I have a project using Unity 6. About half the time when I start the Editor to open this project, it BSOD’s in exactly the same spot (around 40%) loaded once it hits the “Running backend” phase. The error code is PFN_LIST_CORRUPT. This causes my machine to reboot, hang during Windows startup before the login page is displayed, then a hard power off/on allows Windows to load properly and gets me back to my desktop.
This is a brand-new Dell workstation provided by corporate IT. And to be clear, I’ve used this desktop 40+ hours a week since the beginning of November. It only crashes in this manner when starting Unity 6 and (so far) only on this project. It has never crashed loading a project in Unity 2022 or using any other app. The fact that it’s both intermittent and consistent is extremely puzzling.
Solutions already tried:
Full SMART report of SSD (no errors)
Update Unity 6 (0.26 → 0.32)
Wipe and rebuild project from clean git checkout (only Assets, Packages, and ProjectSettings folders are stored)
Delete cached Unity libraries and assets
Examined the Windows Event log. The best I can get is a report saying the machine restarted after an unexpected shutdown with no indicator of reason.
The box is running Windows 11 23H2 and has all current updates.
Update your drivers, make sure to use “stable” drivers only and for GPU prefer the Studio/Pro drivers for creative work, rather than the “game ready” drivers.
If the issue persists it is most likely a system issue, not related to Unity. Unity respectively your project just taxes the system in a way that it fails. You may want to run a full system test program from a boot disk, perhaps Dell even provides one. Alternatively, let Prime95 and Furmark run together for 1-2 hours at “max heat” settings to verify the system is otherwise stable, but if not, you should contact Dell for possible repair/replacement.
Prime + Furmark is always the first things I burn-in any new machine and so far it’s proven itself as a guarantor for a stable system.
If it’s an Intel i7/i9 system you may need a BIOS update to fix Intel’s CPU destroying bug due to excess heat caused by “performance optimized” (beyond specs) BIOS settings. My i9-14900K had stability issues until a BIOS update was made available end of last year, and this also prevents CPU degradation to the point where it may eventually fail altogether.
I had the studio drivers from mid-November already installed. However there was a mid-December update so I took your advice and did the update. I also ran Dell’s built-in system tests that run from BIOS and it detected no problems, but I did take the opportunity to update the BIOS and system drivers as well.
Afterwards I was able to start up my Unity project a dozen times in a row without a crash. So I’m cautiously optimistic this fixed the issue.
Thanks!
I was able to download Prime95 but for some reason corporate security has blocked Furmark downloads whether in executable or zip format. Not sure why. Are there good alternatives to that?
Great to hear! Could you share the Dell model number or CPU? I like to know if it was one of the affected Intel CPUs. I remember one previous instance (besides mine) where the BIOS update did fix similar instabilities.
Hmmm 3DMark comes to mind, and maybe Passmark. Not sure if they have “burn in” features which is what you would want, but even running consecutive high-end graphics tests would be okay. The thing is though that Furmark runs entirely on the GPU and thus you can cause it to heat throttle within seconds, while Prime does that at the same time to the CPU. With other tests like 3D Mark they also utilize the CPU and if the CPU is taxed, they may not tax the GPU as much.
So I would run 3D Mark without Prime in the background and loop that several times.
Corporate IT … if it costs 10 times as much it’s gotta be at least five times faster, right?
I used to work on a project where we had single-threaded Unity interact with single-threaded 30 Hz Kinect and for each Kinet, they got us a Xeon workstation with dual processors (!), each with a dozen physical cores. In fact, we got ten of these. No, make that twelve - two serving as backups. Times three, because we ran the software in three different rooms. And each room was handled by a monstrous Xeon server (dual 32 cores) with a Titan GPU for the central orchestration application … which was almost entirely single-threaded.
Well, at least I got to shave off a few ms in our image processing because it was easy to multithread and we could afford to compress the image data before sending it over the network to the central server.
But regardless, BSOD would indicate the system isn’t stable and sounds more like a ticket for the IT team.
