Actually kind of funny I ran into this thread right now.... I have an extensive XPC story, that has been a journal entry of the last 2 days of my life....2 days ago, a client brought his XPC into the studio, with an assistant engineer, to double productivity in the studio.
We'd be in the main room, recording several vocal and overdub passes on everything, and when done, drag it over the network for the engineer to comp, edit, consolodate, and backup on the XPC using our 002 in our edit room.
Within an hour of our workflow, I was called into the edit room, to see if i could find why the XPC was taking forever for screen re-draws, PT constantly giving DAE errors, just being a total slug.
Re-booting the machine took about 6 minutes before I was able to navigate the computer.
long story short....the system pagefile was horribly fragmented, therefore the system drive was equally as fragmented.... I disabled the system pagefile, defragmented the system drive, checked all settings, DMA, and got the computer back up to speed.
half way through the afternoon, they started getting system memory dumps, and big ol' bluescreens.... I got called back into the edit room.
I convinced them that they needed to let me restore the OS from the CD's that came with the system, and quickly update, and configure XP, install and update PT LE with all appropriate updates to get em fully running, if they wanted to continue using the XPC, I offered them use of a G5, or a P4, both rock solid machines, they elected to get the XPC running properly.
I convinced them that I don't know "where this system has been, who's done what to it, and that it'll be way quicker for me to be sure it's set up properly, by re-formatting, and starting from scratch."
So... we did that, I ran back and forth between the control room, between takes, to spend several hours, re-formatting, installing, updating, tweaking... and we got er running, and man.... she rocks... wow, boots lightening fast, loads PT fast.... big difference... someone I figured, had messed about, with this system, and these poor lads wasted almost a full day, suffering the result of that.
Day 2....(yesterday)
2 hours into the day, I see the Ctrl room Light blinking away on the phone..... I get called into the edit room, same thing as day one, even worse... sluggish, slow, almost to a hault, and I disabled the system pagefile the day before, when we installed, and tweaked away.
I quickly navigated to the hardware manager, and the system drive, was tranfering in PI0 mode, not DMA5 so.... I deleted the hard disk controllers from the device manager, let windows re-detect, and instal on boot, and it worked fine... back to Ultra DMA 5 transfer.
For about an hour......
Then, for no apparent reason, back to PI0 mode, i show the engineer what to do, to delete the Hard disk controllers from device manager, and re-boot, every time it happens, that i'm certain it's probably a hardware failure with the HD, but he's WAY behind with work flow, and now, so am I, and rather then take warranty voiding risks for the client's machine, and time opening the unit to check HD jumpers and cables, to just continue, in this fashion, I offered about 7 times, to set them up on a different machine, there is a G5, and a P4 in the room they are in, that both have been on the same boot for over a month, and are blazing.... they declined, and continued to work on the XPC.
On the way out of the studio at 2:30 am last night (originally were going to be out of the building by 6pm) I asked them how many times they had to delete the HD controller from the device manager.
They said, probably around a dozen.
this is my only experience with the XPC, but i know it's probably the exception to the rule, i understand technology, it doesn't matter what machine you have, you'll sooner, or later, encounter some kind of problem.
I have several well built PC's configured properly, I have an HD 2 Accel rig on one of them, rock solid, trouble free, and a G4, and G5, that have basically been booted since they came home from the store, updated, and occasionally restarted for updates, and installations to re-take.
I'm sure, given the time to spend, tweaking, and pushing an XPC, after owning one or two of them, I may add one to the list of computers that treat me well, but i'll tell you first hand, our little XPC visitor, at our little studio, the last 2 days, did absolutely no "Ass Kicking" with any of my systems, including our office computers (G3's and P3's) If I were the one, given their workload over the past 2 days, I would have quickly taken a G3, or P3 from the office to work on, let alone the G5, or P4 that was sitting right beside them the whole time.
Why people are so stubborn ?? if something stops working for me, and i have another option, to continue optimum work flow, I have absolutely NO loyalty to the wounded machine, i set it aside, till i can effectively trouble shoot it, off the clock, and continue working on what is available, and functional.
Wow, my first "Rant" in a long time.
it's XPC's fault.