Throughout the operation of the tool, NVIDIA Nsight Graphics provides messages that inform on the status of operations as well as if any issues are encountered. This could provide some assistance when trying to determine why your application may not run, connect, or capture correctly. Error messages are indicated by a red flag in the bottom right of the application window. This flag may be double-clicked to open the Output Messages window. Alternatively this window may be accessed via Tools > Output Messages.

When an application crashes, a crash report can be one of the most valuable pieces of information in helping to fix the issue. Accordingly, if you have the ability to send a crash report, it would be greatly appreciated.

Although launching your application with NVIDIA Nsight Graphics might appear to be an alternative to CPU debugging, especially when launched through Visual Studio, the application that is launched is still very much a debuggable application. This can be useful to determine if a problem you are encountering is in your own code by tracing the paths taken by your application.

To do this, set an environment variable of NVIDIA_PROCESS_INJECTION_ATTACH_DIALOG=1 and attach a debugger when you see a message box. Click OK to resume your application once you have set breakpoints that will allow you to inspect if your application is following the expected paths.

If you encounter an NVIDIA Nsight Graphics crash, note that symbols are available for either product via dispsym. If you are able to resolve a call stack, please include that in your report.

The NVIDIA Nsight Graphics Remote Monitor often needs to be launched as an administrator to enable certain functionality. The Remote Monitor is typically installed to the following location:

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Nsight Graphics X.X\host\[platform]\nv-nsight-remote-monitor.exe 

(Change X.X for your Nsight Graphics version, and [platform] for the platform of your NVIDIA Nsight Graphics installation.)

To start the Nsight Remote Monitor as an admin, right-click on it and select Run as administrator.

NVIDIA Nsight Graphics has the capability of collecting detailed information about the run of the application. Logging is opt-in so as to introduce as little-performance impact in production code as possible. Logging is enabled by doing the following:

1. Create a directory C:\Logs. (You can choose a different directory, but it is not recommended, as it would require additional configuration.)

2. Copy nvlog.config to this location.

3. Set the following environment variable:

   NVLOG_CONFIG_FILE=C:\Logs\nvlog.config

   (See Setting an Environment Variable for guidance.)

   Note:

   You will need to restart Visual Studio and/or the Nsight Monitor after setting the variable to pick up the change.

4. UWP Application configuration. If you are not using a UWP application, skip this step.

   1. To enable UWP applications to log, you will need to set permissions on the Logs folder and the intended target path for output logs (if different than the Logs folder).

   2. For the intended folder, right-click Properties.

   3. Open the Security tab.

   4. If not present, create the ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES group.

   5. Add all permissions for this group.

5. Re-run your application.

   Note:

   Note that the logs can get extremely large and so it is not recommended to run the applicable for longer than is necessary. This implies that you may need to force-terminate your application once it has collected the information you want. If the application is creating logs that are too large, please contact devtools-support@nvidia.com for suggestions on how to change the logging configuration to trim it down.

6. Once you have encountered your issue, please copy the logs to an accessible location and send an email to devtools-support@nvidia.com with this report.

For detailed information on the logging system, see this page.

Sometimes a device lost or other issue can be narrowed by observing what the DirectX debug layer has to say.

If you need to install the layer it should be part of the OS in Windows 10:

Apps & Features > Manage Optional Features > Graphics Tools

Open dxcpl, which should look like the below. Make sure your installed application is in the Scope List, and set the Direct3D/DXGI Debug Layer to Force On.

There are two ways to see the spew:

1. You can see logging without attaching Visual Studio by just running DbgView.exe. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/debugview.

2. Alternately, attach using Visual Studio. Logging will be in the Visual Studio Output window. See section below to enable attaching to the launched process.

There are occasionally times where you might be asked to set an undocumented variable to help disambiguate problems.

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Nsight Graphics X.X\host\[platform]\nv-nsight-remote-monitor.exe 

You've tried to launch your application, but it is failing to launch.

You've found that your application appears to launch, but it crashes during runtime.

You've found that your application appears to launch, but it hangs during runtime.

You've found that you're able to run the application successfully, but upon trying to perform a live analysis, the application crashes.

This problem indicates that you have had some level of success, but even if the application generally inactive, the application crashes.

You've observed that the application runs at a significantly lower rate than normal operation.

If you encounter more overhead in your range profiling session or generated C++ capture, conservative synchronization may be the problem.

If you find that the button to Capture for Live Analysis is disabled, or you do not see a message that your application has Nsight Graphics analysis enabled, the Nsight Vulkan layer may not be enabled. This symptom is often accompanied by an error in the Output Messages window, so look for errors in that window for an indication of the failure.

<install directory>/host/windows-desktop-nomad-x64/VK_LAYER_NV_nomad.bat

<install directory>/host/linux-desktop-nomad-x64/VK_LAYER_NV_nomad.sh

The application launches, but you are unable to attach to it with the NVIDIA Nsight Graphics host.

The host UI crashes while you are analyzing an application.

Some applications use a watchdog timer that kills the application after a certain period of inactivity. Because capturing a frame effectively pauses and application, this will trigger these timeouts. This option attempts to aggressively suspend all application threads during capture to prevent this from happening.

Environment variable:

NSIGHT_AGGRESSIVE_REPLAY_THREAD_CONTROL=Aggressive

There is no UI option for this feature, only an environment variable.

This option attempts to disable a named thread from raising exceptions that can tear the application down. It does so by attempting to match thread names against a specified regex; if a thread is named (relies on the app doing this) and it throws a fatal exception, this capability will attempt to suppress that exception.

-NOINNEREXCEPTION

Environment variable:

NVIDIA_PROCESS_INJECTION_IGNORE_EXCEPTIONS_FROM_THREAD=anyregex

There is no UI feature for this capability. This is a very sensitive feature; do not publicize it.

This option attempts to disable any exception from being thrown by the application. This is generally only useful if this exception is thrown in a separate thread and the suspension of that thread does not interfere with the application running. Watchdog threads may meet this criteria, for example.

Environment variable:

NVIDIA_PROCESS_INJECTION_SUPPRESS_FATAL_EXCEPTIONS=1

There is no UI feature for this capability. This is a very sensitive feature; do not publicize it.

This option disables the hooking (e.g., detouring) of functions from a specific DLL. This is useful if an application is using multiple APIs that are potentially interfering with each other. The option supports a common delimited list of libraries.

Environment variable:

NVIDIA_PROCESS_INJECTION_IGNORED_LIBRARIES=opengl32.dll,nvoglv32.dll,nvoglv64.dll

There presently is no UI feature for this capability but it may be productized if found useful.