All of a sudden, incredibly slow operation and glitchy playback

[eldestson]

Hi all,

New to this forum and to using PT 10 at home on Windows 10 Pro. It's been working fine for several weeks and yesterday it seized up and has been running very slowly since then, whether it's a saved project I am returning to or a new one to test it out. Playback is glitchy and I get warnings saying I should remove plugins. I've cleaned registries, nuked the databases, reinstalled PT10, reinstalled PACE, reinstalled audio drivers, disabled Windows audio, re-enabled Windows audio. Nuendo runs fine and Windows audio runs fine.

Two things that changed around this time:
-I plugged in an Alesis V25 for the first time
-Windows Audio suddenly started giving me sample rate multiples options again, after removing them with the "creator's" update or whatever that was called.

My audio interface is a MOTU 828 mk2 plugged into the Firewire pci card, clocked with external wordclock. I am using its ASIO drivers.

Please help!

-------

SiSoftware Sandra

ID
Host Name : DESKTOP-6A2R80L
Workgroup : WORKGROUP

Computer
Model : GigaByte H97M-D3H
Serial Number : To be fille***********
Chassis : GigaByte Desktop
Mainboard : GigaByte H97M-D3H
Serial Number : To be fille***********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) F6 04/21/2015
Intel vPro : 9.01.21.1000
Total Memory : 12GB DIMM DDR3

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz (4C 3.39GHz, 3.4GHz IMC/3.8GHz, 4x 256kB L2, 8MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC LGA1150

Chipset
Memory Controller : Gigabyte Core (Haswell) DRAM Controller 100MHz, 2x 6GB DIMM DDR3 1.33GHz 128-bit

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 2GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-12800U DDR3-1600 (9-9-9-24 5-34-10-5)
Memory Module : 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-12800U DDR3-1600 (11-11-11-29 5-40-13-6)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 2GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-12800U DDR3-1600 (9-9-9-24 5-34-10-5)
Memory Module : 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-12800U DDR3-1600 (11-11-11-29 5-40-13-6)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Samsung S24B150
(1920x1080, 23.5")
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 (1CU 192SP SM5.0 796MHz, 16kB L2, 2GB 1.8GHz, PCIe 2.00 x8)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL GP Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 (192SP 1C 796MHz, 16kB L2, 2GB 1.8GHz)
Compute Shader Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 (192SP 1C 796MHz, 16kB L2, 2GB 1.8GHz)
OpenGL Processor : GeForce GT 720/PCIe/SSE2 (2GB)

Storage Devices
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (500.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL) : 466GB (C:)
WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0 (1TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 932GB (E:)
WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0 (1TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 932GB (D:)
TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 (2TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 2TB (F:)
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224FB (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW) : N/A (G:)

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (C:) : 465GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (500.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL)
GRAND ATT (E:) : 932GB (NTFS, 8kB) @ WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0 (1TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
MOTHER BAR (D:) : 932GB (NTFS, 8kB) @ WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0 (1TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
OLD CHIEF (F:) : 2TB (NTFS, 8kB) @ TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 (2TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
Hard Disk : 852MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (500.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD, OPAL)
Optical Drive (G:) : N/A @ TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224FB (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller #1 : Gigabyte 9 Series Chipset Family H97 Controller
LPC Legacy Controller #1 : T2 86-20
Audio Device : ASUS GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller
Audio Codec : nVidia nForce4 ISA Bridge
Serial Port(s) : 1
Parallel Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : Gigabyte 9 Series Chipset Family SATA Controller [AHCI Mode]
USB Controller #1 : Gigabyte 9 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Controller
USB Controller #2 : Gigabyte 9 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI Controller #2
USB Controller #3 : Gigabyte 9 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI Controller #1
FireWire/1394 Controller #1 : 13330 XIO2213A PCI Express to 1394b OHCI with 3-Port PHY
SMBus/i2c Controller #1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer v4 (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft Print To PDF (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)

Network Services
Wireless Adapter : Hawking HWUN4 Wls-300N Adapter (802.11g (ERP), AES-CCMP, 177Mbps / 54Mbps)

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 10.00.15063
Platform Compliance : x64

Performance Enhancing Tips
Warning 2513 : TPM not detected. Some security features are unavailable.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

[The Weed]

While it may not be your issue, that mismatched RAM stands out.

Also, ,check in your BIOS to be sure you don't have a floppy controller. If you see one, disable it.

