somethings wrong... errors dont make sense

[laneyamp]

hi
im using an abit motherboard.. p4 1.7 ghz, 512mb ram.. one 12gb 7200 ibm drive for the system and one 40 gb 7200 ibm drive for audio

everything far surpasses what digidesign recommends.. but i cant have a session with more than say 6 tracks (or say four with maybe 2 dverbs and nothign else).. without getting some sorts of error messages... dosent matter what type.. just all sorts.. 9012.. whatever number. it always says the same thing.. "try increasing hardware buffer size"..

ive emailed digi over and over and over and im getting quite sick of them telling me to go to setups and "increase hardware buffer size".. i can even set the samples to 1024 and i still get it (try recording guitar to a click with the sample rate set at 1024)..

.i have dma enabled.. ive done this that and the other..everything is setup correctly

so ive exhuasted everything as far as what digidesign can tell me

so tonight i decided to run the system monitor while i run pro tools

its using 90 percent of my processors power just to sit idle with a session with 6 tracks and 0 plugins... 90 percent!!!! could that be right?? is it possible that i simply have a defective proccesor?? thats just sitting idle it uses that much power.. i look back at the system monitor log and see that it reaches 100 percent over and over again while loading the session.. and as soon as i press play on the transport it reaches 100 perecent again.. and thats when i get the "increase hardware buffer" etc.. errors

does anybody have any trouble shooting suggestions??

i also decided to look at the system monitor just now while im typing this... all i have is my internet connection open (its a regular modem) .. aol instant messenger, and one internet explorer to type this in.. and my system usage is staying around 50 percent and has just recently peaked at 74 percent??

this cant be right?? is it??

what else could be wrong??

anything??

help..i mean.. ive been stalling getting my drummer in here for weeks and i got all sorts of people that backed up for recording. [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[keny]

1 The hardware monitor cpu usage is a known bug.
2 check your cpu temp. should be around 60 celsius
3 type all of your IRQ's here
4 List all of the programs installed
5 listen to allen hallada
"keny,
There may be some other program trying to compete for the sound card. WinXP has an integrated Windows Media that may be trying to grab on to it. Would be good to disable your network card and get rid of all the background programs you don't need for now. I haven't messed with my Windows XP resources enough to know how to disable these programs yet. In WinME you go into Run/Start/then type in msconfig, then click on Selective Startup, then unselect "Load Startup Group Items". After rebooting check your system resources and then try ProTools again. Hope that helps you bro.
Allen "
6 Prepare for responses and direction better that Digi tech support can give you.
7 Pretend you are on a desert island to curb stress [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

Keny

[laneyamp]

it seems like we might be getting somewhere.. cause all digi has ever told me to do is increase buffer size and enable dma.. and something about a udma controller or something, which my abit motherboard (and according to my computer tech, no motherboards in years) dosent even have.

im not much of a computer expert.. im just a musician... but i understand things pretty well once people tell me how do it .. i follow directions well... so lets give this a shot.

1 The hardware monitor cpu usage is a known bug.

what does that mean? is it a known bug that sometimes cpus use too much? or is it a known bug that there is something wrong with the monitor program?

2 check your cpu temp. should be around 60 celsius

my computer tech said something about that.. he said hes going to get a benchmarking program and give that a try.

3 type all of your IRQ's here

i know how to look at them.. you want me to type everything?.. is there way i can just copy and paste it or something?

4 List all of the programs installed

1. fruity loops (works fine)
2. pro tools (argh)
3. t-racks (for mastering.. works fine)
4. win zip

thats it.. this is just for my studio

5 listen to allen hallada

the box was greyed out.. i unchecked it.. ill repost if it helped any.

6 Prepare for responses and direction better that Digi tech support can give you.

please bring them on!... this pro tools crap is making me look like an ass. i was recently at a "real" studio in miami, and technically my pc should smoke what they were using, my computer has like double the specs of what theirs did.. , and they charge 100s of dollars an hour...i dont want that. i just want to run a session with more than 4 tracks.

7 Pretend you are on a desert island to curb stress

ill forward that to my band, as more days go by where were not getting recorded.
[img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[da BaSsTaRd!]

if you can afford it, you should consider buying a new mobo, cpu and ram according to the specs on this thread. they've been thoroughly tested by PT users and are pretty cheap. they also make a very powerful system - probably more so than your P4 setup.

A7M266 motherboard (bios 1.007) 55.00
AMD XP2200+ CPU 146.00
Micron 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM 126.00

[keny]

I've typed mine in the past. Get to it! Time's a wastin'

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Keny

[laneyamp]

k

heres what i did.. i setup a new hardware profile and just disabled absolutley everything i could... then i ran pcmark2002... the results between my normal configuration and my protools configuration were very very different.. is anyone familiar with this program??

[keny]

here's the theory.

The less stuff you have in that list the better. The system reconfigures itself to the available IRQ's. You can try putting the card in a different pci slot (like in the middle slots), and you can disable the stuff in the IRQ list that you don't use. Your problems will go away as soon as you get the 001 on it's own IRQ by itself, solo.

Is this windows 2000 or 98se? Xp handles IRQ's differently and gives you a bunch of them. You can get xp home oem for 90$ and have 32 tracks. (no doubt you'll be doing some debugging there too though)

For instance the printer port has it's own IRQ. If you don't have a printer, Why have a port? Same with usb. If there are no usb devices, why have usB?. What is the creative pci modem enumerator? is this your dial up modem? or are you using a different cpu for the internet? Is that two "storage controllers"? There's a lot of stuff here that i haven't seen.

What is your complete system configuration, including printers, peripherals, hard drive setup, and pci cards?

"Prepare for battle"

Keny

[laneyamp]

its an abit motherboard, 512 ram, 2 ibm drives, 7200 rpm, one is a 12 gig system drive and the other is a 40 gig for songs

theres a soundblaster modem and a hp printer.. this computer is strictly for pro tools.. but i have the modem in it to check my email and the printer if i need to print up cd notes and stuff.

heres what i did and its working MUUUUCH!!! better..

i made a separate hardware profile just for pro tools.. i disabled absolutley everything that i could that i knew what it was. .and left the things that i dont know what they were

the digi 001 is still sharing with two other devices but i dont knwo what they a re?intel

8201ba/bam smbus controller 2443
acpi irq holder fro pci irq steering

i can figure out how to disable the smbus controller (whatever that is?) and then it dosent show up as sharing a port with the 001

but i cant figure out where the irq holder is in order to disable it... and i dont know what it is either

if you look back at my list... what else in there do you know i could disable?

[keny]

Is there a controller card running your hard drives? What is that thing!

you should look inside and see how many pci cards are in there. trying to identify each one.

What are the hard drives hooked up to? a pci card or the motherboards ide controller?

Glad to see you're getting on track, though I feel you still need the 001 on it's own IRQ.

Keny

[laneyamp]

the only things in slots are just the modem and the 001 and my graphics card

i dont know the answers to your other questions

i just did that davec test... where you just keep adding tracks and record for 60 seconds.. i got like 20 tracks.. and i never saw the monitor go red... but what happens is it around track 14 or so it starts taking a few seconds from the time i hit record and see the transport moving to when i hear the audio start comming from my speakers and also after i hit stop it takes a few seconds before i hear the audio stop.. and on top of that.. i tried recording onto each drive to see if maybe one worked better.. but they were both the same... they both make an awufl lot of noise though when it starts to get that many tracks and plugins