Problem Statement/Rationale

MongoDB Compass crashes its renderer process when I open the Documents tab for a collection containing large documents. The entire Compass window becomes blank and cannot recover. I have to close and restart the application.

The database query itself completes successfully. The Compass log shows successful `find` and `getMore` operations, followed by:

"msg":"Render process gone"
"reason":"crashed"
"exitCode":-1073741819

On Windows, exit code `-1073741819` corresponds to `0xC0000005` (access violation).

I also reproduced the issue after starting Compass with `--disable-gpu`. The new log confirms that the option was parsed:

"msg":"Parsed command line flags"
"options":["_","disableGpu"]

The renderer still crashed with the same exit code, so the problem does not appear to be caused by GPU acceleration.

I would like the Engineering team to investigate why the Compass renderer crashes while decoding or displaying these documents. Ideally, Compass should render large documents lazily, limit the amount of data passed to the renderer, or show an error without terminating the entire renderer process.

I will attach redacted Compass logs from runs with and without `--disable-gpu`.

Steps to Reproduce

Environment:

Operating system: Windows x64
MongoDB Compass: 1.49.12
Electron: 41.1.1
Chrome: 146.0.7680.166
Node.js: 24.14.0
MongoDB Server: 7.0.28, standalone

1. Connect Compass to the MongoDB deployment.
2. Open a collection containing large documents.
3. Allow Compass to open the Documents tab with its existing query settings:

Filter: none
Projection: none
Skip: 0
Limit: 100
MaxTimeMS: 60000

4. Compass successfully executes the `find` operation and several `getMore` operations.
5. Shortly after the documents have been retrieved, the Compass window becomes completely blank.
6. The application does not recover and must be restarted.

The collection statistics during the latest reproduction were:

Document count: 46
Total document size: 138,600,231 bytes
Average document size: 3,013,048 bytes
Capped collection: false

The issue was also reproduced earlier when the same collection contained only four documents:

Document count: 4
Total document size: 11,957,195 bytes
Average document size: 2,989,298 bytes

This suggests that the issue may be related to the size or internal structure of individual documents, rather than only the total number of documents.

The issue is consistently reproducible with this collection. I have encountered similar behavior in several earlier Compass versions as well.

Expected Results

Compass should display the collection without crashing.

If the documents are too large or complex to render efficiently, Compass should do one or more of the following:

• Render documents or nested fields lazily.
• Automatically reduce the initial batch size based on byte size.
• Keep large arrays and embedded documents collapsed.
• Display a warning or recoverable error.
• Allow the user to enter a projection or lower limit without terminating the renderer.

The rest of the Compass interface should remain usable.

Actual Results

The MongoDB queries complete successfully, but the Compass renderer process crashes shortly afterward.

In the latest reproduction:

The final "Running find" event occurred at:
2026-07-22T06:52:12.325Z
The renderer crash was recorded at:
2026-07-22T06:52:12.808Z

The relevant error is:

COMPASS-WINDOW-MANAGER
Render process gone
reason: crashed
exitCode: -1073741819

The entire Compass window becomes blank. No error dialog or recovery option is displayed, and Compass must be restarted.

Starting Compass with `--disable-gpu` does not prevent the crash.

Additional Notes

• The issue is reproducible with GPU acceleration disabled.
• The logs do not show a JavaScript heap out-of-memory error.
• The collection query and its `getMore` operations complete successfully before the renderer crashes.
• The affected documents average approximately 3 MB of BSON data each.
• Compass attempts to load the documents without a projection.
• The connection uses a restricted MongoDB user. Some optional Compass metadata operations such as `$indexStats`, `$currentOp`, and reading `config.collections` return `Unauthorized`. These errors are handled and logged before the renderer crash. The primary collection `find` and `getMore` operations succeed.
• Other collections containing smaller documents can be opened normally with the same connection and user.
• Redacted Compass logs from both the normal run and the `--disable-gpu` run are attached.
• I can provide a sanitized document structure or synthetic reproduction data if required.