Many problems in last 6 months - still no solution! :o/

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 5:59 am

Hi guys!
Last 6 months Im doing nothing more than troubleshooting my creamware system....
At this time Im very confused I thinking to sell my cards..... but I cant because I love them.....
Anyone can help me out of this mess?
---------------------------------------------
So, first, the tech specs:

ASUS P5WD2 mobo
P4 3.2 GHz Prescott + Arctic cooling Freezer 7
2x Corsair XMS2 512mb in dual mode
1x Maxtor 120 GB 7200rpm IDE (10GB system, 110GB data)
1x Maxtor 160 GB 7200rpm SATA (data)
/both drives are formatted to NTFS filesystem/
ASUS GeeForce FX 6200 fanless
No Floppy, no CD/DVD drive
running winXP in ACPI mode
hyper threading off, all onboard peripherials switched off (USB, LAN, Audio, Serial ports, Parallel port,...)
An finally:
Creamware Luna (3 DSP) + Creamware Pulsar II (6 DSP) connected together by STDM cable.
Thats what I have now
--------------------------------------------
Before 6 moths I had the same system except motherboard (that was Intel Culver City 2 before) and memory (A-Data before).
I had bluescreens and freezes so I tried everithing possible (according to this forum) and finally ended with Standard PC system with turned of everything unnecessary and both cards on their respective IRQs, each alone. No more freezes, bluescreens continued to happen in frequency aprox. once per month and only during work with scope. So I was forced to take hardware changes in place and bought new mobo (P5WD2 that AndreD recommended) and new corsair memory (to be absolutely sure that blues are not caused by bad memory).
Install of cw cards on the new computer was a breeze and everything seemed to work just fine so I ordered Modular III and Flexor and started experimenting. That was first time that problems started again on my new computer. No more bluescreens, but freezes when I tried to connect modules in modular III, touch knob with my mouse (USB cordless one, few days ago I switched to PS2 mouse to be sure that problems are not caused by this), or when loading something (module, preset, device). That was in ACPI mode where my cards were on IRQ 22 and IRQ 23 and both shared its IRQ with "IDE to PCI bridge" (or something like that) - that was maybe a problem, I know. So I started to fiddle with physical placement of cards in PCI and thats where things become very very strange!
When I connected cards together again I suddenly started to got "Cannot create async STDM board connection module MSG2S" errors when trying to make some connections - I observed that it was happening when trying to connect something between devices that are each on different card such as Luna MIDI in to Mixer on Pulsar.
Tried to get out STDM cable and then get it back in. No effect. Tried many times.
So we are almost in present time where I ended with fresh install of winXP (ACPI) and only Pulsar card inside (want to troubleshoot system and then insert Luna card when it will run without any crashes).
Do you think it should be problem to share IRQ with PCI to IDE bridge? Probably yes so I will have to remove my IDE disk to free the sharing in ACPI mode or install as Standart PC and fiddle with IRQs. I will probably try to buy new SATA HDD to stay in ACPI mode.
And what about STDM connection that worked just fine before? Coud it be caused by software problems? Or it is caused by wrong contact on cable?

I will keep informing you what Im trying every day (now Im at work so Im not on my DAW computer so there will be one day shift between trys and replys)

Now I will make such a basic things as Disc Check, Defragmentation, Virus check to prepare my system. In week or two I will buy new HDD. Maybe before I will try Standard PC mode and to get Pulsar on its own IRQ.
But the STDM connection, thats a big problem for that I dont have any solution to try....

Thanks for any Ideas!
Tom aka Brainload

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:09 am

As a sequencer Im using legal Ableton Live 4.1

If you have any questions (something I forgot to mention) dont wait and ask me - Im here all the day and everyday and will try to reply immediately

)

H-Rave · Post by **H-Rave** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:51 am

What graphics card do you have ?

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:14 am

Yeah, IRQ sharing is an issue. I'd just install as Standard PC, turn off IRQ Steering in Windows, that way IRQ sharing will never be a problem ever anymore.

And before someone mentions it, no, ACPI isn't fine on all modern systems =P

djmicron · Post by **djmicron** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:16 am

i don't know if it is hardware related and it's not clear to me if you have this problem just with modular 3,
but about the modular 3 crashes, i know that mod 3 shell is unstable and many of us use the mod 2 shell (you can use the mod 3 modules inside the mod 2 shell).
Have you checked your creamware cards on another pc or have you done a test using one card at a time ?

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:00 am

On 2006-04-26 10:51, H-Rave wrote:
What graphics card do you have ?

ASUS GeeForce FX 6200 TC fanless

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:07 am

On 2006-04-26 11:14, symbiote wrote:
Yeah, IRQ sharing is an issue. I'd just install as Standard PC, turn off IRQ Steering in Windows, that way IRQ sharing will never be a problem ever anymore.

And before someone mentions it, no, ACPI isn't fine on all modern systems =P

Yesterday I finished clear install of winXP in Standard PC mode. Virus check is OK. Defragmentation of all logical drives is running at this time and over today.

