Major Computer Problem

Tekker

Tekker

New member
I'm having a serious problem with my computer right now and I have absolutely no idea what is causing it. I just opened one of the projects I’m working on in my recording program (Magix Samplitude) that has every track "frozen" (where each track is mixed down to a wave file and all of the real-time effects are removed to reduce most of the load on your CPU) and when I try to play it the CPU indicator in Samplitude goes up to around 188%, the playback skips repeatedly, and it won't play the project. So then I created a new project and loaded in only “one” wave file, and when playing it back the CPU is at 0% with occasional spikes of 27%-36%, but it skips each time one of those spikes occurs. So basically my computer can’t even playback a single track now. :(

Here's a little background as to when my problems started:

I got some new computer components (new motherboard, processor, and RAM) not to long ago and everything ran excellent for about a month..... Then one of my brand new RAM modules died causing my computer to reboot on its own during even the smallest tasks. When I removed it (leaving the other “good” one) my computer was running horridly (couldn't use Samplitude at all due major stuttering problems mentioned above) and I was told on the PC perspective forum that the bad RAM may have corrupted the installation of windows so that's what I figured was wrong with it.

I sent my bad RAM module back to Corsair and received the replacement. Then after I installed it I reformatted my C drive and reloaded windows..... But after all of that, I'm still having the same problem in Samplitude as I was before, right after I removed the bad RAM module. The skipping problems I mentioned above were all after I just reloaded windows XP and everything, so I don’t know why it’s not working.


I ran a RAM checker on both RAM modules (in the off chance that the new one was also bad) and they both passed with flying colors. I also tried opening up the Task Manager while playing something in Samplitude and according to it, Samplitude is using up 99% of the CPU. I started out using the default buffer settings and have tried MME and ASIO drivers both giving the same results, I have never had to tweak the buffer settings before so I'm quite positive this is not the cause of the problem (but just to check, I did increase the number of buffers from 4 to 8 and no change).

I have never (ever) had problems like this before, I tried running the SAWStudio demo and had the same exact problem (even with one track) and SAW is a very CPU efficient program.... So something is still seriously wrong with my computer and I’m out of ideas to try at this point. :(


Here are the specs to my PC:

Processor: AMD Athlon XP2800+ Barton
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80177-R

Motherboard: Asus A7N8XE Deluxe Socket A Motherboard
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=240314

Memory: (2x) - Corsair VS1GB300C3 ValueSelect 1GB DDR SDRAM
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80098-34

Windows XP Professional

Recording Stuff:
Samplitude Professional 8.2
Aardvark Q10 (with the newer 7.13 driver)


Also, if this helps, here are the temperature and voltage readings from the BIOS.

MB Temperature: 24C / 75F
CPU Temperature: 52C / 125F
VCORE Voltage: 1.66V
+3.3V Voltage: 3.29V
+5V Voltage: 4.83V
+12V = 12.28V


If anyone can help solve this problem I would be eternally grateful! :)

-tkr
 
There have some other points that were brought up on another forums, (I posted this on 4 other forums.... because I'm desparate!!) so I'll post those here also to eliminate some of the questions that I have answered to help speed up the Q and A process.

The DMA settings are activated for my IDE controllers.

I have not done any of the "audio tweaks" for XP, but I never have done them before either. I have reinstalled XP several times (especially recently) and I have never had any problems like this before.

The system monitor under the "Performance" tab shows a CPU usage of 33% during the spikes (playing back one wave file) and the paging file shows basically no activity. The Paging indicator in Samplitude is at around 2%.

I did install my nForce drivers for my motherboard (did that first thing).

I also had the on-access scan disabled for the McAfee antivirus software.

-tkr
 
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I bought my son the same mobo for his computer and it is very particular about which ram it uses. I put 2 sticks of Mushkin in it and it would not even boot. So I took the PDP ram from my computer and put it in his and it runs great.
 
ocnor said:
I bought my son the same mobo for his computer and it is very particular about which ram it uses. I put 2 sticks of Mushkin in it and it would not even boot. So I took the PDP ram from my computer and put it in his and it runs great.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I heard that same thing before I bought it. I posted over at the PC Perspective forum in the ASUS forum and I was told this RAM should work fine.

It actually ran perfectly for about a month and I was able to run more tracks with real-time effects than my old PC could even dream about. So if it was the RAM wasn't compatible then I never would have been able to run it for a month. But once that one RAM module died, my computer hasn't run the same since, which makes me sad because it was running soooo beautifully before. :(

-tkr
 
sounds like to me the harddrive is on its way out.
A buddy of mine had the same thing happen...we tried new motherboard ,memory ect... except we used the same harddrive.
Still the same problem....we put a new harddrive in...all problems went away!
 
After you did the reinstall of windows did you check to see if any of the IRQs changed and are now sharing? If your video card or soundcard are sharing an IRQ with another device it can cause all kinds of goofy stuff to happen.
You might also want to run this utility program. http://www.majorgeeks.com/TuneUp_Utilities_2004_d3891.html
This registry cleaner is also pretty good. http://www.majorgeeks.com/Lexun_RegScrubXP_d2048.html
Once you have you registry cleaned and your drive defragged it will be easier to trouble shoot.
 
