The common problems and what to do. Back to the README. The full table of error messages, with the older engine fixes, is in the details.
My PC froze, or got very slow, the first time Strata started. That's normal while it starts, most of all the first time. Strata loads 35-55 GB into your RAM, locks part of it for the graphics card, and works out how much of the model fits on your GPU. The mouse can freeze for a few minutes. Wait, and don't close the window. The next starts are much faster. Still frozen after 10 minutes? Restart the PC, close other programs (browsers use a lot of RAM) and try again. If it keeps happening, pick a smaller size (Q2_0 or IQ2_XS).
It stopped while downloading or installing.
Run START-HERE.bat (Linux: ./setup.sh) again. It continues where it stopped.
It says the NVIDIA driver is too old.
Update it (NVIDIA App or nvidia.com/drivers), restart the PC, and run
START-HERE.bat again.
It says port 8080 is already in use.
Strata is already running. Look for its window. Or another program uses the port: START-HERE.bat --port 8081.
Python or the build tools could not be installed. Install what it names (links are printed), then run it again. Everything already done is kept.
The first start takes minutes. It is reading 34-55 GB into RAM; the second start is faster while the files are in the OS cache. Started from Task Scheduler, it can be 24x slower: see Running it at startup.
It's very slow and the disk light keeps blinking. Your PC is out of free RAM. Close other programs, or pick a smaller size (Q2_0 or IQ2_XS).
An answer stopped with "the engine stopped unexpectedly". Usually not enough RAM (on Linux the system then stops the engine). Just send your message again: Strata starts the engine by itself. If it keeps happening, close other programs or pick a smaller size.
It says the prompt exceeds the context.
The conversation is longer than the context you chose. Start a new chat, or run SETUP.bat and pick more
context.
It is slower than the tables. The monitor plugged into the graphics card and other GPU programs take VRAM from the expert cache; RAM running below its rated speed (enable EXPO/XMP in the BIOS) slows the CPU half.
Pictures are refused, or slow.
"this server was started without the vision encoder": the model was set up for text only - run setup again with
--vision gpu (or --vision cpu). Pictures that take 10-30 s are read by the encoder on the CPU; --vision gpu
(NVIDIA, ~1.4 GB of VRAM) makes it 0.1-0.5 s.
"No AMD GPU found (the amdgpu driver's KFD topology is empty)" on Linux. The kernel's amdgpu driver is not loaded for the card. Integrated Radeon GPUs are listed as not supported; setup lists every card it found and whether Strata can use it.
The engine stops at start with the card's name, its architecture and the build's list.
The engine was compiled for another card (for example after moving the Strata folder to another PC). Run
./setup.sh --setup --backend hip: it compiles the engine for this card's architecture.
Large pinned host allocations fail on ROCm although RAM is free. See AMD_HIP.md: the mapped expert mode avoids the full pinned arena.
Look in the full troubleshooting table, or open an
issue and attach strata-<model>.log from the Strata folder.