PowerBI Crashing, General Consensus Tips

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am having some issues with my PowerBI desktop. I find it crashing abruptly whenever I am using it. I am typically using Excel files as data sources. In my last iteration, I was using a ~4000 KB file. With 13 columns of data and less than 100,000 rows of data. It is crashing constantly, at different stages. Sometimes upon export. Sometimes as I am creating a measure. 

I am fairly new to PowerBI and saw there were many posts about the topic throughout the years. Is there a general consensus on best methods or steps to take to troubleshoot this to diagnose the problem?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!! 

[Greg_Deckler]

@Anonymous - Did you ever get your issue resolved?

[Anonymous]

Hi! I am working off of an older version of Power BI (March 2020), but this has been an issue even when I had the most updated version.

Following one of the guides, I was able to access my Trace/Log files after generating a forced crash.

For this crash, I was getting a message saying that I was out of memory. In other instances, I do not always get this.

It seems odd to me that I am out of memory for a file that isn't that large. Is there something in the log file that I should be looking at?

[v-lionel-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Try to check the memory usage.

Best regards,
Lionel Chen

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Hello, thank you for your help.

I have noticed there are 2 types of crashes that occur:

1. Where my Power BI desktop just shuts off by itself

2. where my Power BI desktop reports an error message about memory and then shuts off

I'm not sure how it triggers one versus the other, but it seems to be a memory issue. I ws keeping track of my CPU Utilization Rate and they seem to spike when the crash occurs. However, there are many cases where my CPU Utilization Rate does hit that rate, but does not crash.

Is there a way to either minimize the CPU Utilization % that I am using?

[amitchandak]

@Anonymous , just check you do not have any windows update pending. Also, check you are one of the latest version on power bi

Check power bi log file for any errors

https://dbakevlar.com/2018/07/power-bi-101-log-files-and-tracing/

[Greg_Deckler]

Go to File | Options and settings | Options | Diagnostics and post the information found there. Generally this is not an issue but can happen from time to time on new releases.