There is the problem. Your soundcard and video card are using the same IRQ which is a huge "Bozo no no". You will need to uninstall your soundcard and move it to a different slot and most likely XP will assign a different IRQ to it.
 
ocnor said:
There is the problem. Your soundcard and video card are using the same IRQ which is a huge "Bozo no no". You will need to uninstall your soundcard and move it to a different slot and most likely XP will assign a different IRQ to it.
Click to expand...
Wow, that's very strange, I wonder how it got set like that.... Does it assign them based on what slot they are in (it's the same as when I installed it before) or can it assign them differently when you install windows?

I will try moving it to a new slot and see if that fixes it...... Keeping my fingers crossed! :D

-tkr
 
Tekker said:
Wow, that's very strange, I wonder how it got set like that.... Does it assign them based on what slot they are in (it's the same as when I installed it before) or can it assign them differently when you install windows?

I will try moving it to a new slot and see if that fixes it...... Keeping my fingers crossed! :D

-tkr
Click to expand...
Sometimes, you will have to take one of the offending pieces out, and leave it, so windows only boots with one of the offending pieces. Then, if it boots ok, do as Ocnor suggests, and put the other back in, and use a different slot. Seems to have something to do on the order of these things during a boot up.
 
Go into the bios and turn off your onboard soundcard and see if that makes a difference.
 
Does it do it on all your samplitude projects or just the one? I would check that and make sure theres not something just in the project file causing something.

Did you try defragmenting the audio drive?

Its normal for samplitude to have 99% CPU priority. Everything will do that if its a high priority program.

I would just try and make sure its not a hang up on that particular file.

Danny
 
ocnor said:
Go into the bios and turn off your onboard soundcard and see if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...
I tried turning off the following things in the BIOS and the problem persists.

Onboard Sound
Com Ports 1 and 2
Floppy Disk
Parallel Port
Game Port
MIDI I/O

darnold said:
Does it do it on all your samplitude projects or just the one? I would check that and make sure theres not something just in the project file causing something.
Click to expand...
It does it when just loading in a single random wave file (not related to the other project).

Did you try defragmenting the audio drive?
Click to expand...
I haven't done that, but I have tried moving the project folder (as well as the single wave file) to two different hard drives and it still does the same thing for both the single wave file and the full project.

So I think I have elminated my normal audio drive as the source and it's also not the project files themselves.... I have also opened projects I created with the SAWStudio demo and they all do the same thing.

-tkr
 
If you have not done so already you should download and run the 2 programs that I suggested earlier.This will eliminate any registry problems and clean out unused files that may be causing your computer to slow down. Then defrag the hard drives.
 
when you moved the sound card to a different slot, did you make sure that it was'nt sharing an irq with the video card? you should figure out a way for your sound card to have it's own irq.

how does your pc run otherwise? i mean besides the issues with your recording software? do you still get high cpu usage with the sound card disabled?
 
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Woohoo!! Made some progress today!

I took another one of our older 6 gig drives, loaded XP and Samplitude onto it, then I plugged in my audio drive and loaded in the wave file I had used before that used to skip and it no longer does!!! :) I used the onboard sound and tried both MME and ASIO and they both work fine now. The CPU indicator in Samp is down to 2% with occasional spikes at 6%-10% and the paging indicator is at 0% with spikes at 2%.

I have my Aardvark card installed into the PCI slot but haven't loaded the drivers for it, so I will probably try that next. I don't have any of the windows updates, or anything else installed other than the nForce drivers and Samplitude. So I may just go ahead and keep this drive that I''m using now since at least I know everything will work on it (hopefully it'll stay that way :)).

So I'll try loading the hard drive with my program files and test with that before I load the windows updates and my Aardvark card. Then if it still works at that point, hopefully I'll be good to load all of my other programs and get back to my normal working computer again.

I'll let you all know if it still works when I put it back together..... Keep you're fingers crossed!! :D


And BTW, I got another power supply from my friend today which is a 450W supply as opposed to the 300W I've been using.... Even though that didn't fix my problem before, I figured it was still better to have for my system. He didn't know how much it was gonna cost but he let me have it to test with it.

-tkr
 
ocnor said:
If you have not done so already you should download and run the 2 programs that I suggested earlier.This will eliminate any registry problems and clean out unused files that may be causing your computer to slow down. Then defrag the hard drives.
Click to expand...
I downloaded the TuneUp utility, which looks like a really cool program... I may have to get that one of these days. :cool:

I didn't use the registry cleaner, because it was fresh installation of XP so there really wasn't really any way the registery could have been that messed up.

I've actually heard it's a bad thing to defrag audio drives, because it messes up the interleaved (I believe it's called) files (files that were recorded together during multitrack recording). I've only recently seen this mentioned but haven't done any further research into how much difference this would actually make. Personally I think having the other files lined up in a nice neat row would make more of an improvement, but for now I'll leave it as is until I have more time to look into it.

I did finally get something working, so I'll start gradually building my system back up and if I run into a problem at least I'll know where to look now. :)

-tkr
 
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