Mbox2 constant -6104, -6101 or Hardware not found!

[John H]

I was working on a session last night with only about 10 tracks and maybe 5 or 6 plug-ins and it kept loosing audio and I had to re-open Protools LE once the cpu usage started reaching maximum.

Today, I got the hardware not found error on starting Protools LE over and over.

After swapping to every available USB port (not using a HUB by the way) I applied the 1.38 Firmware Update thinking it would help.

There was a lot of crackle, pops and noise coming from MBox2 audio while launching Protools LE, session opened fine then it gave me the -6101 error after playing briefly then running out of steam.

restarted mac

again, a lot of crackle, pops and noise coming from MBox2 audio, session opened fine then it gave me the -6104 error etc... like previous!

I tried creating a new session, added 1 audio tracks and pressed play only to get the -6104 error straight away!

I have an 800Mhz Quicksilver G4, 1Gb factory fitted RAM, 250Gb Maxline III system/storage drive in 2 partitions and 40Gb Western Digital drive dedicated to audio. Also, system is fully new install, dedicated to Protools LE 7.0, no quirky 3rd party control panels etc...

I avoided moving to Protools LE under OS X until I knew it was a workable system as previously used Toolbox XP system under OS 9 and wanted a similar plug and go experience under OS 10.4. I'm very disappointed in this. It worries the hell of me that it's a hardware error and it'll mean sending it back and messing around to get my £300 worth of kit working again.

It feels like the firmware update was rendered my system useless or at the very least added to the problem with the crackles etc... I can't stress enough how rock solid and well this system has worked with Protools LE up until now.

Please help!