Computer crash at start of lighting builds

Ok so I’ve had a strange problem for a long time now. When I build lighting in certain levels or projects, my computer will completely shut off almost immediately after the build starts. However, this doesn’t happen all the time. I’ve had levels that only had this problem a few times, and most of my projects have never had this problem luckily. But recently this has been very frequent for a level I’m working on for a job. It will crash maybe 30-50% of the time when I build lighting. The other 50-70% of the time it builds lighting just fine with no errors.

My colleagues can build lighting just fine using the same level, so perhaps it’s a problem with my computer? My colleagues and I were thinking it could be a CPU issue? However the CPU seems to be doing fine, it’s usually around 95% when rendering, I don’t think it maxes out at 100%. And the computer isn’t exceptionally hot or overheated. Plus the scene itself doesn’t have a very complex level to render, building the lighting takes less than a minute. I’ve dealt with plenty of other significantly more complex scenes before that never had this problem. And my colleagues have very similar if not the exact same type of laptop as me.

So I’m at a loss. Any thoughts? Thanks!

My computer specs:

Alienware laptop
Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit
32 GB of RAM
Intel Core i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.8 GHz

I have also had this issue with 4.9, my lighting crashes the PC every time without fail. I am trying to open the project in different version, hopefully this will fix the problem. It crashes on others PC too.

There is a way in the project settings to scale down rending in the viewport. Changing the resolution of the textures whilst editing. Maybe this will help with your project?

Hey Stephie, thanks for the suggestion. I gave it a try, but unfortunately changing those settings in the viewport didn’t prevent the crashing :frowning:

Hey PandaDude,
I found it helps run the program a little smoother. I have ended up moving to a newer version of unreal. From 4.9 to 4.12 and it seems to be working okay. It has lost a little of my data so be prepared just in case for that. Maybe try using a newer version, it may help