And, do you have a CD or DVD in a drive? If so, remove it.

[Ben Jenssen]

And PT 10 has never been supported with Windows 10.

[Darryl Ramm]

Lots of things could be wrong here. And since it's an unsupported config you are going to be mostly on your own. Why are you not running on Windows 7?

Previous advice is a great place to start.

IO buffer size? Sample rate?

What *exact* DAE errors do you get and when?

Did you start by trashing prefs (different than databases)?

*Always* suspect plugins,so you need to do the standard diagnostic step of removing them from the plugin folder*s*.

(the above steps should have been done well before reinstalling Pro Tools etc....).

Make sure "ignore errors" is not checked in the playback engine dialog.

Did this break after a Windows update? I would get off that hamster wheel... Disable Windows Auto Updates (requires Windows Pro which you have) or keep the system off the Internet. And make backups before doing updates.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[eldestson]

No floppy controller, no disc in optical drive.

Not sure why I'm running on Windows 10 instead of 7. At some point a computer auto-updated from 7 to 10 and when I rebuilt this one a while ago I went with 10 because everything was running fine on it. I guess if this problem ends up requiring a reinstall of OS I'll go with 7.

I/O buffer size 2048 at 96 kHz sample rate. I tried different buffer sizes, there was no difference.

I did trash prefs as well as databases.

I'm using quite a few plugins, but the system was stable for most of a month with all of them. This slowness thing is happening even in brand-spanking-new projects with no audio tracks created let alone any plugins running.

Followed Darryl Ramm's advice on unchecking "ignore errors" in playback engine dialog and the program WORKS now (Thank you!), but every operation I perform (literally just clicking on anything, locating the playback cursor, anything) makes it hang for about 6 seconds. More significant operations make it hang longer, up to 20 seconds. When I press play, it glitches for 6 seconds and then plays smoothly. It's functioning, but I doubt anyone could work like this.

I reset the buffer to 128 samples and got this message:
"You are running out of CPU power. Remove some Native plug-ins or increase the CPU Usage Limit in the Playback Engine dialog. (-9128)"

[eldestson]

Oh and no, there was no Windows update at the moment it broke. I had finished a mix and bounced out of Pro Tools, did a rough master in Sequoia 12 with iZotope Ozone 7, plugged in an Alesis V25 for the first time, and next time I opened Pro Tools the nightmare began.

[Darryl Ramm]

*always* suspect plugins. Work to exclude/include them as the problem as soon as you can when troubleshooting. You need to test by moving all plugin files out of both RTAS and AAX plugin folders and restarting Pro Tools. Even unused plugins can cause problems if they are in those folders. You need to exclude them all by doing that simple test.

Have you checked that every third party plugin is up to date?... that's made hard/impossible that you are running on a unsupported config but you should still be on top of this as much as you can. I would get rid of RTAS plugins where there are AAX-32 equivalents (unless the AX-32 ones are known to have problems).

The reason to make sure ignore errors was not checked was to get Pro Tools to throw useful error messages when things go wrong. That it helped fix anything tells me that your system is pretty flakey anyhow.

Pretty quickly if things don't work then sort out what you want to do--run Pro Tools 10 or 12 and then what version of Windows you should install. If you want to keep running Pro Tools 10 and still have problems I would go grab a spare drive/partition and install Windows 7 on it, minimal other stuff and check it works before installing plugins etc. You need to go back and reinstall *everything* from scratch. Or do you have a backup from before you upgraded to Windows 10? You have to get on top of this crap and manager your computer like you actually depend in it.

[eldestson]

Did the plugin test, there was no difference.

I put this computer together recently, started with fresh install of Windows 10, optimized for Pro Tools & then installed all programs / plugins. There is no backup of Windows 7 because 7 was never on this boot drive.

Returned buffer size to max and am still sometimes getting the error notice I posted above, so yeah i guess it's flaking out pretty hard. The consistent thing is the incredible slowness. But Nuendo 4 and Sequoia 12 are both working perfectly. Is it possible that my iLok is broken?

[eldestson]

Well thank you for your help, I'm doing a fresh install of Windows 7 & we'll see how it goes from there.

[Darryl Ramm]

if things are slow on Windows 7 I'd start poking around the Windows Event log looking for clues.

And regardless of if it seems to work OK or not pay attention to that DRAM, use DIMMs qualified for the motherboard and make them all identical, timing, specs, vendor, ...