System freezes caused by Mbox drivers

[The Blue Peanut]

Hi all, I've been working with ProTools for a while on Macs and recently switched to PC after my iMac killed itself thanks to some terrible construction...

So now, I've got ProTools 8.0.1 running on Windows Vista or Windows 7 depending on what I'm doing. The problem is that the drivers are causing my OS to crash when I'm using the MBox but not ProTools. It's a total system freeze which tends to happen any time within the first 2 hours of starting up. The weird part is that sometimes it just freezes the software that's using the audio and decides it can't see the MBox anymore and if I then restart it, it's fine and won't crash until I then restart again...

On top of that problem, when I run music players like iTunes, WMP or Spotify, it sometimes seems to change the sample rate somewhere and confuse the player so it just keeps skipping through the playlist and not playing anything, or just says it's playing and doesn't actually do anything.

Finally it often decides the MBox isn't there when I do pretty much anything that would send a signal to it- turning on the PC, starting any app with sound, closing any app with sound, etc. Reinstalling the MBox drivers usually fixes this one but there's clearly something not working properly. None of the above problems seem to occur when I'm using PT though, although I've not used it that much on this system since I have access to studios with HD and better gear than at home.

These problems have been there since I bought this PC last May- I had a few issues with dodgy RAM which only just got fixed so I hadn't been able to pinpoint the drivers as the issue but it seems certain that it is them since changing the OS had no effect, and the hardware has all been tested repeatedly. No problems running this MBox on my iMac with PT 7.1.3 for 2 years though so the box is fine.

I've trawled through the forums, tried all the usual fixes, etc. But not found anything mentioning these problems, so, here I am.

The system I'm running it on is a home-built i7-920 with 6GB RAM, an Asus P6T MoBo, HD4870 GPU and Western Digital 500GB Caviar HD. The box is an MBox 2 Pro. I've clocked everything back to original levels and re-installed both Windows OSes which didn't fix the problem. Also I've reinstalled PT and changed almost every audio-related setting that seems related but to no avail.

I'm currently downloading the 8.0.3 update and will post again after using that for a bit, although it is currently saying 14 days left thanks to the wonders of wireless technology...

Any other information that's needed or anything I've forgotten to say please let me know and I'll post it. I'd hugely appreciate any suggestions for this cos it's a right pain in the rear.

[cwsand]

Note: To enable other users to help you, please include all of your system details when posting an issue to the DUC; Pro Tools hardware, Pro Tools software version, CPU, OS version, Motherboard make/model, chipset, amount of RAM, type of hard drives used, etc.

- Please - Use SiSoftware's Sandra Lite application to generate a full system profile:

www.sisoftware.co.uk

Under SiSoftware Sandra, click on "Download & Buy" to download the free Sandra Lite version or purchase other versions. After installing Sandra, click on the 'Hardware' tab and run the 'Computer Overview', then copy and paste into your post here on the DUC.

[TOM@METRO]

Okay Blue, Welcome to the DUC.

You might hold off on installing the "Beta" (8.0.3) until we look at your system. This has typically been troublesome even when 8.0.1 is fine. Compounding issues may not be a good idea. What apps. are you attempting to use in Vista and W7 with your interface?

[The Blue Peanut]

Cheers for the replies guys, I'll look into getting that Sandra app but due to my mentally slow connection it'll have to wait a bit- most of that info is on my last post for now though.

I'll stick to 8.0.1 like you said Tom, the apps I'm running are basically anything that uses the MBox- games like Crysis, Fallout 3, CoD MWF2, Mass Effect, etc, music players like iTunes or Spotify, or even things like BBC iPlayer. The exception is that I'm yet to have the problem when running PT but as I said that could simply be through lack of use- if I use it for a while maybe it will crash too, which I'll test when I get the chance next week.

[YoRugMan]

Have a read through this as well:

http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/self...p?DocId=211077

....in particular, try the "Disable USB Power Management" tweak.


.

[The Blue Peanut]

Thanks for the reply, I already had a look through all that and tried it all- the MBox 2 Pro I'm using is Firewire rather than USB although power management is unchecked on them all anyway.

Since posting this the problem does seem to have changed for some reason- I've not changed anything but now when I turn my PC on it's just not noticing the MBox until I reinstall the drivers then it's just how it was before.

[The Blue Peanut]

Right, the problem has now become worse- whenever I try to import audio into ProTools the program crashes. I'm assuming this is related since it's all digidesign and nothing else seems to be affected.

Also, other music players can't run at all with ProTools open- I know that's common but usually they open and don't play if that happens, for me they open and crash, but only when ProTools is open so it seems to be related to the drivers again.

On top of that, being in the final year of a music tech degree I sort of need ProTools at this point, so it's a bit urgent now.

[TOM@METRO]

We are still waiting for the Sandra report, aren’t we?

[The Blue Peanut]

Yeah sorry once my housemate finds the router password so I can change the DNS settings I'll get it. At the moment it's set to assign everyone the same IP on a connection managing 100k peak speed.

That and there's a Mobo fault which crashes the PC within roughly an hour so I can't finish the download. Also I'm looking into whether this Mobo fault is actually the cause of the driver issues rather than the driver themselves, it's only surfaced recently but nothing seems to have triggered it- it could just be getting worse and was subtle enough before to not show up.

Once I get all that sorted I'll post either to say the drivers were never the problem or with a Sandra report!