Freezing While Recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter Whyte Ice
  • Start date Start date
W

Whyte Ice

The Next Vanilla Ice
Whenever I start to record in CEP and in
some cases playback, the system freezes, the screen turns black and the
power button on my tower is disabled and I'm forced to do an improper
shutdown. I don't understand why this is happening. This is a new computer
that I have had for only two days and everything worked fine before on my
old computer. I have a Delta 44 soundcard installed in the second PCI card
slot and I have updated the drivers to the most current ones. Whenever I'm
recording, 95% of my system resources is free, I don't have anything else
extra running other than Explorer.

My computer has a Biostar motherboard, AMD Duron processor (I'm not sure how
many MhZ), 256MB of RAM, Windows 98 First Edition, Delta 44. I think it
might be the video card but I don't know where to check what Video card I
have installed. I have an ethernet card and a modem installed in the other 2
PCI slots.

I am using the latest update of Cool Edit Pro, 1.2a
 
I have a feeling it's the '98, first edition' that's the problem, and it may be having a conflict with your mobo. I suggest a wipe and reinstall with Win 2K/98SE. XP maybe but I've never used it, so.

The recording setup is another possibility, if you're set up to record from the modem's voice input it can get messy. Also I'm not so sure about Biostar mobos maybe someone else with experience can figure if it's good.

Is the problem only related to sound? I would check for drivers and IRQ conflicts/sharing, too. Maybe onboard sound is still enabled? May try to cut that out?

Sang
 
I don't think its the Win98FE because I had everything running fine on Win98FE on my old computer. That whole thing about wiping, reinstalling, I just went through that a couple days ago and its hell reinstalling everything I have.

The only things that aren't new in this computer are both of the hard drives and CD-ROM which were transfered over.

Voice Input? I record through my Delta 44 Soundcard. I disabled onboard sound in the bios when I first got my computer.
 
Having been a Windows 98 user for a while (on our normal home PC) I wouldn't say it's Windows 98 first edition...although I've had that problem occur only once in the 3-4 years we've had our machine. I guess it's still a possibility though. With what little knowledge I have on the issue my guess would be something with the motherboard. I'm not sure if Biostar's are a recommended brand or not for recording.
 
i'll tell you this, i had the SAME PROBLEM a few months ago. i kept changing Os, thinking it was the Os, it was my video card. i changed it and my daw hasn't froze since. biostar boards are usually good so i doubt it would be the board, change the video card and try and record, if it records you know your problem.
 
How do you install new video cards? Where do they go?

I found out my Video card is a S3 Savage 4 video card and I entered that in Google and found a google pages on it and people were saying they have had problems with it freezing and all.

What video cards are recommended? Are they hard to install?
 
Whyte Ice said:
How do you install new video cards? Where do they go?


What video cards are recommended? Are they hard to install?

Choose a video card based on what you're using it for. I'd stop in Comp USA or a similar store and ask the tech to fix you up. They are farely easy to install and most have installation instructions.
 
There could be lots of reasons for freezing. It could be the power supply, memory, cpu overheating, something on the motherboard, a nasty component, a combination of components, etc etc etc.

What you need to do is some proper troubleshooting. First, determine if the machine really is just crashing when you do audio, or if the machine just crashes when it's being taxed. Download a benchmark program (graphics/cpu/memory intensive) or something similar and see if that'll crash the machine. Find some situations in which the machine is almost *guaranteed* to lockup within a certain amount of time.

Then the proper procedure is to remove everything except what is absolutely necessary. The minimal configuration would typically be a video card, CPU, one stick of memory, and *one* hard drive. Nothing else. Now you get to go through the painful process of trying to make the machine crash by add/changing components, one by one and in combinations, until you determine which combination of components is the culprit. It would help very much if you could get your hands on a spare 300W power supply and a spare stick of memory, as those are prime candidates and can't simply be removed from the equation without being *replaced*. In fact, I would try swapping the power supply just for the heck of it, especially if it is <300W, before going through the nasty troubleshooting process.

Since you've recently reinstalled, this is not a windows problem. If it was a windows problem then it wouldn't have a solution, you know what I mean? :) You have to use windows, so if a combination of devices/components is getting in your way, you have no choice but to make some hardware changes.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Back
Top