pro tools freeze at startup

[dominic]

hi,
i recently bought a new laptop and the 003 rack with pro tools. I've had all sorts of troubles since getting this machine and the rack a month or so ago.

the problem now is that it freezes at every startup at the 'creating dae objects' point.

I'm running vista home with service pack and pro tools LE 7.4.2 with rack 003
on hp dv 5 laptop.
i was getting heaps of 6087 errors (and still get 6085 and 6088's when i'm recording sometimes), bought an external hard drive - i run it on eSata - and an express card firewire port (some brand called skymaster but it's got TI compatible chipset) and that seems to have fixed that.
My protools sometimes froze at 'reading preferences' and sometimes at 'creating dae objects'. i removed the preferences from the data folder and now seem to just get the dae objects freeze.
sometimes however it loads ok and then works alright but not super reliable - like i say, i get those recording errors from time to time.

i have nvidia geforce 9600m gt as well and heard people had problems with this and pro tools 8, but i tried to uninstall drivers and it just reinstalled them.

also a more general question: when it crashes i can't get out of it even if i ctrl-alt-delete the only way is to either turn off computer (hold the power button till it suddenly powers down without shutting down properly) or turn off the 003 at which point it immediately exits the program. i tend to do the later, is that bad for my rack?

any help would be greatly appreciated!!
dominic

[bblue]

Sure sounds like the main problem is your FW card. Whenever you have a hang and turning off the 003 clears it, it's almost certainly FW related.

Have you tried a different or shorter cable?

I just went through something similar trying to find a compatible card locally. There are several with different TI chipsets and made by SIIG which *don't* work. One that looks like or emulates TI doesn't have too much of a chance. I finally found an old 2002 ADS card with the specific TI chip in it, and it works fine.

Beats me why the Digi drivers can't take more of these chipsets into consideration.

--Bill

[dominic]

thanks a lot for the suggestion bill.
what you're saying makes sense. i bought this card because it seemed like the 4 pin connection in my laptop could've been the problem before. this was the only express card firewire controller i could find in the shop. there's not a lot of demand for them apparently. what really sucks is that though i had some problems before, now i can't even start the program!
i'll definitely try a shorter cable - the one i'm using is pretty long although it did come with the rack. and i guess i'll look around for other firewire cards.
i might also check it with the inbuilt one again just to see if it starts.
thanks again,
dominic

[dominic]

just checked with internal firewire port and it does open (doesn't freeze at start up) but back with old problem of dae error 6087 after a few seconds of recording.

[dominic]

hey i just thought i'd add, i can sometimes get past the startup freeze if i uninstall the firewire controller (express card firewire controller) and then reinstall - just did it then and it worked... what does that mean, any guesses?

also another thing - my express card chipset is TI xio2200 so i think it is Texas Instruments
dominic

[dominic]

if i'm not mistaken this is the exact firewire card i bought:

http://www.buyextras.com/syie13fiexti.html

anybody know anything about these?

[bblue]

The only TI chip that appears to work correctly is the TSB43AB23 which is on the SIIG NN-440012-S8 board, and also appears to be in the ADS PYRO PCI 64R2 board, Belkin F5U503 PCI, SIIG NN-PCM312-S2 for Cardbus and
Unibrain FireBoard Blue™ 1394a for PCI. I didn't see any Express cards with that chip in them, but with the chip part number you might be able to research it further.

Maybe Digi could comment on a possible compatible express card?

--Bill

[ejwells]

Originally Posted by dominic

I'm running vista home with service pack and pro tools LE 7.4.2 with rack 003

Ummm...7.4.2 is for Mac. Did you mean 7.4cs2?
You need LE7.4 for Windows (then 7.4cs8)

And...Vista Home Edition isn't supported.
Windows Vista Ultimate and Business are.

[dominic]

sorry that should've been 7.4cs8 (comes up as 7.4cs7 but that's normal right)
i know vista home isn't supported; if it wasn't such a hassle trying to get rid of it and put xp on i would've done that already - i mean i've already tried and i don't know how you're supposed to do it. i thought i'd try everything else first but options are slimming. like i say i can make it work sometimes after screwing around uninstall/unplugging the card then putting back in and so forth but i still get dropouts - 6085 error. i've got my buffer at the highest 1024. also played around with other settings - now got them all on max: level 4 dae buffer, large cache size. can't go above 90% in cpu usage limit with 2 processors though.
dominic

[DigiTechSupt]

Maybe Digi could comment on a possible compatible express card?

We don't have any that are currently officially supported, but I've used and others have had success with this Siig 2-Port