SUMMARY
This article will outline the steps you can take to begin troubleshooting if Nuke is crashing on startup, and what information is useful to provide when opening a Support ticket.
MORE INFORMATION
When opening a Support ticket, the more information that you are able to provide, the easier it will be for us to start isolating the cause of the crash.
Running some of the below tests may resolve the issue for you, and it may not be necessary to open a Support ticket. However, if you do need to contact us, please provide us with as much information from the following tests as possible.
TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS
1. Does the issue occur in safe mode?
Launching Nuke in safe may allow you to determine whether the crash could be caused by any third-party plugins or customisations that may be installed on your system.
Q100038: Launching Nuke/NukeX/NukeStudio/Hiero in safe mode
Running Nuke in safe mode will prevent the following from loading at startup:
- Any scripts or plug-ins in
~/.nuke, - Any scripts or plug-ins in
$NUKE_PATHor%NUKE_PATH%, - And any OFX plug-in (including FurnaceCore)
If the issue no longer occurs after launching Nuke in safe mode, it is likely that the crash is being caused by a plugin or script installed to your ~/.nuke directory. If this is the case, you can refer to the following article for further troubleshooting steps:
Q100475: How to troubleshoot issues with the .nuke directory
2. Does the issue still occur after disabling GPU acceleration?
To determine whether an issue may be GPU related, you can try disabling GPU acceleration:
Q100071: How to disable GPU Acceleration to help diagnose issues in Nuke
Depending on what preferences have been set, Nuke may be using your GPU for certain calculations. You can also disable GPU acceleration in any part of Nuke where the option is available, such as the Viewer or certain nodes (ie. Kronos, ZDefocus, etc.).
3. Does the issue persist after updating your GPU driver version?
Regardless of the result of disabling GPU acceleration, we still recommend that you try to keep your GPU drivers up-to-date where possible, as mentioned on Nuke’s tech specs page.
4. Does the issue still occur after disabling the Frame Server?
There have been issues reported that have been resolved by disabling Nuke’s Frame Server. You can find out how to do this here:
Q100378: How to disable the Frame Server for Nuke, Nuke Studio and Hiero
If disabling Frame Server resolves the issue for you, the next step would be to temporarily disable all firewalls and security software on your machine and relaunch Nuke (with Frame Server enabled). Sometimes firewalls and other security software may block certain processes that Nuke is running, which can result in a crash.
If disabling all firewalls and security software on your machine helps too, you may need to then adjust your permissions and settings.
5. Does clearing your cache help?
Clearing your cache may help with performance issues and unexpected behaviours. It is also good practice in order to prevent unnecessary memory usage.
The following article explains where you can find the default cache locations:
Q100043: How to clear your Nuke/NukeX/NukeStudio cache
6. Does your machine have an 10th (Ice Lake), 11th (Rocket Lake) or 12th (Alder Lake) Generation Intel CPU?
Some Windows users have found that Nuke will sometimes fail to launch on a machine using an Intel 10th Gen (Ice Lake), 11th Gen (Rocket Lake) or 12th Gen (Alder Lake) CPU. If your machine also has an Intel 10th Gen, or newer, CPU then setting the following environment variable on your machine may correct the issue:
OPENSSL_ia32cap=~0x200000200000000
For more information about this issue, and the workaround, please refer to the following article:
However, with the update to Nuke's version of OpenSSL to 1.0.2u, this issue should no longer occur in Nuke 13.0v8, 13.1v4 and 13.2v1, and later.
INFORMATION TO PROVIDE WHEN RAISING A SUPPORT TICKET
1. The troubleshooting steps you have taken so far.
Letting us know the troubleshooting steps you have carried out so far (including the ones listed above) will allow us to avoid asking any unnecessary questions, and move the investigation along much quicker.
2. Submit a crash report
If you see an Issue Reporter dialog when the issue occurs, we would recommend either submitting the crash report, or saving the report and attaching it to your Support ticket.
It is important to note that crash reports will not tell us exactly why Nuke is crashing, but they can indicate the general area where the crash has occurred in. Providing us with as much context as possible for a crash report will allow us to provide further troubleshooting advice.
We also require the Crash Reference ID for any crash reports that you have sent, in order to find them in our database as, for your privacy, our crash reports do not include any identifiable information. You can simply copy/paste the number from the Issue Reporter dialog and more information on this here:
Q100046: Sending crash reports for Nuke/NukeX/NukeStudio/Hiero
However, if an Issue Reporter dialog is not displayed after the crash, you can follow the instructions in the following article to generate a crash dump file. You can then attach this file to your Support ticket:
Q100274: How to automatically generate a crash report when running Nuke
3. Verbose mode output
Launching Nuke in verbose mode will expose additional messages in the terminal/Command Prompt. Usually this relates to plugins that are being loaded but this may help determine what Nuke was doing when the crash occurred:
Q100112: Launching Nuke in verbose mode and isolating potential customisations causing issues
You can copy the output from the terminal/Command Prompt, paste it into a separate text file and attach it to your support ticket.
4. Machine Specs
If we believe the issue may be hardware related, we can use this information to try and replicate your setup on our end. We usually require the following machine specs:
- Operating System
- CPU
- RAM
- GPU and GPU driver version
Alternatively, you can generate a system report, to easily gather the necessary information. Instructions on how to do this, for each operating system, can be found in the following article:
It’s also recommended to confirm that your machine specs meet Nuke's minimum system requirements which are outlined on Nuke’s tech specs page.
FURTHER READING
For licencing issues, you may be able to find the relevant article here: License Help
If you have tried the steps above, and you are still unable to determine the cause of the problem, then please open a Support ticket and let us know the exact issue you are encountering and the troubleshooting steps you have taken so far. For more information on how to open a Support ticket, please refer to the following article:
Q100064: How to raise a support ticket
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