I can report the same issues! It is 100% unity related. I have it on my windows pc and on my mac book M3 as well. All updated drivers. On a variety of unity 6 versions including the LTS version. The systems both run stable otherwise. Unity 6 has massive issues in my experience. There is a 100% reproducible case, when a windows machine goes to sleep and returns with unity 6 open, it’s gone BSOD. Probably the 3D swapchain errors are related but no one seems to fix those. It is a shame and must affect many users. Unity startup after restart is hit or miss, when i circle my mouse and see it stuttering after unity opened, i know that my machine is about to BSOD and i can usually still close unity and restart my machine to try again.
A Windows computer is not considered stable unless it has run Prime95 + Furmark in parallel for at least 2 hours with no crashes or glitches.
That pair of burn-in test apps is almost guaranteed to bring up any instabilities in otherwise seemingly stable systems.
Awaking from stand-by with Unity closing due to “swapchain error” is nothing that Unity can fix. I reported this and it came back with an explanation why there’s nothing that can be done about it. Curiously, after I upgraded my system I never had this issue and frequently put my computer to sleep several times a day with Unity projects open.
You didn’t mention whether the crash occurs on the M3 as well, but since BSOD is a Windows-thing I assume the Mac runs fine or has fewer issues?
If it has an Intel i9-13900k or 14900k these defective CPUs can cause crashes with Unity unless a BIOS update is installed or BIOS settings are tweaked to stay within power limits. And generally, if your BIOS has any sort of “performance” or “auto tuning” option, turn that off respectively use conservative (standard) settings only and check if the system runs Unity without crashes afterwards. Unlike most apps, Unity is pretty demanding on the hardware, so it’s not a surprise if it’s the only app that crashes.
Deleting the Library and Obj folders, especially after consistent crashes is mandatory because of possibly corrupt data.
Worth noting that a BSOD is almost guaranteed indication that the system is at fault, NOT the software! A BSOD indicates a Kernel-level crash where applications do not operate. BSOD only happen due to a) faulty or overloaded hardware or b) faulty drivers or other Kernel-level software/services.
Crash also occurs on my M3 18GB frequently only with unity open. But again it is not only that Unity crashes it is that the mouse stops working and the Macbook reboots automatically after 15 or so seconds. My reproduction case here is, I can open unity usually fine, I use my mac to build for iOS. I can trigger a build, xcode opens build is deployed fine everything is good. However, when I wait about 5 min after building. usually while testing my build on device (mac is running, screens are on, everything is good) and then I focus Unity again, 100% mac is gone. Only remedy here is to open the activity monitor before focusing unity and forcequitting unity, or closing it directly after the build has finished.
For windows, maybe BSOD is wrong communication, I basically get my screens going black, coming back on again for a few seconds, mouse starts to stutter, then going black again and the machine reboots. Also here only when Unity is running.
windows machine Rams are literally 2 months old and memTested. Bios is updated. Drivers are updated. Sometimes I get the swapchain popup before the crash often not or I don’t see it because the monitors are black.
Unity must collect crash data, It would be interesting to see how many users are affected by these issues and if they have any similarities.
@CodeSmile thanks for your help. Do I understand correctly, that you are running/developing actively with Unity 6x on a windows machine without issues? → in other words, is there hope other than waiting for unity updates?
Yes. I’ve had just the best experience with Unity 6 so far.
You do have to understand that every project is different. Unity is just the executing shell for all your project assets and settings, so any combintation of these together with combinations of hardware and OS could lead to persistent issues that needn’t necessarily be Unity’s fault.
In a case like yours when crashes happen on two different OS on two different machines, the likelihood of that problem being project-specific is 98% and another 1.9% for the crashes to be mere coincidence and you happen to have two unstable systems.
That’s most likely still a BSOD because Windows defaults to not showing that screen (for long) and will restart automatically. The Windows Event viewer can help you narrow down the cause of the restart, as it will log some information. Typically it’ll indicate some sort of driver issue, and in that case a driver update and reset might help. Mac has similar event logging I believe.
How do you synchronize the project between both systems?
Did you try to delete the /Library and /Obj folders? Especially after a crash or force quit, data corruption can occur and can trigger subsequent crashes.
Yes, if you send it. But since the crash reporter doesn’t pop up but rather the system reboots it’s unlikely to get sent to Unity.
I have not heard of anyone complaining about such crashes, in fact several cases reported back that the issue was due to the faulty Intel i9-1x900K CPUs.
