Constant short freezes PT 12.7.1 Win 10

[Du0]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is a long one but here goes. I'm hoping someone can help me improve the performance of my PT 12.7.1 system.

I subscribed to PT two months ago. It was running pretty well on my PC until yesterday. I was running sessions with complete songs happily with no performance problems.

THE ISSUE
It has started freezing for short periods. It will do this when running a track or just moving around the interface and navigating menus. It freezes for I'd say no more than a second or two then runs again, a few seconds later it does it again.

This did coincide with having another issue where a couple of days prior to subscription renewal my licences stop working and turn orange in iLok manager. This prevents me from launching PT at all. This has occurred at both billing cycles so far but I can't say that this is related to the performance issue so I'll leave that one there.

Every now and then PT will show as Not Responding in windows but then comes back again. Watching the System Usage shows no correlation with CPU or memory usage as it occurs even at idle with CPU at only 1 to 2%. Other changes to system was the install of some new Waves plugins (REDD, NLS and PuigChild). I did try removing these from my system again but did not improve things so they are reinstalled.

I have tried a complete reinstall of PT and iLok but this made no difference.

Please note I'm currently not using an external I/O device. My PC is 5 years old but has pretty reasonable specs (I think) Quad Core i7, 16 GB DDR3...

Any help here is appreciated.

Here is my Sandra Report:

SiSoftware Sandra

ID
Host Name : XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Workgroup : WORKGROUP

Computer
Model : OEM System Product Name
Serial Number : Sys***
Chassis : Desktop
Mainboard : ASUS P8Z77-V
Serial Number : MT70250********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) 2104 08/13/2013
Total Memory : 16GB DIMM DDR3

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (4C 8T 3.71GHz/3.9GHz, 3.7GHz IMC, 4x 256kB L2, 8MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC LGA1155

Chipset
Memory Controller : ASUS Core (Ivy Bridge) DRAM Controller 100MHz, 2x 8GB DIMM DDR3 1.33GHz 128-bit

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : KHX1600C9D3/4GX 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1332
Memory Module : KHX1600C9D3/4GX 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1332
Memory Module : KHX1600C9D3/4GX 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1332
Memory Module : KHX1600C9D3/4GX 4GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1332

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Samsung SyncMaster
(1920x1080, 23.0")
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (2CU 384SP SM5.0 1.2GHz, 256kB L2, 1GB 5GHz 128-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)

Graphics Processor
CUDA GP Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (384SP 2C 1.2GHz, 256kB L2, 1GB 5GHz 128-bit)
OpenCL GP Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (384SP 2C 1.2GHz, 32kB L2, 1GB 5GHz 128-bit)
Compute Shader Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (384SP 2C 1.2GHz, 256kB L2, 1GB 5GHz 128-bit)
OpenGL Processor : GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2 (1GB)

Storage Devices
Intel Raid 1 Volume (240GB, SATA) : 224GB (C:)
2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (240GB, SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", SSD) : 224GB (K:)
2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (1TB, SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", SSD) : 932GB (E:)
2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", DVD+-RW, CD-RW) : N/A (D:)

Logical Storage Devices
System Reserved : 100MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Intel Raid 1 Volume (240GB, SATA)
Local Disk (K:) : 224GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ 2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (240GB, SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", SSD)
Local Disk (E:) : 932GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ 2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (1TB, SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", SSD)
Hard Disk (C:) : 223GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Intel Raid 1 Volume (240GB, SATA)
Hard Disk : 450MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Intel Raid 1 Volume (240GB, SATA)
Optical Drive (D:) : N/A @ 2x INTEL SSDSC2CW240A3 (SATA1/SATA300, 2.5", DVD+-RW, CD-RW)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : ASUS Panther Point LPC Controller
Audio Device : ASUS Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi High Definition Audio
Audio Device : EVGA GK107 HDMI Audio Controller
Audio Codec : nVidia GeForce 6800 LE [NV40.2]
Serial Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : ASUS Panther Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller
Disk Controller : ASUS Asmedia 106x SATA Controller
USB Controller 1 : ASUS Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller
USB Controller 2 : ASUS Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2
USB Controller 3 : ASUS Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1
USB Controller 4 : ASUS ASMedia XHCI Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Send To Microsoft OneNote 2010 Driver (1200x1200, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer v4 (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft Print To PDF (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)
Printer : Brother PC-FAX v.3.2 (A3/LGR) (200x200)
Printer : Brother MFC-J6920DW Printer (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Brother MFC-J6920DW Printer (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Adobe PDF Converter (4000x4000, Colour)

