eventual SFP crash

[garyb]

what is sharing an irq with the scope card?

are you shutting down Scope before Ableton? if so, don't. you must shut all apps before Scope....

[Neutron]

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25301

it turns off suspend for everything.
just because the option os not in a driver does not mean its not used, it could be permenently on!

and try different USB ports as well for the MOTU. they are often on different IRQ, and one might not interfere as much.

[greenbluegold]

Neutron:

I'm looking in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\

and I don't see USB

I have usbaudio, usbccgp, usbehci, usbhub, usbstor, and usbuhci but not:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB
Entry: DisableSelectiveSuspend
Type: DWORD
Value: 1 disables selective suspend. 0 enables selective suspend


and nothing with a DisableSelectiveSuspend entry.

Garyb :

the scope board is ICQ 23

I don't see a resources tab for the MOTU interface in the device manager so I don't know it's ICQ. The resources tab for the scope card reports no conflicts.

I shut down sfp last. I wish I even had the chance to shut it down, but the whole system crashes before I get the chance... and yes the problem continues after making the changes I reported in my last post :^/

I appreciate all your input. thanks

[garyb]

yes, but what else(if anything) is on irq 23?

go to start/run "winmsd"/hardware resources/conflicts-sharing and tell me if the card is there and what is with it, if anything. the info "no conflicts" on the properties page is meaningless. sharing isn't necessarily a "conflict", but it will make problems.

also, is your controller outputting active sensing(a midi monitor in Scope could tell you)? if so, you may need to turn active sensing off or filter it.

[Neutron]

Neutron:

I'm looking in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\

and I don't see USB

I have usbaudio, usbccgp, usbehci, usbhub, usbstor, and usbuhci but not:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB
Entry: DisableSelectiveSuspend
Type: DWORD
Value: 1 disables selective suspend. 0 enables selective suspend


and nothing with a DisableSelectiveSuspend entry.

in that case just create it. i did not have it either until i installed the virus software, which added the key and the value.

im not at home right now, but i seem to recall you can tell it worked because the option to go in power saving mode is gone from the individual usb drivers.

[greenbluegold]

The scope card is sharing IRQ 23 with a USB port. I swapped the usb connection where the midi interface is plugged in to another spot on the motherboard and I unplugged an unused usb connection.

I added DisableSelectiveSuspend to my registry and set its value to 1. The USB hubs no longer have a power off on idle type message under the DeviceManager.

I haven't yet tested my setups resistance to crashing because now it hangs up every few seconds. It hasn't yet crashed but I wanted to take the chance to post.

[Neutron]

The scope card is sharing IRQ 23 with a USB port. I swapped the usb connection where the midi interface is plugged in to another spot on the motherboard and I unplugged an unused usb connection.

I added DisableSelectiveSuspend to my registry and set its value to 1. The USB hubs no longer have a power off on idle type message under the DeviceManager.

I haven't yet tested my setups resistance to crashing because now it hangs up every few seconds. It hasn't yet crashed but I wanted to take the chance to post.

you changed 2 things and one of them is causing the problem. change one of them back if problem gos away then you know thats not good for you at the moment. otherwise change the other one back and re-change the first thing.

i fall for that all the time. change a bunch of things and now its fixed but i dont know which one fixed it.

[garyb]

disable the usb controller that is sharing the irq23 in the device manager, then check for sharing again.

[greenbluegold]

The shared IRQ was my only usb 2.0 controller so I didn't want to disable it.

So instead I dropped the bomb. dismantled and rebuilt my computer, moved the scope card to another pci, removed components that were unnecessary, clean reformat of the hd, reinstalled window, reinstalled scope, ableton etcetc... I'm now IRQ sharing free

it was a long and obnoxious day, but I think everything is running stably now. phew

thanks for all the help

[garyb]

[greenbluegold]

accidental double post deleted

[greenbluegold]

I wish I did feel content, but I spoke too soon. It's not crashing after a couple of bars like it often would before, but by 180 to 190 bars it freezes up.

I also am testing it without using the MOTU midi interface and using only the cremware midi in and outs. It still crashes.

I don't remember having this problem with Ableton 6 and scope. I'm going to download the latest update 7.0.9 and the most current version 6.

On my computer I've done a clean install of windows xp sp3. Disabled all the devices I am not using either in the bios or device manager. This includes, turning off the onboard ethernet, onboard sound cardI, firewire, IR, legacy ports and unusused USB ports. Installed scope.
I have no shared IRQ numbers.
I turned off the reset when idle option on the scope driver.
i turned off power saving when idle on the usb hubs. (I didn't add the regisitry key as my cursor *seemed* to hang more when the DisableSelectiveSuspend key was added). It hangs a bit to much for me to be comfortable with as it is. I remember it working better in the past and I thought the reformat/clean install might fix it.)

