Blue screen of death (BSOD)
The Windows "stop error", more commonly known as the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), is caused by serious problems with the software or hardware of your computer.
Computers running Smaart are just as susceptible to hardware problems as any other computer, but BSODs encountered while running Smaart are almost always caused by faulty or corrupt audio device drivers. Smaart never interacts with the system at the kernel level, so it is extremely unlikely that the program is the cause of a BSOD.
While Smaart is launching, it checks the operating system for available audio devices. All available devices are individually polled to determine their configuration (input/output channels, sampling rate, etc). If the device's driver crashes during startup, or even during measurements, it can cause a BSOD.
Here are some suggestions for tracking down the source of a BSOD:
1A. Look for the source of the problem in the text of the BSOD. The screen text will sometimes list the file that was being used when the crash occurred (usually a .sys or .dll file).
1B. If you can't find the source of the problem in the BSOD screen text, determine which audio device driver or audio-related software was most recently installed.
2. Try reinstalling the latest version of the software from the manufacturers website. Note: some DAWs bundle various audio device drivers with their main installer. These drivers will be automatically installed when you install the main software suite. Most of the time these drivers are unneeded and can be safely uninstalled without harming the functionality of the DAW.
3. If you still cannot find the source of the problem, try uninstalling any old unused audio device drivers that are installed on your computer (you know you have some), then try starting Smaart.