PT 6.4cs9 Playback issues........help. please.

[Aoede]

Ready to throw it all out. The past week I have not been able to playback anything in PT. I'm always getting the -6085 and -6089 errors and it doesn't matter what the playback buffer setting is at. It will not even play one guitar track that I had recorded sometime ago. I've had the computer for over a year and it was specifically built for PT. I have an approved Firewire card and dual drives. The thing is, it used to work! Now all of the sudden nothing! I re-installed PT again today and the updates and still get the same crap. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I've already searched.

Thanks.

[gonzalo]

i am having similar circumstances ...i get a DAE ERROR 87...i have trouble shooted in all aspects ...does any one know how to increase the data bit transfer rate ...i have scsi hard drives & firewire drives but it is happening with everything...please help ...thanks

[Aoede]

Thank you for hi-jacking my post....I see you've finally started your own.



Anyone have any answers?????????

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Perhaps if you list your system details.. including which OS and SP.

Rail

[Aoede]

Sure Rail. You've been a big help in the past. Thanks.

Win XP pro with SP2 and I think my Firewire card is the SIIG 1394 model...hard to remember.

I'm wondering if I should try a new Firewire cable. Once in a while in the past I was having issues when listening to music through the 002R and my monitors. The 1394 light would flicker on and off and the music coughs and sputters and cuts out constantly (using Windows Media Player). I'm having this issue tonight. Although whn I fire up PT the Light stays on but, I can't playback ANY tracks. hit the play button and sometimes it doesn't even light up....I have to hit it several times and it starts for maybe a second and then I get the errors.

[jazzmandan]

You state that you have had the machine up and running for a year. But I see you have SP2 with your XP. Could it be your problems stated when this was updated recently?? If so, there is a lot of chatter about a firewire driver from MS that is a new fix.

jazzmandan

[Aoede]

No, I was getting playback upon installing SP2 and then the 6.4cs9 update. Now FF a few weeks and now I can't playback anything. I did the MSCONFIG where it boots only the minimum requirement to run Win XP Pro and started PT and get the same symtoms.

[Aoede]

Anyone interested in buying a PT/002R?

[Aoede]

^

[jazzmandan]

A couple of suggestions to troubleshoot:

1)Can you use the XP system restore to go back to a point in time when things were working?
2)Can you eliminate the firewire external drives and record and play from the internal system drive?
3)Does the demo sound track play properly?
4)Can you reistall XP SP1 from your original system disks?

Lastly, are the NW Burbs any where near the Lake Zurich /Hawthorn Woods area.

jazzmandan

[Aoede]

Hi Dan,

I tried the restore. Back to the point in early November before I installed service pack 2 and 6.4cs9. So it was 6.4 and service pack 1 and when I started PT and tried to playback something it would reboot my machine....so then I installed the 6.4cs9 update still w/ SP1 and it stopped the rebooting but, it wouldn't playback. So, I undid that restore and I'm still here in limbo w/ SP2 and 6.4cs9 I'm wondering if it my confuser.

I'm not sure what you mean on #2. I have two 80gig seagate drives in my confuser...one for the audio. Firewire out of the 002R to the Firewire card in my confuser.

Where is the demo sound track? I'll try and look for it. (update)The "be There" demo cannot payback...no matter what the buffer setting.

I should do a complete reinstall of Windows Xp Pro again. Just not sure of the steps to do it. Can I wipe out everything on the computer or will it just reinstall the OS?

Even tonight not using PT....just using the 002R to listen to music through my monitors I'm getting massive studdering and cutouts....even rebooting and the same thing....using Windows Media Player. I tried switching the Firewire cable to different ports and still the same crap...I've had this happen a couple months back then it goes away and now same thing.

I'm about 25 minutes west or 14 miles from Lake Zurich.

Thanks,
Tom

[jazzmandan]

My personal opinion, ...this is an SP2 problem. Your restore, in all likelyhood, did not return you to a clean SP1 and as a result could not eliminate the conflicts. Regarding the two seagate hard drives, be sure that they are both running in DMA5 mode.

