Intermittent DAE errors, 1394 light blinking hell!

[bwherry]

Hi all,

I recently upgraded from 6.4 to 6.7 (and the latest cs update) -- all was fine (sessions loaded, played back fine, etc). Then I went to Windows XP Service Pack 2, and sometimes I had startup glitches, had to reboot, but once a session got up it would be fine for a whole day's worth of tracking, MIDI, mixing, etc. I think one in three PT starts would be successful. This was a few days ago.

Last night I fired up the system to practice some drum parts. First try: DAE -1115 error, blinking 1394 light - reboot. Second try: PT start up fine, but hangs when loading the session - reboot. Third try: PT can't start -- unable to locate Digidesign hardware - 1394 light blinking - reboot. And so on... now it's a different problem and combination of symptoms every time, and I wasn't even able to get a session to load last night. This is very frustrating, to say the least!

I already tried trashing the DAE Prefs followed by a cold reboot, and that didn't help at all.

I *could* go back to SP1 and see if that's better... I'll probably end up completely removing Pro Tools (Wave Driver, ASIO driver, everything) and reinstalling it all first.

Has anyone had similar problems with 6.7 and XP SP2? Ideas??

Thanks in advance!

Brian

ps- one of the failed session loads resulted in a cache.wfm (IIRC) file being left behind in the session folder -- could that be causing problems on subsequent session loads? Should I delete it? Ugh.


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EDIT: RESOLUTION 2/9/2005 -- turns out this was all due to a bad 1394 cable (and a coincidence in timing with the 6.7 upgrade and SP2 install). New cable sorted it all out.

================================================== ===============================================

EDIT: Still having problems 2/26/2005!

After I thought I had the problem sorted out with a new 1394 cable, it's back. Sometimes sessions load and play just fine. The other day I started up PT, played back several sessions, etc. -- no problems. Other times (like TODAY) I get "The operating system held off interrupts for too long" followed by a flashing 1394 light on the 002R. Other times it's a DAE -1115 error. Usually whenever one of these problems happens, PT freezes and I have to restart my machine. Sometimes I have to power cycle the 002R. I stipped this session down to FIVE audio tracks -- that's it. Lately I've had the system usage window open, and my machine is barely taxed *at all*, yet I still get these sporadic failures, freezes, ... I've already read and tried everything in the answerbase, as well as all the solutions mentioned on the DUC. I'm going out of my mind here!

Is there some kind of diagnostic or unit test I can run on the individual parts of my system to determine the culprit?

Please help! Anyone!

Brian



System specs:
=========================================
Intel D845PESV, Pentium 4, 2.8GHz
Windows XP Home Service Pack 2
Pro Tools LE 6.7 (w/ cs8 patch)
1024MB memory
Adaptec FireConnect 4300 1394 card (TI chipset)
Several 7200rpm ATA-100/133 audio drives (mostly WD w/ 8MB cache), internal and external (1394 w/ Oxford 911 bridge)
Digi 002 Rack
Control|24

[darkglass]

brian,

I have found that with any kind of system upgrade... and this one was very significant. The best bet is reload WINXP(from scratch with disk format) then load SP2... Finnaly, load your 6.7 software. I am reasonably confident this will make the problems disappear. Worked for me just fine. As a matter of fact I hose my system about every 3 months... and reload everything fresh. Make sure you back up any important files of course first. Btw: I also suggest running disk defrag on a regular basis.

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi,

The blinking 1394 light indicates the 002 driver is having trouble initializing. Please try an uninstall and reinstall Pro Tools LE 6.7. There is also a slight possibility your troubles are due to a faulty FW cable.

regards,
Digidesign Technical Support

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Does your Adaptec 4300 have the TI chipset? Adaptec changed their chip in the latest shipping version.

Rail

[bwherry]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Rail, my FireConnect 4300 is at least a year old... is there an incompatibility with the TI chipset? Any well to tell if I have that or not?

I'll try uninstalling/reinstalling PT 6.7 tonight and see how it goes... *fingers crossed*

Brian

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Pro Tools likes the TI chipset.

If you look in Device Manager at your IRQ list... (Use the View menu)... you'll see which chipset your FireWire card has.

Rail

[bwherry]

Turns out my Adaptec Fireconnect 4300 *does* have the TI chipset...

Anyway, I uninstalled everything and then reinstalled 6.7 -- same problems. One thing I tried is after a reboot simply trying to play a .wav file (using WinAmp, Windows Media Player, ...) that was on the Firewire drive I had been using -- no go! So, thinking something might be fishy with that drive/interface/cable, I rebooted with that Firewire drive turned *off* -- .wav files played fine with other apps, Pro Tools played through several sessions (on an internal IDE drive) fine, ... no problems!

Could a faulty FireWire cable (or faulty Oxford 911 bridge on the external enclosure) cause problems on the Firewire bus, thus causing problems with communication between the PC and the 002R? I guess so!

Anybody got a good source for nice (but not too expensive) Firewire cables?

Thanks again for all the help,

Brian

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Not cheap.. but the best:

http://www.granitedigital.com/

Rail

[bwherry]

Not cheap.. but the best:
http://www.granitedigital.com/

Whoa, those are pretty serious. I think I'll just swap with an extra I have laying around for now...

BTW Rail, I noticed your name in the 6.7 About... window's rolling title. Are you on Digi's payroll now or was that just a thanks from them for being "the man"?

B

[Rail Jon Rogut]

That's just a "Thank You".

Rail