buffering troubles?

[Jeff Monaco]

My recordings keep locking up. It's as if my buffers or buffer sizes are not sufficient. I have gone into Options/Settings and experimented with the settings on both the System and Multitrack tabs to no avail. I never used to have this problem. What has happened?!?

[dobro]

What do you mean exactly by "recordings keep locking up"?

[Jeff Monaco]

Thank you for responding. First, some basics. I have a Pentium II 400 PC with 128 mgs of RAM. I have a Layla by Echo external sound card along with an internal Sound Blaster AWE64. I use two 9GB hard drives (both still have ample free space); my audio drive is a Seagate Medalist Pro SCSI and my boot drive is a Fujitsu UDMA. My motherboard is an ASUS 100 MHz with the 440 BX AGP chipset.

Anyway, I have successfully recorded with CEP for months and months. Lately, in a Multitrack session, as I am recording, the recording will just stop for 2 to 5 seconds, and then resume. However, it leaves an obvious gap in the recording from its pause. I have tried adjusting playback/recording buffer sizes, number of buffers, background mixing priority levels, cache sizes, etc. to no avail. I even downloaded the upgrade to CEP. No difference.

I have run scanned disk, defragged, etc. No troubles. Is there some other diagnostic I can run to make sure everything is compatible. Could my IRQs have become conflicted? (My old modem had crapped out, I had briefly installed a US Robotics modem. Could that have reconfigured my IRQs? I have since removed it and put in another Supra modem. Modem works fine, but I wonder if its conflicting with my sound card somehow.)

CEP help suggests adjusting my virtual memory settings, but that sounds severe. Everything used to work fine. I am at a loss.

I appreciate your interest and any light you can shed on the problem.

[Jeff Monaco]

Me again. I was reading through some older dialogues with someone named Wolfie who was having similar problems as me. In response to some of the questions that were asked of him:

1) I am using Windows 98 as my OS which I recently had to reinstall after a download from Microsoft crippled my VMM32.VXD driver, (another nightmare I won't bore you with.)

2) I have been installing an uninstalling numerous programs in an attempt to fix other problems associated with the disastrous installation of MS office 2000. Another long story; Office 2000 reconfigures Windows 98; had to download a special utility from MS that supposedly removes all Office 2000 registry files; reinstalled 98.

3) I am not clear on how to determine if my hard drives are in DMA mode. The Device Manager only says Generic IDE Disk Type 46 and 80 (two drives)

4) My Layla external sound card does share an IRQ with IRQ HOLDER FOR PCI STEERING, but I understand that that may just be an IRQ place holder.

5) My hard drive does not thrash about when I get the recording glitches.

Anyhow, don't mean to go on and on. I appreciate any assistance anyone can give me.