Scanners and Cameras
Scanner : Brother MFC-J6920DW LAN (Scanner, 2400x2400, USB)
Scanner : Microsoft Brother MFC-J6920DW [30055c1b335a] (Scanner, USB)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Intel(R) 82579V Gigabit Network Connection (Ethernet, 1Gbps)
Wireless Adapter : ASUS PCE-N15 11n Wireless LAN PCI-E Card

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 10.00.14393
Platform Compliance : x64

Cheers!

[mjslakeridge]

I don't have a specific answer, but wanted to bump your post up so it will get noticed. Have you done ALL of the optimizations for your version of PT and Windows as shown under the Additional Resources section at the top of this page?

From your Sandra Report, it looks like you have a RAID 1 setup with some of your storage drives. I don't know if that is good for PT (maybe someone else knows more about that).

[JoelG]

A few things..

Have you done all of the suggestions in the Optimisation Guide?

I don't think the lack of an audio interface would cause this problem, but are you using ASIO4ALL with your built in sound card?

I had some issues with my Nvidia video card drivers, they where causing latency spikes. The only solution I found was to change to AMD. That said, there may be newer drivers that fix that, or it might not be your problem. Something to check is run LatencyMon and see if you are getting any spikes and narrow that down.

Joel

[The Weed]

With NVidia on Windows, best to only install the Graphic driver and PhysX and disable any HDMI capabilities in Device Manager.

See this post for more optimizations.

[philgrab]

Make sure you don't have automatic backup scheduled during your session. That one has caught me a few times.

[Du0]

Thanks for the reply and the advice. I had done the optimizations but I went back through them anyway. I suspect Turbo Boost was still enabled on my processor. I couldn't see a clear way to disable this in the ASUS BIOS but found some information about disabling it using the power management settings where you set the maximum processor state to 99% which disables Turbo Boost. I have no idea if that is actually the case but I did it anyway.

I also tried a new user account and PT ran fine under the new user but not the old one. After going back through the optimizations the problem seems to be fixed. The only major change I made was the power management settings on the CPU which i thought I had done already

JoelG: ASIO4ALL is not used, Thanks for the tip on LatencyMon. This appears to be OK when running a test.

So for now it seems to be fixed. interesting it was under just the one user account that the issue occurred so maybe it's a software conflict and will come back.

Cheers!

[Darryl Ramm]

Common causes of this is Pro Tools getting its underwear in a knot about floppy and optical drives.

Go into Windows device manager and remove and floppy devices that appear there (yes ones you don't really have to start with)

Make sure there are no optical
discs in any optical drives.

Reboot the computer and test with Pro Tools.

---

I see it is now fixed.... any chance you had an optical disc in a drive while this was happening?

[Du0]

Thanks Darryl, there was no CD in the drive and I don't appear to have Floppy Drive Controllers/Devices listed in Device Manager or in the BIOS I could see.

[onosendai]

From earlier experience this freezing behaviour could stem from the drive you are working from. Have you checked how frequently PT's is set to auto-save? Does your workdrive run at a constant or have you noticed whether it will park its head after some time of inactivity?

It could also be plugin license issue? Do you have a general set of plugins in e.g. template that are always using, have you tried disabling these plugins?

Sidenote for potential plugin perpetrator: right now I will sometimes get random PT's stalls and what from I could find it seems to be exclusively with Izotopes plugins, they suddenly revert to "demo" at random. The iLok(?) or the plugins fail to talk properly with each other and it can end in drm error messages due to failed license checking. The license routine seems to timeout and this affects system performance a great deal before the process is killed.

[Du0]

Well both my C drive where PT is installed and my audio drive are Intel SSD's which I thought should be OK.

I have PT set to auto save every 5 mins?

This issue did occur around the time I purchased and installed 3 new Waves plugins but i couldn't be sure on the timing. I did uninstall the plugins to see if that had any affect but the issue remained.

I have been having a lot of issues with the PT licensing however so maybe this was a factor.