Need serious help on system advise and interface

[finalcut]

I'm having such bad trouble with my PC system (that worked well) now that I have upgraded to PT 10. that I may not be able to salvage it.

I have been using a creation station from sweetwater for a few years (3 to 4 years), and while it is indeed a little dated I didn't expect this degree of trouble. It's a dual core 3.4 GHZ pent with 8 gig of ram. I'm still using my 02 rack as well. Like I said, up until upgrading to PT10 and Win7 64 it was running and tracking like a champ!


I had it up and running with a fresh install of Win 7 64 and my new PT10... was opening sessions, testing mixes.... with just a few minor issues that I was getting under control and then BAM - all of a sudden it won't even launch - I keep getting this error:

Could not allocate memory for the disk cache. Try lowering your disk buffer (DAE Buffer), disk cache size, or engine voice count. If you got this error on launch, delete your prefs and try again. (-9514)

I responded to this error with over an hour with a Sweetwater tech (who was great) and another couple hours after that with a certified service tech I know making every possible adjustment we could think of and read about, and I have gained no ground. I also searced these forums and others and have tried everything suggested that I could find.

So....
At this point I am thinking I may have to get a new PC and a new Hardware interface if I can't get this resolved in a day or so. I have a total of 2k to 2.5k to spend, which leads me to the following questions:

1- How can I be sure my new PC will run PT10 reliably and awesomely? It would be a PT system only, so all I care about is running PT10
2- What are some great interfaces with good options for tracking Guitar, Vocals, drums, Midi.... decent options of i/o
3- What interfaces are best for low latency? USB or Firewire - or does that matter?

Thank you all very much.
And by the way if I learn of a solution for my error I will certainly post that info here incase it might be useful to others.

Carl

[panamajack]

The good news is you did not get a blue screen.

If your system is 3 to 4 years old, what about your hard drive? Or have you at least run "check drive for errors" and "defrag" just to stress test your hard drive? Cross-linked files used to be more common, the newer hard drives seem less likely to whack your data, better error correction, etc.

I assume your tech removed your memory sticks one by one and made sure each passed.

Hard drives with wobbly bearings, or flakey memory, can create error messages that do not identify their true source.

[BradLyons]

I had been a Windows user for many years---but about 3-4 years ago I got tired of all the problems and moved to the Mac instead, EVERY ISSUE WAS GONE. I also had that same computer, two of them actually----and both gave me issues. I even went as far to have (3) builds made with a Quad Core, various video cards, etc and I just couldn't get anything stable. I moved to the Mac and never looked back, the only regret I had is not doing it sooner. With that said, Windows can certainly work fine but understand there are SO many variables. I was having disk errors even with a 4098 buffer! That's right, 4098 on my buffers on a PTHD system on a Quad Core machine. We determined it was a particular video card's driver. So we replaced the driver with the standard Windows driver and while that worked, I wasn't happy with it. We put in a new video card, that problem went away----however I would have graphics redraw issues when using a large LCD/TV---problems I didn't have on my previous video card. While I think you can certainly build a good Windows system, again it is Windows---and when it comes to 64-bit Windows I think we are still some time out before it becomes fairly stable. I'm NOT saying to get a Mac---but my personal situation I dumped both systems (again both were PTHD) and went Mac with the vary same hardware, NO problems.

Feel free to email me directly, I had quite a bit more information to share about your particular situation.

[finalcut]

Hi fellas. Thank you very much for your replies.
Panama, my tech did indeed remove the ram one stick at a time. He tested it on line as well. Hard drives looked good to and the OS was a clean reformated drive...

Brad, you sound just like one of my best friends who went to mac about a year ago. He and I were going over my problems and he was very cool about it like you are in saying that he likes mac much better. I may just go with a mac.

I have been a PT user on PC for a good number of years and love the software. I have taken great care in building or selecting my PCs, and no matter how hard I try I end up having issues. This particular creation station has served me well for several years, but in order to keep it running well I had to jump through hoops here and there.
I just want to record music... If a mac can keep me in creative mode rather than "tweek my PC all the frikin time" mode than I'm going with a mac.

My only concern is how hard and costly it will be to change my:
Pro Tools, Waves Plugs, Superior Drummer from PC to Mac versions...

Thanks again guys.
Carl

[bonzerboy]

MY PC no problems, runs like a camp 6 core I7 processor woohoo

[finalcut]

well I got PT10 up and running and it seems to be going ok on my old box. I had to do a complete reformat of the os and redo win 7 and everything else. That was the official last straw... if it craps out again I'll get a new system.

Thanks again guys.

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by finalcut

well I got PT10 up and running and it seems to be going ok on my old box. I had to do a complete reformat of the os and redo win 7 and everything else. That was the official last straw... if it craps out again I'll get a new system.

Thanks again guys.

By the way NEVER just upgrade the OS----whenever you need to upgrade the OS on a computer, it is ALWAYS best to wipe it clean and start fresh with a brand new installation.

[thomasjbs]

There are 2 questions for you to ask yourself:

1) What *other* issues are occurring on your Windows PC?

I come from a tech perspective: 20+ years of PC support. If you're not having *other* PC issues, it may not be a PC issue. Windows PCs get blamed a lot when the actual issue is "software" or "device compatibility" issues. Device Compatibility" issues are not a Windows issue per se. You just have to make sure you purchase hardware that your "preferred vendor" (Pro Tools), supports.

Pro Tools appears *very* extensive and comprehensive, but it is not without its own problems: For example - installation would *not* continue until I installed some ASIO driver. Pro Tools installation would not continue and would not tell me why. I had to find the answer on the internet. I understand - they can't support every configuration everywhere - but it still didn't tell me what to do or why it was necessary. This is *the* biggest issue with ALL PCs (Macs included).

Macs get around this issue by Apples use of a Closed Hardware Platform. I cannot install Mac OS on my Dell, HP, or GigaByte motherboard without extensive hacking and Apple license violations.

Limited Hardware Platforms = Fewer Software Integration problems.

But My Brand new MacBook Pro locked up 4-6 times in the first month I owned it prior to installing ANY software on it. (Garage Band) But I still like it.

Trying to Find out which SOFTWARE driver is at fault (not a MS problem) can be a horrible process which is why:

2) It might be a *lot* simpler to purchase a MAC - **if** you can guarantee that your already-purchased hardware and software will work on it.

[thomasjbs]

Buffers on a hard drive determine speed and throughput of data from the hard drive - not reliability.

So if you have a drive with 0 buffers or 4096 or 8192, it simply means that data will be read or written slower or faster.

Some apps don't support WRITE caching, so things can go wrong, but it's not an OS problem. It's just a requirement that you have to adhere to (if ProTools has any write-cache requirements).

[katerkarlo]

Carl, I am in a similar situation as you. I own a Win7 PC that is fast and reliable with Cubase. With Pro Tools, on the other hand, I am constantly having issues : crashes, error messages about not having enough memory, midi delays, noise bursts at the end of every recording etc. etc.

I am getting sick of trying to solve all those issues. I have the impression that Windows and Pro Tools is a hit or miss affair. Some people are lucky, some are not. I am not saying that Windows is the culprit, but Pro Tools is very picky when it comes to system components and drivers.

Right now I think I will either go back to working with Cubase or get a Mac.