The Pulsar II driver is causing my Windows XP to crash sever

piphanz · Post by **piphanz** » Fri May 28, 2004 11:32 am

Hi group,

I keep reading in this forum that XP works great with Pulsar cards, so I can't wait to get this problem sorted out

Since installing the PulsarII, my system is notoriously unstable, especially when doing anything audio-related. If I start up Nuendo 2.1 and start recording, the sound will usually freeze up within a minute (repeating a small sample of sound again and again like this-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is...) until I reboot. If I don't reboot, I will get a 0x0000000A (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL)stop error or something similar (c5 errors and 50 errors have been seen on more than one occasion).

Oftentimes my computer will crash with a 0x0000000a error without me having used the board for anything (of course, the driver is loaded anyway).

I know that I have the VIA chipset, which isn't optimal, but can't this be helped in some way?

I'm running Scope 4.0.

A run-down of my system can be seen at

http://www.abes.dk/system.html

but feel free to ask me anything you need to know to give me a hand with this highly frustrating problem.

Thanks a million in advance
Kind regards
Tim

BingoTheClowno · Post by **BingoTheClowno** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:01 pm

What's your PC set to: ACPI or Standard PC mode?

Check the PCI Latency value in the BIOS.

Post by **garyb** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:51 pm

from what i can see about your system you have a few problems. your motherboard is one of them.

that said, things SHOULD work fine. just not optimally. i suspect that you have an irq problem. can you give a rundown of the parts in your computer? what you posted is not complete and has lots of unessessary info. just exactly what are all the parts in your computer?(if you know) what are your IRQs assigned to? is your card sharing an irq with anything else? if so you must change something.(move the card to another slot or disable unused ports or remove unneeded components)

the via chipset on your motherboard(responsible for managing traffic across the different busses on your motherboard)is notoriously ineffecient. there is a patch that might help: http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/#PCI although a good intel(for p4) or nvidia or amd(for amd) based motherboard is the true fix.

are you using a scsi card? you might want to rethink that as pci traffic is VERY high when using lots of asio tracks and reverbs and delays. is it just for those cdroms? do you NEED those?(if they're reading samples,why not add another big harddrive and put your library there?) your motherboard already has poor pci performance.....

there may be settings that need to be addressed. are you in dma mode for your hds?

why does your system say that 500mb of ram is installed and then show a single 1gb stick? at any rate if you are using a single 1gb stick, i would point out that most computers work better with paired ram these days. well with the intel or nvidia chipsets, i believe pairs of ram are preferable. don't know if you have a problem there....

i assure you that having a properly setup machine to run scope on will be well worth the effort. sometimes 20 or 40 dollars is the difference between happiness and failure. that's not much money when you consider that the soundcard costs $1000, so just get the better parts. when you can in the future you might consider the pulsar in your next update. your card will reward you for making it comfortable.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2004-05-28 13:56 ]</font>

piphanz · Post by **piphanz** » Fri May 28, 2004 2:23 pm

Thanks for the superfast responses, guys!

I ran device manager, and it looks as if my IRQ 11 is pretty crowded... look at

http://www.abes.dk/system.jpg

I'll try and sort things out and see if it works. As latency goes, my video card has a latency of 248, my ethernet adapter a latency of 32 and the Pulsar II a latency of 96. This doesn't seem particularly optimal, but I'm not too knowledgable about these things. Is there any obvious changes to latency I should make?

Thanks again.

Kind regards
Tim

BingoTheClowno · Post by **BingoTheClowno** » Fri May 28, 2004 2:54 pm

PCI Latency is located in the BIOS, if your motherboard supports it. I have it set to 0 (zero) but Creamware recomends that set to 64 (I had it set to 64 and had the same problem like you're having).

That IRQ sharing could be also part of the problem. You'll have to move the card to another PCI location, just don't put it in the slot next to the AGP card since most of the time it is shared with the video card.

Another thing you should consider is changing to Standard PC mode and disable the Com ports in the BIOS if you don't use any serial devices (you'll free 2 IRQs by doing that).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: BingoTheClowno on 2004-05-28 15:56 ]</font>

piphanz · Post by **piphanz** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:00 pm

My motherboard, hunk o' junk that it is, doesn't really allow for much adjustment, but I managed to force it to at least consider re-allocating some IRQs. For some reason, the Pulsar2 card doesn't work in any other physical PCI slot in the computer, but by moving a few other things I managed to get a configuration where the Creamware superboard only shared an IRQ with a USB controller.

I ran Nuendo and recorded something using three channels at once and whaddaya know, it didn't crash. Furthermore, the system is still running as I type this. Bonanza!

It's early days yet, but it seems to be doing the trick.

Thanks so much for all your help! I really, really appreciate it! I was cursing Creamware for making something that didn't work, but as usual --- the error was to be found 20 inches from the monitor...

Kind regards
Tim

BingoTheClowno · Post by **BingoTheClowno** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:12 pm

Try using a USB device while recording in Pulsar

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:27 pm

the PCI latency is a number of units how long a card can occupy the bus and prevent others from using it.
That 248 for the viseo card is definetely too high - probably good for hardcore gaming, but not much else

Dunno if such a high setting has any effect in 2d mode at all, but I'd set it to the regular 64 or even 32 (like the network card).

cheers, tom

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:45 pm

I just had a crash on my new Intel-chipset based System,(OS XP,
while the system with the Soltek mainboard with VIA chipset is steady like a rock (now),
The soltek system still has on SFP3.1 drivers, while the Asus P4P800 has the new Scope 4.0 drivers.

That latency Patch did back when installed that system the trick for me also my OS on this sytem is W2000 .

goodluck