Unable to locate M-Audio Hardware. Make sure your hardware is connected and turned on

[ytass]

Hello all,

This is just infuriating me. I have a clean Windows XP SP3 install, and have installed the M-Audio Firewire driver 5.10.0.5058, and then installed Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0

I am using a Firewire Solo. Windows sees the Firewire Solo and can use it (can play audio file in windows media player, and can listen out of speakers connected to FW Solo).

When I launch Pro Tools, it reaches the dialog box. "Unable to locate M-Audio Hardware. Make sure your hardware is connected and turned on".
This is ridiculous. What is going on here? I have already done a fresh install.This problem arose after I installed M-Powered 8.1. I decided to uninstall Pro Tools and go back to M-Powered 8.0, but that didn't help.

Please help!

I see so many other people have problems with M-Audio hardware. It really seems a joke that the product has such terrible performance and so many problems. Come on Digidesign and M-Audio. This should be simple - I'm wasting all my time trying to get my system up and running, where as this time should be spent on MUSIC!!

Make/Model: Gigabyte P55M-UD2 Rev 1.0
Operating System: Windows XP SP3
Processor: Intel i7 860
RAM: 4 GB Corsair 1333 MHz DDR3
FireWire: On board - Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller, T.I. TSB43AB23 chip

[ytass]

I looked at the IRQ setup on my machine. The Firewire Solo is sharing IRQ 17 with the network card. So I disabled these other 2 instances:
* Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 6 - 3B4C
* Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller

After disabling both devices, Pro Tools still did not see the M-Audio hardware.

[DigiTechSupt]

I believe the current driver version is 6.0.1_5.10.0.5058. That's what came up when I went to the drivers page of the M-Audio website and selected Firewire Solo under XP with SP3. You should probably update to that driver.

[ytass]

I have updated the driver to 6.0.1_5.10.0.5058. Pro Tools still cannot find the hardware.

I have installed the Reaper DAW and it works perfectly with the M-Audio Firewire ASIO driver, and it was effortless, just like it should be.

Any suggestions - other than having to reinstall an OS, re-install Pro Tools etc etc?

[ytass]

I have been able to fix my problem. I had 2 different drivers installed on my system. One, was the driver that came with my install disk. The other was the 6.0.1_5.10.0.5058. I uninstalled the old driver and re-installed the new driver, and hey presto.

Thanks for your help.