Warning messages don't show and freezes Unreal

I’ve noticed that my Unreal Engine seems to “freeze” a lot, especially when I’m using the Material Editor. Even if I wait, it doesn’t seem to return to normal. I’ve also noticed that most of the times the engine freezes, there is a warning message that is suppose to pop up…but doesn’t.

For example. I was just on the Material Editor, and I was playing around with it to see if it would freeze on me again after I just updated the driver for my Nvidia Video Card. I added a texture and a normal map. In the preview section of the Material Editor, where you can switch between viewing the texture on a sphere, cylinder, plane and etc… I clicked the last option which I believe is for viewing the texture on the mesh. Right when I clicked it, everything froze and no warning message popped up. On my windows taskbar on the bottom of the screen, it showed 3 windows for Unreal. One for the Unreal Game Engine, one for the Material Editor, and one for a warning message. The title was something along the lines of: Warning: No preview mesh found. I wasn’t able to open the window for the warning message and when I open the Task Manager, it says Unreal is not responding.

So my question is, is it possible that the warning messages are freezing the engine. Since the warning messages aren’t showing up on the screen, I can’t exit it or click ‘ok’. I can only see that there is a warning message through the task manager or by hovering my mouse over the Unreal icon on the Windows taskbar (and even then I can only see the title of the warning message and can’t open the window since everything is ). Is there a way to solve this?

Hi ,

  • Does this occur in a clean, blank project with no additional content or is it limited to one project?
  • What steps can I take to reproduce this error on my end?
  • Can you post your dxdiag here so I can take a look?
  • If you open your task manager, do you see a large memory spike when the freeze occurs?
  • Did this occur in any previous engine versions?

I don’t believe memory is an issue, I have 16 gb and when it freezes it doesn’t usually take up a big portion. Here is my dxdiag:

Windows 8.1 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600)
Processor: Intel Core i7-5700HQ CPU @ 2.7GHz (8CPUs)
Memory: 16384MB
Video Card: 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M (SLI)

I’ve only used version 4.11. I’ll test it on a blank project now.

Ok so I tested it on an blank project in 4.11.2. I went straight to the material editor and added a diffuse and normal texture and then I went to the preview section of the material editor where you can view the texture on a sphere, plane, cylinder or cube. I clicked the last option of a tea pot and it freezes automatically. Total memory use of the Unreal engine is around 900MB. With all my other programs running it is 23% of total memory. A warning titled “Warning: No Preview Mesh Found”, but like I said in the original post, that warning message doesn’t pop up. I only see it through the task manager or if i hover my mouse over the unreal icon on my windows task bar on the bottom of the screen. I can’t open it because unreal is .

Does this only occur when you use the mesh preview option or does it occur on the sphere/cylinder etc.? I have not been able to reproduce this on my end as of yet. If it is limited to the mesh, what static mesh are you using when this occurs?

It does not happen happen when I select the sphere/cylinder etc… I am not using a static mesh when it freezes. It seems to freeze when a dialogue box pops up. When I click Windows > Reset Layout in the Unreal Engine, a dialogue box titled Reset UI Layout is suppose to pop up but doesn’t. it tries to open but the engine freezes right when I click it. Would it be helpful if I created a video of this happening?

Here is a video of my problem. I show two examples when it freezes when a dialogue box is suppose to pop up:

Hi ,

Can you post your full dxdiag.txt here so I can take a look? I have attempted this on multiple machines and have not been able to reproduce the error on my end.

  • Additionally, do you have swarm agent and the editor set as exceptions in your firewall/antivirus program?
  • Do you have any other programs running when this occurs?
  • Did this occur in previous engine versions or is it limited to 4.11?

I just tested 4.10 and I have the same problem where it freezes when a dialogue box is suppose to pop up.

I don’t have an Antivirus program, and I believe my windows Firewall is off. Ive run into this program a lot, I don’t think there is a program that is interfering. I’ve attached the dxdiag.txtlink text

Try rolling back your drivers on your nvidia card to a previous driver. Does this stop the error from occurring?

I used Display Driver Uninstaller in safe mode to remove the nvidia driver and then did a clean install of the previous driver version 365.10 and it didn’t fix the problem. Still freezes when a dialogue box tries to pop up. Do you think if I upgrade to Windows 10 it might fix this problem?

This issue was fixed by uninstalling Nahimic Audio Software for MSI. Once it was uninstalled, the dialogue boxes popped up instead of the Unreal freezing.