Reading random files will cause lockup/playback issues

[remixmark]

I have 10 drives in my pool of various ages. I recently moved them from Windows 10 to a new PC build running Windows 11.

[Symptoms]

1. Since then when I've played a handful of files in MPC-HC after <10min the screen would lock up for about 10 seconds and then it would start to play just the audio and then the video would catch up. Other times it would just crash MPC-HC.
2. Accessing files (copying them to my M.2 or trying to simply trying to analyze them in other software) I would see my system either lock up requiring me to hold down the power button or wait a few seconds for my system to catch back up.

Hoping someone can assist me with anything to check.

[Shane]

Perhaps try adjusting the Performance settings for the Pool? E.g. toggling "Bypass file systems filters" or "Network I/O boost", or disabling "Read striping" if it's on.

Check if you can update/rollback drivers for the hardware of your new build?

Does the problem still manifest if you're playing the media files on another PC via a network share to the pool? On the same PC via a network share to the pool?

[remixmark]

10 hours ago, Shane said:

Check if you can update/rollback drivers for the hardware of your new build?

Drivers for what specifically?

 

10 hours ago, Shane said:

Does the problem still manifest if you're playing the media files on another PC via a network share to the pool?

I’ll try playing on plex and report back. 

 

10 hours ago, Shane said:

On the same PC via a network share to the pool?

I don’t know what you mean by this. 

[Shane]

Drivers for any/all hardware; I'd guess storage and graphics.

"On the same PC via a network share to the pool" means e.g. sharing the pool's media folder to the network, then using the share to access that folder even though it's the same PC (e.g. \\poolpc\mediashare instead of p:\media). In case that maybe gives a clue as to the nature of the problem.

[remixmark]

I did rollback my GPU drivers to 537.58 (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/212701/), but the issue still happened. 

On 9/19/2025 at 10:15 PM, Shane said:

Does the problem still manifest if you're playing the media files on another PC via a network share to the pool? On the same PC via a network share to the pool?

I was watching content yesterday and no issues (it would usually happen every 10min or so). I'm looking into playing content off particular hdd's to see if I can find a link between a hdd and the issue. I was watching content (direct from the drivepool via MPC-HC) while someone else was streaming off my plex server (same drive pool, different hdd's) and no issues for either of us. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Check the Event Viewer.  Specifically the "System" section.  You may see disk, ntfs or controller errors.  This can be very helpful for tracking down problem drives.  (and is one of the things I do in tickets when people report these type of issues).  More often than not, there is a drive causing problems and it shows up here.  It's not always a failing drive, there have been cases of a bad connection (and is something I've been hit with myself, actually). 

 

[remixmark]

Sorry for the delay, but I haven't had the issue in a week or so. I checked all the option under performance.

Not sure if that's what resolved my issue or not, but so far so good.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, the biggest ones are probably the bypass file system filters and network i/o boost

the Network I/O Boost option uses some CPU time to identify where the requests are coming from and prioritize network traffic over local access.  This can make playback over network shares more snappy. 

The other is the "Bypass file system filters".  I don't recommend leaving this one enabled, but ... may be the most likely culprite. specifically, file system filters are drivers that "sit" ontop of the file system.  They intercept and can modify any file system API access... and this is explicitly how realtime virus scanners work.   

The complication comes that when accessing a file, the file system filter is called for the pool itself (normal), and then for each instance on the pooled drives.   The bypass does what it says and bypasses this... for the underlying, pooled drive access.    This can speed things up, but stuff like deduplication, some encryption software, and other disk tools may be impacted by this because they aren't being called correctly when the bypass is on.    

However, conversely, it means that the same file may be "scanned" multiple times, and for some software ... that can cause issues.