Windows Hipchat client crashes immediately on launch
Problem
Hipchat Windows version 4.0 may consistently crash on launch if your video card drivers are out of date. The application can also be affected by misalignment and/or scaling issues.
When Hipchat is launched, the crash reporter dialog appears before any other windows have the chance to appear.
Diagnosis
Environment
This issue has been observed with the following video cards:
- AMD Radeon HD 6350
- AMD Radeon HD 5450
- AMD Radeon HD 6700
- ATI FireGL V3400
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M
Diagnostic Steps
See this Microsoft support page for details on how to find your video card's model and update its drivers:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/video-cards-faq
Cause
This issue is caused by out-of-date video cards drivers.
Workaround
The following workaround will cause Hipchat to no longer use the computer's dedicated graphics card. If the workaround is successful, the application can continue to be used that way, or the computer's graphics card drivers can be updated to resolve the problem. At that time, remove the flag applied in the workaround to improve the Hipchat for Windows application's performance.
- Right-click the 'Hipchat' shortcut
- Add "--disable-gpu" to the end of the 'Target' path:
- Press OK and relaunch the application
For the ATI FireGL V3400 video card, it has been reported that disabling the video card's driver on first launch of Hipchat resolves the issue.
If your end-users unable to implement "--disable-gpu" change onto the client due to lack of administrative permissions, admin can set a global environment variable that will disable hardware rendering for all Qt applications on a system. Admin can modify, or add if it doesn't already exist, a file in the installation root called config.ini (typically stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlassian\Hipchat4) and add the line 'disable_gpu=true'. This would help to disable gpu for that particular Hipchat client.
Resolution
The resolution is to update your video card drivers. Please visit your graphics card manufacturers' website for details.