Help me stabilise my damn PC!

[rfeather1]

Thank you JuanPC! Great tests you've linked there.

The PC passed them all with flying colours so that seems ok.

I've checked the overclocking and CPU is on default, the RAM is set to default too. As far as I understand overclocking shouldn't be that much of an issue anyway?

The power supply is Corsair RM 1000, so should be more than adequate.

For the OP, I'm using a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20.

Thanks again for everyone's help so far.

[audioman1973]

You were saying the PC is rearranging your hard drive order. I was having that issue because of an external USB Seagate hard drive plugged into my PC. If I didn't eject the hard drive in Windows and unplug plug it physically from the computer it would change the boot order of my drives in the bios and the PC wouldn't reboot because the bios was setting the USB drive as the first drive in the boot order. I even tried setting an option in the bios not to boot on USB drives but it would STILL reorder the drives. So if I use the USB drive at all (it's my system backup drive so that's the only time I plug it in) I have to make sure I eject it from Windows before shutting down or restarting. I didn't look at your system specs but I thought I'd throw this out there in case it fits your situation.

[rfeather1]

Hey audioman1973! I don't have any external drives plugged in but I have noticed something similar where my USB with Waves licenses would appear in the boot order. Normally after a crash and restart one of my internal HDD would be first in order and the SSD wouldn't show so I'd have to reorder them.

I sometimes get the error messaged "ilok cannot be shared across multiple networks" after a restart but believe this a common problem and not directly linked to PT performance / stability.

I have noticed sometimes leaving an external plugged in and booting all hell can break lose so I feel your pain :)

[audioman1973]

The drive I plug in is a USB 3 drive into a USB 3 port. Doesn't seem to happen on any USB 2 ports. Don't know if that's relevant or not.

[rfeather1]

I was just able to recreate the freeze. I left my session looping with lots of plugins, quite a few tracks and 512 buffer. Was hitting around 60-70% overall on the CPU meter. Even when it hits red it doesn't cause a crash.

When I rebooted I got the error "overclocking failed, please enter setup to re-configure your system".

During looping I made sure I wasn't overclocking and watched the CPU speed stay at 0%. The CPU and RAM were set to their default values and didn't budge. The overclocking re-enabled after rebooting.

I use a USB2 hub for dongles. Everything else like soundcard, keyboard go into my USB3 ports.

[JuanPC]

Originally Posted by rfeather1

I was just able to recreate the freeze. I left my session looping with lots of plugins, quite a few tracks and 512 buffer. Was hitting around 60-70% overall on the CPU meter. Even when it hits red it doesn't cause a crash.

When I rebooted I got the error "overclocking failed, please enter setup to re-configure your system".

During looping I made sure I wasn't overclocking and watched the CPU speed stay at 0%. The CPU and RAM were set to their default values and didn't budge. The overclocking re-enabled after rebooting.

I use a USB2 hub for dongles. Everything else like soundcard, keyboard go into my USB3 ports.

If USB drive change boot order and overclocking failed appears means you have: wrong settings in the bios.
Or bios is old/outdated/has bugs.
Or bios is corrupted...

Most high end boards have a dual bios chip, use the other, upgrade to latest bios firmware, configure bios well.

[YYR123]

Did you install the bloat ware from Asus? Those applets that let you overclock from inside Windows and change the fan speed and such?

Uninstall then, they could be causing problems, also I would trash the prefs for the fun of it


How does your computer run when not using pro tools?

Is it stable?

[rfeather1]

So I switched the jumper on the motherboard and flushed CMOS. Reset BIOS to default and have the session on loop to try and recreate the freeze. Seems pretty solid so far...even the CPU meters looking more consistent.

The PC never crashes when I'm not using Pro Tools. I have the ASUS AI suite to monitor CPU, RAM etc. I've had this error before without the ASUS software installed so doesn't seem to be that. Trashed prefs before, that never resolved it either.

Will report back once I know more!

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by rfeather1

So I switched the jumper on the motherboard and flushed CMOS. Reset BIOS to default and have the session on loop to try and recreate the freeze. Seems pretty solid so far...even the CPU meters looking more consistent.

The PC never crashes when I'm not using Pro Tools. I have the ASUS AI suite to monitor CPU, RAM etc. I've had this error before without the ASUS software installed so doesn't seem to be that. Trashed prefs before, that never resolved it either.

Will report back once I know more!

The AI Suite will absolutely cause problems with PT. it causes dpc issues due to its constant monitoring.

[Kevin Kascak]

I've been using Seagate drives exclusively for 10+ years until a little while ago. I built a new PC, Intel 6/12 core 32 GB memory and four HDD's. I kept getting stability problems or long boot ups. Like you said, some drives reordered too. Then my "samples" HDD disappeared, just over the short warranty.

It turns out Seagate has been having major failure rates with some drives as high as 15%. Guess what, I had three on the high failure rate. Once I replaced the HDD's with WD Black, the problems and instabilities went away. There was a 2 TB on the list too. Google Seagate high failure rates or look at the reviews on Newegg.

On a side note, Seagate did nothing for me even with many computers with similar setups. It was expensive but I'm back to Western Digital for the foreseeable future.

Originally Posted by rfeather1

So I switched the jumper on the motherboard and flushed CMOS. Reset BIOS to default and have the session on loop to try and recreate the freeze. Seems pretty solid so far...even the CPU meters looking more consistent.

The PC never crashes when I'm not using Pro Tools. I have the ASUS AI suite to monitor CPU, RAM etc. I've had this error before without the ASUS software installed so doesn't seem to be that. Trashed prefs before, that never resolved it either.

Will report back once I know more!