At evening I will try to set Pulsar card on its own IRQ (and another card still keep out for now) - thats no problem I have done it once on my previous mainboard (Intel Culver City 2), but with no possitive effect - but that Intel board was not so good for creamware cards as I discovered somewhere on this forum....

I hope that this will be my solution

)

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:15 am

On 2006-04-26 11:16, djmicron wrote:
i don't know if it is hardware related and it's not clear to me if you have this problem just with modular 3,
but about the modular 3 crashes, i know that mod 3 shell is unstable and many of us use the mod 2 shell (you can use the mod 3 modules inside the mod 2 shell).
Have you checked your creamware cards on another pc or have you done a test using one card at a time ?

Im sure that described problems occured even in Modular 2 shell that I've used (because of recommendations posted here). I think it is releated to IRQ sharing problem too but Im not sure.
Cards not checked on another PC - I will do it if my Standard PC experiment (that I mentioned above) fails.
But on my current system I does not tried to use modular with one card only.
Now it is good time to try both Standad PC with no IRQ sharing and only one (Plusar II) card.
At evening Im preparing some heavy stress testing using devices and/or actions that caused problems before (see my first post)...

Thanks are going to you all guys!

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 7:08 am

And what version of SFP do you guys recommend for troubleshooting purposes? (maybe important note is that Im using only STM-1632 and my own modular devices)
I have both 3.1c and 4.0

Could it be a problem to install 4.0 over existing 3.1c version?

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 7:12 am

And what about combinations of SFP 3.1c and Modular v4.0 and vice versa?
Could it cause some problems?
I will try to avoid this but Im asking only by my personal interest....

H-Rave · Post by **H-Rave** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:55 am

I suppose having 3.1c and Scope 4 could bring up registry problems,have you tried it without one of the two.

djmicron · Post by **djmicron** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:05 pm

i think it's better to have both 3.1 and 4.0 installed on different folders.

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:08 am

On 2006-04-27 12:55, H-Rave wrote:
I suppose having 3.1c and Scope 4 could bring up registry problems,have you tried it without one of the two.

It seems 3.1c works better for me.
Many of problems occured in v4 on my current system. I will probably try to use 3.1c for now and if there will be no problems I will try to switch to v4.

fidox · Post by **fidox** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 6:12 pm

hi !

i had problems with Asus too, and i switch to Abit the same chipset and it works fine now !

i have Abit IC7 875 chipset , standard mode, everything else is disabled,

2 x pulsar XTC + 1 x luna II

valis · Post by **valis** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 1:19 am

Could it be a problem to install 4.0 over existing 3.1c version?

Yes. It is VERY easy to reinstall both. Simply remove both installations starting with the v4, and if the 3.1 doesn't remove no big deal. Delete the directly completely (with scope not running) and then install 3.1c into C:SFP and 4.0 into C:Scope

Now you will have 2 independant setups that you know the state of, instead of 1 combined setup that seems to be having issues. Then you can decide which version is more stable for you, or perhaps discover that its probably a hardware conflict somewhere that shows up with both installs.

Eliminate the variables one at a time (rather than doing a whole bunch of things at once to 'try' to fix it) so that the problem(s) can be easily isolated (one by one).

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Mon May 01, 2006 1:04 am

try to disable hyper threading from bios

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-05-01 02:04 ]</font>

brainload · Post by **brainload** » Thu May 04, 2006 12:35 am

Okay guys,
it seems that my system is definitely more stable than before. I did not have much time to do some heavy testing, but after few hours of work with scope there is no problem at all and I have finished two simple patches in modular 2 shell (before I was not able to finish even one patch without some problem so I suppose it is now better).
Next days will show more.....

And for you who have the same problems, here is list of all tweaks that I had done:
1, settings in BIOS (ASUS P5WD2)
- load default settings
- hyper threading turned off
- ACPI 2.0 support turned off
- APIC ACPI turned on
- Serial ports disabled
- Parallel ports disabled
- All other onboard components disabled (Network, Audio, USB)
2, clear install of winXP on another HDD as Standard PC (press F5 to select ACPI or Standard PC when installation begins - just at the point where you have option to load drivers by pressing F6)
3, Do defragmentation and scandisk your drive
4, Go to device manager (Start - run, type devmgmt.msc, enter) - select Computer, right click, properties - turn off IRQ steering
5, restart and check that all of your creamware cards does not share IRQ with anything other than another cw card....
If some card share IRQ with something you have to disable that device (in case you do not need it). Other way is to physicaly place card into another PCI slot or try to reserve IRQs in bios - thats most boring part because you have to restart, try some settings in BIOS, boot to winXP, check IRQ settings, restart to BIOS, new settings, reboot and so on until you achieve desired IRQ settings...
6, thats all, now everything should work much better....

)
+ dont forget something - its very important to do everything carefully and surely.

In next days I will try to turn on some devices such as Network and USB because I need them....

I will also report if any problems will (or will not) begin...

Thanks all of you and hope that this topic will help somebody in future...