held off interrupts for too long...!!!...What?!?!

[groovilator]

Running MBox software on a Sony Vaio PC (bad combo). Newest problem: can't record anything because with reduced buffer size can't get more than a few seconds of play before getting this message - "Held off interrupts for too long. Increase buffer size." A knowledgeable friend told me it's because Pro Tools is fighting for priority with other (necessary) background programs. I've disabled all startup programs, performed error checks on all drives (commonly known as scandisk), and defragged all drives but the problem seems to actually be getting worse. It might be notable that I didn't realize the importance of error checking until yesterday when I was told about it so I've done many defrags over the past God-knows-how-many months without checking for errors. Could this be my problem and is there an easy way to fix it? I'm really screwed right now because I'm at the tail end of a project I've been working on for five months and when I finish I have potentially paying projects to get started on (which will hopefully finance my new non-Vaio system). Gotta get this one figured out quick.

[GZUZIZLORD]

Get a mac bro. Solved my problem.

How many mghz do you have? do you have enough ram, and you sound like you have seperated drives for audio, do you?

How many plug-ins are you running, try making all the plug-ins inactive, not bypass, inactive and see what that does.

also what external paraphanelia do you have conected to your vaio..printers,etc..

and what are you trying to record.

[Cliffy_Boy]

I stopped getting those errors when I disabled my live virus scan. Make sure the drives are DMA, defrag, raise the playback buffer to 8, hardware to 256, you may also get good results if go into My Computer ( your computer) - properties ( by right clicking My Computer) - Advanced - Performance - - Adjust for Best Performance -Advanced - Processer Scheduling - Programs instead of Background Services. Try different combos to see how it affects performance. You can go into task manager and select Processes - right click on ProTools ( it must be running) then set processer Priority from Normal to High. In Page file size in My Computer somewhere, some people have solved the problem by setting the swap file to 0 meg assuming you have 512 Meg RAM. Good luck.

[groovilator]

Thanks, CB. I followed your performance suggestion in My Computer and my machine is running a little faster. Also I reset the priority in Task Manager and that solved my problem ("above normal" setting works fine). Except now when Pro Tools is running everything else slows wwaaaayyyy down which will make it difficult when I need to multitask (accessing reference material, etc.). Buying a new system is definitely going to be my long term solution but at least for now I know I can still get some work done. And I now know of a number of different things I can try for getting me by. Thanks.

[Cliffy_Boy]

sorry for f**ing the rest of your computer.

[coryc]

What chipset is the MOBO using? VIA, SIS, NVidia NForce, etc???... i used to get the same error's all the time even with 1 track, everything i tried doing to fix the problem never worked until i replaced the MOBO, i was using a Nvidia NForce2 chipset with digi001 and they just wouldn't see eye2eye?...i swapped the MOBO for a "pure VIA" chipset and no more error's...

also, have you tried to disable things like USB/onboard sound/LAN/parallel ports etc... and are you recording onto a separte HDD???

Cory

[crs117]

I am not sure what chipset your sony comp is using, but if you have an on board raid controller, even if you arent running your drives in raid, i would see if i couldnt find the jumper to switch if off. I was having some major nightmares with pt 6.1 even though previous releases seemed to work perfectly fine with my on board raid controller which i used for extra internal hard drives.

Like i said check to see if your mobo has raid on it, then find a way to switch it off. This fixed all my problems.

Christian