Very Frustrating Crashes

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 7:24 am

I've joined this forum just to post this...

I'm running Scope 4.5, with two Pulsar II cards. My DAW is SONAR 5.2.

I've recently reinstalled my two Pulsar cards on a new computer, but, scope randomly crashes after about 5 minutes when playing a Sonar project (with or without Audio, it can be just MIDI). Within scope, I'm running two STS 3000 samplers and the 1632 mixer.

I've tried moving the boards to different slots, there is no IRQ sharing for the pulsar board, I've made sure there's nothing running that shouldn't be, and I'm at my wits end! Someone please help!!!

Here's the set-up...

Cards - Pulsar II x 2
MOBO - Gigabyte K8NSC (nforce 3 250 chipset)
Processor - AMD 64 bit Dual Core 4200+
O/S - Windows XP professional (SP1 + updates upto SP2 without installing SP2)
SAW - Sonar 5.2
Memory - 2gb DDR400 on two 1gb DIMMS

Thanks for your time,

Andy

[ This Message was edited by: pianoman on 2006-07-15 08:25 ]

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 8:25 am

It may be a dual core problem.

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 10:02 am

Try putting your computer in Standard PC mode

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 11:17 am

Thanks for your responses!

So, if it's a dual core problem, is my only option exchanging the processor?

Plus, to get my PC working in standard PC mode, do I have to reinstall windows?

Thanking you in advance,

Andy

Herr Voigt · Post by **Herr Voigt** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:53 pm

Try a project without samplers. I have no good experiences with STS under XP.
And in the system control (german: systemsteuerung) of your DAW you have to deactivate the option "reset board if idle" in the Pulsar settings.
Hope this helps a little bit, Thomas

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:43 am

I think is dula core driver scope not optimize,tray to disable second core of your processor

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:02 pm

I sure hope the Intel solution works, I'm banking on it. BTW pianoman, GSIF drivers in SFP work great 4 me live. I wanted to use the STS series, but I prefer a more stable approach as I perform twice daily and cannot afford 1 crash, period. My SFP DAW's had 2.54 160, and 3.0 Orchestra working w/o incident 4 one year now.

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 12:59 am

Thanks for your input, guys. I'll try disabling the second core.

Post by **garyb** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:09 am

you might double check memory timings with the manufacturer...

the latest video and mobo drivers and bios need to be installed for sure. manufacturers make many revisions with newer products(we're the beta testers)

usually spontaneous reboots indicate a motherboard, memory or vid card problem. many times a motherboard will seem perfect with less demanding app and/or hardware, but will show problems when pushed(cwa cards use the pci and memory busses pretty brutally in some cases)....

if you're experiencing freezes, that's usually related to midi. some midi devices transmit clock and active sensing, which can overflow buffers and cause lockups. if this is the case, then use a filter or better yet disable those functions in the controller if possible.

[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2006-07-19 03:12 ]

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:12 am

This crash problem only happens when using pulsar - it's a dual boot machine with two hard drives. The other operating system has no crashes at all.

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:12 am

This crash problem only happens when using pulsar - it's a dual boot machine with two hard drives. The other operating system has no crashes at all.

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:23 am

As I'm getting nowhere with this... Can anyone recommend me a stable motherboard/processor combination (preferably without PCI express)

Thanks

Post by **garyb** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:38 am

i suggest getting a cheap or free computer for internet and typing....

my favorite scope motherboard is the intel d865perl. it's cheap and stable. pci express is for VIDEO, it sucks. that said, it does work...

once more for stability, i always like intel, it's no more expensive than amd, and the chipsets are superior(all the software is desinged around them as well...). many including myself have used the asus P5AD2-E Premium with very nice results(pci-e).

i suspect it's your setup and not the hardware after learning it's dual boot. extra files make extra trouble. for example, several users have had problems with a file named rapi.dll because not only does scope have a .dll with that name, but several m$ apps do as well(mostly active sync) and the two files are not related in any way...trouble.....

also, i choose stability over raw power EVERY day of the week. nothing is less useful than a computer that crashes. i typically work for HOURS without saving...and without regrets....simple straight-forward boxes with a single task are always more reliable, although not manditory.

i hope there are some hints that help in there....

[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2006-07-19 03:42 ]

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:57 am

Dual boot is not an issue - theres literally two hard drives, and I select which one to boot from the BIOS, not extra files. So, a decent AGP chipshet/processor, anyone?

Post by **garyb** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:55 pm

intel d865 mobo with 478 processor, northwood or prescott.

asus P5AD2-E Premium with 640(or other socket 775)

yes, dual boot CAN be a problem. are both called c:? i'm not saying that's YOUR problem but installing some apps on disks other than c is a problem....

also, if you expect any reasonable track count, your audio data should be on it's own drive...

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:40 am

If you think about it, I've two disk drives, if I boot from one (by selecting it from the BIOS), it sees the other drive as a data disk, and not as installed, duplicate software - there's no danger of that becoming an issue anymore than someone who has a second disk drive on a single-boot machine.

Anyway, after a chat with a chap called "Ralf" from creamware (a very helpful man), I re-installed XP in standard mode, and the problem seems to be fixed, I'm very pleased to say.

Thanks for all your help! I'll definately be posting on this site more often!

Andy

katano · Post by **katano** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 12:52 am

good ol' ralf