix for discover servers which is great and thank you for the update.  I'm not a Windows pro so I need to research more about the ping task, I had hoped the above fix would take care of both of them.  I will look for some more answers and reply back asap.  Thank you for your patience.

One question, did your IT Department say which suggestion was the one that resolved the broadcast error?  Since I can't repro I'm somewhat dependent on asking customers which fix helped so I can update the tracker.  Thanks so much for that info.  

Best Regards,