Error message "hardware in use by another application"

[Naom-Harv]

I have recently installed Pro Tools first and whenever I try to open a project I get the error message "Pro Tools is unable to reacquire the hardware because it is in use by another application. Please quit other apps and hit "OK" to retry. If the hardware cannot be acquired, please quit and relaunch PT". No other apps are ever running, and when I hit 'quit' I get the following message "AAE error -6001 was encountered". The only info that I can find on 'error -6001' is that it's to do with drivers. Has anyone else encountered this issue?

[amagras]

Let me guess, you are using Windows and your hardware is processing the audio of the OS? That's the problem, probably... but you need to read a thread called "Help us help you" which is a brief introduction to what we need to know about your system before we can offer any real help here.

[Naom-Harv]

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll check out that thread and come back with more info about my system.

[Naom-Harv]

Any chance of posting a link to that thread? Not having any luck finding it! Help me to help you to help me...!

[amagras]

Originally Posted by Naom-Harv

Any chance of posting a link to that thread? Not having any luck finding it! Help me to help you to help me...!

Sure, here it is:
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=300050
Welcome to the community.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Naom-Harv

Any chance of posting a link to that thread? Not having any luck finding it! Help me to help you to help me...!

Its up near the top of this, and every DUC page. Right below the large purple
Avid Pro Audio Community

[Naom-Harv]

Thanks folks for helping out a newbie! Can't believe I didn't see that link at the top of the page. Doh!

I will get the info required and post it here in a while... tho I may be some time...

[Naom-Harv]

Eh ok, well looking at the 'General Troubleshooting' page as directed by the 'Help Us Help You' page it looks like the game may be up, but I'll share my findings here in case I'm not understanding something...

First issue is that my laptop has only an i3 processor where the minimum requirements say I need an i5.

Second, amagras, I guess when you asked if I was using windows and was the hardware processing audio off the OS, was that to do with this big red scary warning I've copied off the troubleshooting page?

"You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive"

Hmm well my laptop doesn't have a firewire port. I'm not sure I'd know the first thing about installing an internal drive on a laptop either. Is it reasonably simple to do? Or is it sounding like, between needing a faster processor and a secondary hard drive, my Pro Tools First journey is at an end? Surely not! Any advice?

[amagras]

Hold down a minute Super, just post your sistem info and if you are on Windows post a Sandra report. Finish reading the link, then we can talk about your hard drive and other limitations, there are folks here running PT with less than what's recommended.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Naom-Harv

"You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive"

Some of this is old, but the spirit still matters, BECAUSE: streaming audio takes a lot of drive speed. Most laptops have a spinning drive that is 5400 rpm. That's too slow for streaming much audio, PLUS, the system drive is also handling a lot of work "under the hood", so take a slow drive, ask it to do 4 times the work=lousy performance. These days, you CAN get buy with a single drive, IF(the great big "IF") the drive is a fast SSD(solid state drive). The better SSD's can handle the extra load as they have no moving parts. Not all SSD's are properly high-performance. Samsung 850 EVO and 850 PRO are well-proven and very popular among us Pro Toolers Having said this, I do use Samsung SSD as the system drive in all my machines, but I still get better performance when sessions are on their own separate hard drive(all my recording drives are 7200 rpm)

Back to the i3 for a moment, Pro Tools is a resource hog(as compared to some other DAW software) and some plugins(especially amp sims and some VI's) so your little i3 will get bogged down really quick(i3 is a "budget" cpu and you need power. i5 is okay for some, but I always recommend an i7 quad as the minimum)