Why is Pro Tools so unstable? Why is support so bad? Update Sandra report added

[Robert Todd]

I have an 003 and Eleven rack. I have a dell xps dual core running Win 7 Ultimate 32 and find pro tools to be a very unstable program. Whenever I restart my system I see the blue screen of death 5 or 6 times before pro tools finally loads. I have submitted 3 support requests and the answer is always bad drivers reinstall. That is [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep], I have reinstalled 7 times now and nothing changes. I do not understand why the software engineers at Avid are so incompetent that they cannot fix this. Features and User Interface are nice but system stability across ALL possible platforms and interfaces (USB, Firewire 400 or 800 etc.) is the base of a well written product. Pro Tools is not a well written product and Avid should be ashamed of the garbage they sell. THEY NEED TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCT STABLE. Please Avid listen because right now your software sucks.

[sw rec]

Hmmm....I've been making a living with Pro Tools since version 5.3, and am likely not alone with the sentiment that if it was UNSTABLE I'd be using something else. It is VERY resource intensive, and very specific concerning its requirement in a host computer. I'd be interested to see a Sandra report on your system to see if it's compatible. One out-of-place component can create a very unstable system.
That being said, I'm teaching audio recording on two different programs at the local community college, and the "runs on anything" program that people learn BEFORE my Pro Tools class is a clunky amateurish piece of junk in my humble opinion. Stability across ALL platforms and interfaces is not always realistic because of the huge amount of data that's being sent around inside the box....there's typically one well-researched, proven configuration.
So...if you're truly SOLUTION-oriented, theres LOTS of people on here willing to help sort this out. Start with that Sandra report and let's see what we're dealing with. Might be something really simple.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by Robert Todd

...I have a dell...

Can you post us a Sandra report so we can check out your system? "Off the shelf" Dell's are known to be problematic with PT at times.

You also need to do the standard system optimizations.

Shane

[TOM@METRO]

Robert,

I can only mimic the answers above. You have been around here for a while and must know that Pro Tools is a very special application, and it requires a special host computer and peripherals. Not only the choice of hardware and drivers, but also other installed applications must be considered.

As requested in the "Help Us Help You" sticky, post a Sandra report and we'll go from there.

[AvidCS]

Originally Posted by Robert Todd

I have an 003 and Eleven rack. I have a dell xps dual core running Win 7 Ultimate 32 and find pro tools to be a very unstable program. Whenever I restart my system I see the blue screen of death 5 or 6 times before pro tools finally loads. I have submitted 3 support requests and the answer is always bad drivers reinstall. That is [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep], I have reinstalled 7 times now and nothing changes. I do not understand why the software engineers at Avid are so incompetent that they cannot fix this. Features and User Interface are nice but system stability across ALL possible platforms and interfaces (USB, Firewire 400 or 800 etc.) is the base of a well written product. Pro Tools is not a well written product and Avid should be ashamed of the garbage they sell. THEY NEED TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCT STABLE. Please Avid listen because right now your software sucks.

You have 2 support cases on your account. In the first you said your 003 was not recognized. We responded within a day with driver install instructions. In your other case (a few weeks later) you said your computer crashes when you connect your Eleven Rack to your 003 via S/PDIF. We responded within a day with additional instructions and requested more info (you referred to Pro Tools LE 8.0.4, 8.0.3.251 drivers, and Windows 7, so we wanted some clarification).

There wasn't a response from you to either case.

[Robert Todd]

Originally Posted by DigiCS

You have 2 support cases on your account. In the first you said your 003 was not recognized. We responded within a day with driver install instructions. In your other case (a few weeks later) you said your computer crashes when you connect your Eleven Rack to your 003 via S/PDIF. We responded within a day with additional instructions and requested more info (you referred to Pro Tools LE 8.0.4, 8.0.3.251 drivers, and Windows 7, so we wanted some clarification).

There wasn't a response from you to either case.

There wasn't a response on the first because of being away from my studio and you closed the case. All responses after that, when I returned home, were ignored.

The second case I repeated the exact same thing you sent in the 1st case, which both times was to reinstall everything, a time consuming task.

That said, both times for a short while, the problems disappeared, only to reappear yesterday after I installed an external HD per the hardware specifications page here.

I have now ignored the support request, knowing the answer in advance and reinstalled everything again, and yes the system now starts up smoothly except, Pro tools sees the 003 when the 11R is turned off, but, sees only the 11R when it is turned on, not both as it did before.

I apologize for the rant, but prior to retiring I was a software engineer writing in C, C++ and Java and writing applications thast hbandled much higher data flows than music files do, and the only times I ever saw such instability in application performance was in C languages when the programmer either failed to close the memory allocations they had opened when they were through with them, known as a memory leak, or when the programmer directed the application attempts to access memory or interupts used by other system resources. Both are absolutely preventable (Java does it for you) by having the application check availability of these resources prior to attempting to access them, or in the case of memory leaks (again Java does this without any coding by the programmer) carefully tracking where memory is allocated with the malloc(X) command where X is the name of the variable and freeing it programaticaly immediately after it is used with the free(X) command.

