Resolve Free 19.0.3 (and other 19.0.x) will not render

Having issues rendering on Resolve Free 19.03. As soon as I try to render, it gets stuck at 0% and the time remaining doubling every 3 seconds. When I abort rendering, resolve is mostly grayed out/locked up and I cannot do anything without closing out (which it states is still rendering despite being aborted) and restarting.

The machine in use is a Dell Precision Laptop with an i7-13850HX CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 2000 ADA GPU.

Things I have done/tried:

• Updated to the latest stable Nvidia Driver (Currently have 553.24 installed)
• Tried different codecs/resolutions (H.264, H.265)
• Tuned off playback proxies

The video in question isn't anything particularly complex: a title, a couple of clips with one cropped/moved over the other with a framerate/speed change in the final set of clips.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

Got it to work, but I don't know how.

(Details missing from the original post: I'm on Windows 10, render location is the default "Videos" folder)

I opened resolve as administrator and had it render. It hung as before, but I let if run for a while (while I was away from the computer for a couple hours). Came back and it had completed with a rendering time supposedly 1:50. I then added a job to render the same thing in low quality 720P (not high quality 1080) to a different filename and it rendered in a very fast 20 seconds. After restarting resolve (not as as administrator), it's back to hanging... and also hanging as Administrator too.

Hmm?

Went to work on another video... this time upgraded to Free 19.1 Build 12. Doing the exact same thing.

What if you turn off "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration"?

What if you render out to DNxHR HQX as a mezzanine format, then create a new timeline, bring in that flattened file, and try to render that out as H.264 or H.265? Sometimes, it works better at a slower render speed, like 25fps or even 10fps.

BTW: One of the issues with YouTube and the other social media services is that they RE-ENCODE anything you upload for their internal formats (like VP9) and then discard your original upload. Clearly, the highest-res, highest-quality format you can upload is best... and that would not be H.264. DNxHR or ProRes may give the encoding engine more signal to work with.

Some have reported (with evidence) that a 4K upload gets more bandwidth than an HD bandwidth, and yields better quality even in HD.

Even QHD (2560 x 1440) should do.

What if you turn off "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration"?

What if you render out to DNxHR HQX as a mezzanine format, then create a new timeline, bring in that flattened file, and try to render that out as H.264 or H.265? Sometimes, it works better at a slower render speed, like 25fps or even 10fps.

BTW: One of the issues with YouTube and the other social media services is that they RE-ENCODE anything you upload for their internal formats (like VP9) and then discard your original upload. Clearly, the highest-res, highest-quality format you can upload is best... and that would not be H.264. DNxHR or ProRes may give the encoding engine more signal to work with.

Some have reported (with evidence) that a 4K upload gets more bandwidth than an HD bandwidth, and yields better quality even in HD.

I'm using low resolution because the files are being emailed/onedrive stored/linked. Not for youtube or publication (used related to work, subject to many NDAs). Also, the source videos are 1080p recorded on my phone.

On other machines to include my previous work laptop (with a measly skylake i7 and low-end AMD graphics) Resolve 18.x had no issues with. I didn't have trouble until I was given a new laptop and I tried it with Resolve 19.x.

That said, I'm trying it now, with the encode set to "native" instead of "auto" and it seems to be working... go figure. I also have rebooted since then...

Fixed for now?