In fact I am a bit concerned about this mouse business. It hangs every few seconds and occasionally my browser will go "back" without me clicking the page back button or even getting near it.


I'm filtering midi going into scope, both from my keyboard through the midi in and through the sequencer midi in. It did have active sensing and so I am filtering that.

The loop I am using does have a fair amount of control changes, from moving the modulation wheel. I feel the system should be able to stand up to normal use.

Still the inevitable crash. :-/ arrrgh

I'd really like to get this stable enough that I can start recording without worrying about saving after every change and rebooting all the time.

[garyb]

it's hard to say just what is making your computer freeze. i'll tell you this much, i've done dozens and dozens of installs which NEVER freeze...i'm not sure what you've done in your setup, but if the cursor freezes then you have some application running in the backround that is hogging resources....

[Neutron]

do you have one of those mouse which have special drivers such as intellimouse? if you do try uninstalling it and just using the normal windows mouse driver. i know that those things can play havoc with 3dsMAX

[greenbluegold]

Neutron:

It's a plain old vanilla logitech ps/2 mouse. It uses the xp ps/2 driver nothing else.

I've tried it with only SFP running and regular windows processes, monitored using Processexplorer. There doesn't seem to be anything running in the background. CPU performance is usually ~ 3% when the cursor lags.

I didn't have these performance problems before first installing the motu interface and upgrading to ableton 7. I did both at about the same time so I don't really know where the problem lies. I'm going to try another clean install and see if I can get it working with just ableton and sfp installed.

fingers crossed.

Garyb:

I know you've built many systems. Could you point me in a direction of a hardware setup that you'd recommend. motherboard, cpu etc etc... My computer is a 2.8GHz p4 which I'd consider upgrading if I can't get this setup working properly.

[garyb]

it's a thought, though i think sp3 works ok....others?

greenbluegold, it'd be pretty cheap to build an intel dp35dp an e8400 and 2gig of kingston valueram(1.8v), which would be light years beyond what you have now in power. you'll need an adaptor cable, though because there's no ps/2 connectors on the dp35dp.

[greenbluegold]

I've got good results!

I did another clean format and reinstalled windows.

I installed scope, and then ableton.

Tested the stability using the scope midi in/outs >2000 bars no crash. satisfactory

Installed the MOTU drivers.

Tested again with scope midi in / motu midi out -- it crashed at ~180 bars.
So there was a problem with the MOTU.

I checked my IRQs there was a conflict with the onboard ethernet and onboard audio with a USB device. I turned off the onboard ethernet and onboard audio in my bios.

Tested again with scope midi in / motu midi out -- it crashed at ~310 bars.
A little better, but not good enough.

I then added the DisableSelectiveSuspend key to my registry.

Tested again with scope midi in / motu midi out -- no crash at > 7100 bars ~ 3.5 hours. That's good enough for me.

The difference between this time and the previous clean install is that on the first try I installed drivers for a pci ethernet connection, installed anti virus software AVG and a firewall Comodo, and then fully updated my windows.

I would turn off the net connection, the firewall and the anti virus before testing in ableton, but somewhere along the way something was changed or something unhappy was added that gummed up the system.

I'll keep this install a net virgin (As I know you should keep your DAW off the web) and do internet from an old win2k partition.

Now that it's working, I'm a bit less inclined to upgrade, even though my system is pretty old, as long as it's running what I need I'm happy and the longer I wait to upgrade the exponentially better the next computer will be.

thanks again everyone, there were numerous problems that needed to be fixed and each of you gave advice that was essential in the end.

woot! to planetz!

[Neutron]

Thats good! you worked it out very well, although you probably could have gotten away without all the reinstalling. however that probably was what helped you to figure it out.

can you post on the selective suspend thread about how it helped you

[greenbluegold]

I think there was more trouble in my setup than just the USB selectivesupsend issue. It could be that was just what pushed things over the edge into completely unusability. I suspect background processes related to some piece of software was causing mischief as well. I had previously corrected the IRQ sharing issues and edited the registry to turn disableselectivesuspend and was still being plagued with crashes and hanging cursors etc. Even after turning off my ethernet device, the firewall and antivirus programs using processmanager I still had a few extra processes running compared with my current clean slate install. <shrug>

I believe a large part of my trouble in pinpointing the problem was that there were more than a few of them contributing to the situation.

[garyb]