[Robert Todd]

Sandra report below

SiSoftware Sandra

Computer
Model : Dell Dell DXP061
Workgroup : WORKGROUP
Host Name : Windows-PC
User : Robert Todd

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz
Speed : 2.66GHz
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 1 Unit(s)
Type : Dual-Core
Integrated Data Cache : 2x 32kB, Synchronous, Write-Thru, 8-way, 64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache : 4MB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 16-way, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing

Computer
Mainboard : Dell 0CT017
BIOS : Dell 2.5.0 05/24/2007
Bus(es) : X-Bus PCI PCIe IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : No
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
Total Memory : 2GB DIMM DDR

Chipset
Model : Dell P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 266MHz (1GHz)
Total Memory : 2GB DIMM DDR
Memory Bus Speed : 800MHz

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Hynix (Hyundai) HYMP512U64BP8-S5 1GB DIMM DDR2 PC2-6400U DDR2-800 (5-5-5-18 3-23-6-3)
Memory Module : Hynix (Hyundai) HYMP512U64BP8-S5 1GB DIMM DDR2 PC2-6400U DDR2-800 (5-5-5-18 3-23-6-3)

Video System
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (32 SM4.0 1.35GHz, 256MB DDR3 2GHz 128-bit, PCIe 1.00 x16)
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (32 SM4.0 1.35GHz, 256MB DDR3 2GHz 128-bit, PCIe 1.00 x16)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL Processor : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (32SP 4C 1.45GHz, 256MB DDR3 2GHz 128-bit)
Compute Shader Processor : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (32SP 1.35GHz, 256MB DDR3 2GHz 128-bit)

Storage Devices
Seagate ST3250820AS (250GB, SATA300, 3.5", 8MB Cache) : 233GB (C:)
OWC Mercury Elite-AL 2TB (USB) : 2TB (F:)
PBDS CD-RW/DVD-ROM DH-48C2S (SATA150, DVD+-R, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (D:)
PBDS DVD+/-RW DH-16W1S (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (E:)

Logical Storage Devices
Reservado para el sistema : 100MB (NTFS)
New Volume (F:) : 2TB (NTFS) @ OWC Mercury Elite-AL 2TB (USB)
Hard Disk (C:) : 233GB (NTFS) @ Seagate ST3250820AS (250GB, SATA300, 3.5", 8MB Cache)
Optical Drive (D:) : N/A @ PBDS CD-RW/DVD-ROM DH-48C2S (SATA150, DVD+-R, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)
Optical Drive (E:) : N/A @ PBDS DVD+/-RW DH-16W1S (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : Intel 82801HH (ICH8DH) LPC Interface Controller
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : SMSC SCH5514D-NS
Audio Device : Dell 82801H (ICH8) HD Audio Controller
Audio Device : Creative Labs Audigy Audio Processor
Serial Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : Dell ICH8R (ICH8) SATA RAID Controller
USB Controller 1 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB UHCI #4
USB Controller 2 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB UHCI #5
USB Controller 3 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB2 EHCI #2
USB Controller 4 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB UHCI #1
USB Controller 5 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB UHCI #2
USB Controller 6 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB UHCI #3
USB Controller 7 : Dell 82801H (ICH8) USB2 EHCI #1
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : ADS Technologies TSB43AB23 1394a-2000 OHCI PHY/link-layer Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Send To Microsoft OneNote 2010 Driver (1200x1200, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)
Printer : Dell Laser Printer 1720dn (1200x1200)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Intel(R) 82566DC Gigabit Network Connection (Ethernet, 100Mbps)

Power Management
Mains (AC) Line Status : On-Line

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.01.7600
Platform Compliance : x86

Windows Experience Index
Current System : 5.5

[AvidCS]

Originally Posted by Robert Todd

There wasn't a response on the first because of being away from my studio and you closed the case. All responses after that, when I returned home, were ignored.

The second case I repeated the exact same thing you sent in the 1st case, which both times was to reinstall everything, a time consuming task.

That said, both times for a short while, the problems disappeared, only to reappear yesterday after I installed an external HD per the hardware specifications page here.

I have now ignored the support request, knowing the answer in advance and reinstalled everything again, and yes the system now starts up smoothly except, Pro tools sees the 003 when the 11R is turned off, but, sees only the 11R when it is turned on, not both as it did before.

I apologize for the rant, but prior to retiring I was a software engineer writing in C, C++ and Java and writing applications thast hbandled much higher data flows than music files do, and the only times I ever saw such instability in application performance was in C languages when the programmer either failed to close the memory allocations they had opened when they were through with them, known as a memory leak, or when the programmer directed the application attempts to access memory or interupts used by other system resources. Both are absolutely preventable (Java does it for you) by having the application check availability of these resources prior to attempting to access them, or in the case of memory leaks (again Java does this without any coding by the programmer) carefully tracking where memory is allocated with the malloc(X) command where X is the name of the variable and freeing it programaticaly immediately after it is used with the free(X) command.

Case 1 on 1/13: "Pro Tools LE 8.04 does not recognize the digi 003" (We responded within a day with instructions and links for the drivers. There are no responses from you on this case.)

Case 2 on 1/26: "Digi 003 and Eleven Rack used together crash system" (We responded within a day asking you for computer information, and provided driver info again as well as a DigiDelivery link for the 8.0.4 installer. There are no responses from you on this case.)

So we tried to help, but instead of responding to us you started a thread calling our programmers incompetent, our products garbage, and our support bad. You are entitled to your opinion, but our products work for the vast majority and we are honestly trying to help you figure out why they aren't working properly for you.

So back to that... Please try holding the N key when you see the splash screen during launch. Do you see options for 003 and Eleven Rack?

[necjamc]

FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : ADS Technologies TSB43AB23 1394a-2000 OHCI PHY/link-layer Controller

From my experience with 2 Dell Laptops I own, (although different firewire chipsets) that they are not stable using the onboard firewire controller. I have had sessions crash 20 min into a live recording, and during the same show, it froze but appeared to continue recording. At the end of the night 2 of 3 sets got less than 20 min of usable material, and 1 set was completely unusable. I purchased a TI chipset PCIe adapter card (for my laptop expansion card) and have not had a problem since then. Just a thought. I have had problems with onboard firewire controllers even just getting my 2626 recognized let alone stable.

[fredparm]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem.
Playing live, either the system crashes, either suddenly a very bad noise occurs.
Thanks for your help.