Help me stabilise my damn PC!

[sw rec]

Make sure that little round battery on the motherboard isn't dead. If it is , you'll lose your bios settings every time you blink. Should be, I believe, 3 volts.

[DJ Hellfire]

Sounds like the interface could be a possible suspect. Another user last week was complaining about his Scarlet interface cause Pro Tools problems that went away when the interface was not used.

[rfeather1]

Evening guys! I've uninstalled the ASUS bloatware and the system seems most stable after flushing CMOS and setting the BIOS to default.

As soon as I change fast boot, hyperthreading, c-state (all recommended things to disable as far as I know), I run into the freeze.

The battery is showing 3.3volts (the system is only 9 months old).

My interface is using a beta driver 1.9b 12 - the official one is 1.8 but they don't let you downgrade apparently. I've contacted focusrite to check.

If it's the Seagate drives that sucks!

Thinking to go ahead and get Windows 10 before the free end of the month expiry now that's ruled out.

Thanks for all your help so far!

[YYR123]

Windows 10 was nice when I tried it.

Congrats on removing the bloatware it's for the best.

You can downgrade the driver, by uninstalling the current, and then reinstalling the non beta driver

[rfeather1]

This is from Focusrite online support -

"If you see this message, your Scarlett interface may have been connected version of Scarlett MixControl later than the one you currently have installed. Try installing the latest version of Scarlett MixControl from our downloads page here.

If the issue persists, your Scarlett may have firmware from a beta version of Scarlett MixControl loaded on. In this case, try installing the latest beta version of Scarlett MixControl from here."

I've also included the error I get from driver 1.8

[YYR123]

Ahh ok, driver is not firmware.

One thing is not the other.

[rfeather1]

Sorry I wasn't clear, yep its the firmware!

I've attached some of the bios settings I normally disable - it's looking like one of these might cause the PT freeze?

[rfeather1]

So it froze again. C-state and Turbo were disabled in the bios. It's a heavy session at buffer 256 but with my spec it can handle it and at worst throw back an error, not bring down the whole system. I don't normally mix at 256 but at the moment its about recreating the issue and pinpointing whats causing it.

I'm in talks with Focusrite to downgrade the firmware but i'm nearly out of ideas now. Maybe try PT11 again?

[JuanPC]

I love when a computed gives me a challenge, a mystery to solve...
Makes me sad when someone is not up for the challenge.
Anyway...
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=382111

PT freeze is a serious problem...
is PT freeze or the whole Windows freeze? reset must be made?
Do you get the blue Window of death?

Try 12.3.1 the best version for Windows... Yes 12.3.1
Try W7 pro/ ultimate.

Could be a plugin you have.
¿What is your plugin list?
Move all 3rd party plugins to the unused folder, and test 1 by one.

Could be Ilok USB is inserted into a usb3.0 port.

Could be So many thing.
USB2.0 ports are limited to 0.5A "500mA" usually Some USB ports share the same power, could be a conflicting USB device draining too much power.
When Ilok needs to check licenses there is not enough power, because it's a passive device.

When PT is working, safe remove & physically remove the USB, see if you get the same freeze.

[rfeather1]

Hey Juan!

I've tried with and without hyperthreading! Whole system (Windows) freezes, forced restart.

I will try 12.31, thank you for that tip! I never remember having this issue with 11.3.2

My plugin list is quite large (all legit incase people think its that) but i'll prepare that (all latest installers too). It's hard to test because it can take 1-2 hours before the freeze happens. To test 1 plugin at a time will take about a week :) That gives me another idea though, list the plugins in the session that i'm able to recreate the system freeze.

I use a powered DLINK USB2 hub for all my flash drives.

Will try these ideas and get back to you! Thank so you much for helping!