If you search this forum you will see that there was some discussion in the past several months about a problem with the Seagate drives not defaulting to this setting. There is a "tool" at the seagate website to force the 7200 rpm drives to run in the optimum mode.

There was also a post several weeks back about a new "hot fix" from MS for updating the firewire drivers following SP2. Early claims were that this was going to be a salvation, but I'm not sure how it is panning out.

You can't playback "Be There"! This tells me that there is trouble with the hard drives. Try moving "Be There" to your other internal drive (be sure it is DMA5) and see if it plays.

When all else fails don't be afraid to reinstall XP Pro. Put in the original system disk and restart the machine. Yes, it reinstalls with two options, one will not wipe the machine and the other will. I suggest, first back up everything, second try the reinstall to "fix" which will not wipe the confuser but only the OS. This typically does not work since the registry will not be completely revamped. Finally, go ahead and reinstall with a "reformat" of the drive. This will wipe every thing.

Once you have a clean system. Disable the automatic updates to keep SP2 from coming back. Reinstall back to your original PT (no need for the cs updates) and try to playback "Be There"

Only one mans opinion, if there is a better solution I sure wish someone would step up to the mic.

Good Luck

[Aoede]

Thanks Dan, I'll give it a go...didn't hear about the Seagate drives. I do remember installing PT over a year ago when I first bought it and went cautiously through everything in the "Getting Started Guide" and it said to enable DMA for any IDE hard drives...I'll look into it as well as the other suggestions.

Thanks again,
Tom

[Bodie]

In addition to that...if I read your post right, you're using the Firewire Digi002R...if so, there's two things to know:

1) Works fine on clean XPSP1 with 6.4
2) If you upgrade to XPSP2, there were fixes in the implementation of Firewire that you'll need PT 6.7 to use (Digi fixed it's implementation of Firewire drivers in this release to match)

To validate this:
If you have disk space, install a 2nd installation of XP with SP1 in a new directory (call it WinXPSP1)
Then install PT 6.4 (point it to a 2nd Digi Directory so you don't invalidate your test)

You'll find all is well

Then update to XPSP2
Update 6.4 to 6.7

Firewire is no problem at that point

For those that have read this far...congrats, I work and live in Redmond, WA...and am a user of ProTools, so not only do I know the OS very well, I know it with PT...try that out first and let me know if it solves your problem (should most certainly <G>).

/Bodie

[jazzmandan]

Sounds like good advice. It's just a shame you have to spend $75 to fix a machine which was working well in the past. But that seems to the story with SP2.

jazzmandan

[Aoede]

Well, the latest news is I think it's my confuser and not the fault of PT. I remember when I had my computer built by a co-worker that we had some problems and did know if it was the drives or mobo. Things got better but, the machine always had some glitches here and there. Well, last night I downloaded the Seatools program from Seagate and had it boot from the cd that I made. Seatools diagnostics only got 30 seconds in and this is the error I got:

ERROR

The controller is unable to properly communicate with the drives that are attached to it. This could be do to a bad connection, cable or controller. Seatools maybe unable to continue testing. Check cables and connection for the following drives: PRIMARY MASTER


So, there it is. I still have some screen shots of when Martin built my confuser. Things like one of the 80 gb drives was full or would only show 4.6 something space available and the next reboot it would be fine or upon boot up it would tell us it couldn't find the OS that we installed and put the disc in the drive. I remember we tried a different cable so, i'm counting that out. Do you think it's the mobo? The controller is on the mobo right? A mobo swap. I have the Intel D875PBZLK i875P Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU. I'm almost afraid to go with the same. Any suggestions?



Thanks again.

[jazzmandan]

Controllers, chipsets, mobo, sockets... I'm afraid if we get this deep into the confuser I will have to bail.

But, based on the error message, I would do what it says and just open the case and disconnect and then reconnect the HD cables to be sure they are properly set. Maybe I would switch the two hard drives or eliminate one ... or maybe not. I would think that a bad connection or a failing master drive would have a very serious negative effect on the operation (that is I'm surprized it would boot).

Best maybe after that to get Martin to comeback and run some diagnostics to pinpoint the hardware problem.

Good Luck

jazzmandan