cool edit skips and hang

[choy]

Hi ! just want to ask for your expertise about my problem regarding skips and hangs while recording and playing back. My system is working fine for quite a long time then just yesterday when i do a session it started to skip and hang. My hardware shouldnt be a problem cause i have Pentium iii 800 mhz, 384 mb Ram, 20 gig 7200 maxtor HD and i have a darla soundcard. I followed all the configurations suggested by cool edit.
The HD speed slowed down compared to how it used to be. Any idea what should i do?? I am planning to re install Windows 98 ,will that help? is it a good idea.

Thanks any response will be greatly appreciated

[mastahnke]

Reformatted and cleaning up the system is always a good thing. I do it about once a month to keep the system working fast. Anyway, the first thing I would do would be to reboot the machine, that way you clean out your RAM. Then after booting up, check press CNTRL+ALT+DEL and see what programs are running. Cancel everything that you don't HAVE to have. Also, you can run MSCONFIG and remove certain programs from being loaded into RAM upon start-up.
MIKE

[DS_Sultan]

Was anything added to the system recently? New software installed, etc... How do you mean the HD speed slowed down? How is it you are perceiving this slowdown? How does it show itself? Describe the effect.

I would NOT do a reformat and re-install of the OS and your apps just yet. If you don't understand why this happened this time, what if it happens again? Do you want to format and re-install again? Try to figure it out this time so next time you know what is going on.

Have you done any disk diagnostics? Scandisk? Defrag? Fresh boot as suggested, but from a clean power up? What other system tweeks have you done to this system?

[choy]

Thanks for your response guys!

I didnot install any new programs. I did all the test like diagnostics, Norton disk doctor and it seems okay no errors found. Regarding speed, definitely there is a change. When i run the echo reporter before this problem The disk write speed was about 8,000rpm/s but when the problem arises it speed slowed down 4000+. Its playback assessment before was 100 playbacks but later it was cut to half. In other words The performance halfly depreciated . Before it began, I was experementing about simultaneously recording 4 tracks using an outboard mixer through a soundcard. When i start recording the computer hanged, then it began to skip. whiile playback and recording. another take, it hanged again and the screen shows Errors occurred in Cool edit SE. After that incident my computer never return to its usual performance. Any diagnostics from you guys?

[DS_Sultan]

Choy, sounds to me that perhaps your hard drives DMA mode is off now. Can you check that? And make sure you are not in DOS comatability mode either.

If you oneed help with it we are having a live chat today at 2PM EST US time at Collaboration Central just click the chat link on the left, log in and ask away.

I know, April Fools Day, but it's no joke to us.

Good luck.

[inxela]

Make sure DMA is enabled in your ControlPanel/System/DeviceManager/DiskDrive properties. I just had the same hang problems for the past month, and this fixed it for me.

*a*

[dobro]

Hi. I took a look at my settings, and DMA is *not* enabled, but something called Interrupt Request (IRQ) is. If I enable DMA, it disables the other one. Is this standard? What difference does it make?

[DS_Sultan]

Yes, this would be a normal thing. What DMA does is give your HD direct access to the bus as a bus-master device. This means it can talk directly to the memory controller and other bus peripherals without the CPU getting involved. Quite a speed saver.

If you were to leave it at IRQ then that means: (follow me here)

Anytime the HD wants to read or write data, it has to knock on the CPU's door *knock knock* and hope Mr. CPU is home listening, he is home but is out back handling the IRQ that came in from the serial card and you have to wait for him to finish before he comes to the door to even see what the heck you want, let alone do what you need done.

With DMA the HD can just say "Hey, anyone have the bus right now?" and he goes and checks it out himself, if the bus is free he grabs it and get's on with his work. All the while the CPU is still out back goofin off with the serial port...

Just trying to draw a picture here OK. That is kind of a drastic equivelant, but if you think about that as if you were answering your own door if you were busy, it should make sense.

Hope this helps.

[dobro]

Okay, thanks - my system hangs sometimes too - I'll give the DMA approach a try and see what happens. Mr CPU, indeed.

I got a hard drive baby
I got megabytes of RAM...

[DS_Sultan]

hehehe...LOL..... sorry... it just came out of my keyboard...