Scope freeze

[guppy]

Hello !
I got a problem since days now:
Sometimes Scope freezes , but I can work with samplitude, listen music from foobar, etc ,and have sound from all inputs/outputs, but scope interface doesn't react at all, I can't move anything, into mixtable and routing.
I' ve seen that if i'm very patient it can stop freezing alone (if I wait more than 1 hour...), but I can't understand why.
I've tried to reinstall VC 2008 from microsoft without any success.
Everything was fine 1 week before
It always happens after 2 or 3 hours of work.
For example, it just happened now, when I tried to load das wha-wha for testing, but in general I don't need to load anything to see that happened, so I must close and reopen Scope (without any blue screen or other strange behavior). I can see that Scope use 25% of the intel processor when it's freezing (and goes near to 0 when I force scope to stop, so that I can see he's guilty )
Do you have an idea from where comes this problem and how to solve it please ?

[dante]

Someone said recently that fixed Scope by removing a line from CSET.INI.

http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php ... hilit=CSET

Do you have a backup CSET.INI ?

[Eanna]

If you force-close Scope (either by the X button on the top-right of the window, or End Process in Task Manager), and re-start Scope, is Scope responsive?
If yes, then it must be a software problem.

Are you running other software at the time? A DAW etc.. Try running Scope for a period with nothing else loaded... it may be that some other software is causing an issue with Scope.

What other devices do you have sharing your PCI bus? And PCIe? Anything like a wifi card?

Is there anything new / you don't recognise on Windows Startup? You can see what processes and services are started at startup if you use type msconfig into the Run box... A new application process or even a virus could be involved. Google the name of anything you don't recognise...

In the Device Manager, can you see Scope in the device tree? Does Windows flag it as being in trouble (usually a yellow exclamation mark on the icon) when Scope gets in a frozen state? If you disable and then enable the card in the device manager, does it fix the problem without bringing Scope.exe down? (something I've never tried myself! But it might indicate that the drivers managing the connection to the cards on the PCI bus are deadlocked, rather than the Windows application process freezing up).

Another thing to try is re-run the Scope installer...

And indeed, as Dante says, cset.ini can get corrupted with bad entries, but you'd think that that would render Scope unusable, and not drop out after a 2-3 hour period of use.
Re-running the Scope installer you'd think would overwrite your cset.ini with a valid clean copy...
I would archive your existing installation so you can restore it to a separate directory, and do a folder diff of the clean installation and the archived previous installation, to see what differs.
Do you think the your computer might be getting hot? If you rule out the software side, then try re-seating the cards.

Whatever else, make sure if you're re-installing Scope that you don't lose anything in your current Scope dir! Downloaded devices, key files, presets, template projects, your keys..... zip up your installation dir before your next move!

And any changes you make to your system - make sure you understand how to back out any changes you make -before- making them. It's up to you to understand what you are doing before you do it.

Full of questions, me... not too many answers...!

Best of luck!

[garyb]

have you done all this?
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31345

[jksuperstar]

...and don't forget to sacrifice a chicken, swing it over your head three times, and mark your studio door with S|C in blood.

[garyb]

we don't do blood rituals here.

you can even delete the cset.ini and it will regenerate(but don't do it without a backup or you'll lose lots of settings). cset is never a big problem. it can get corrupted, but that's easily fixed via reinstall or just closing Scope, deleting the cset and then restarting Scope. a corrupted cset is very rare. it mainly used to plague old macs(os9 and earlier).

[guppy]

Thanks for all my friends !
I made a sacrifice with my cat as I don't have any chicken, I think it's working
Seriously, the only thing i have changed is the uaa microsoft audio which was sharing irq with one of my pulsar card.
I tried many things to avoid it to start at windows startup, and the only thing I got is an exclamation mark on it, but it doesn't take any irq anymore.
I have manipulated it many times to solve it, so it's not very clear
I made c-state and other optimisation long time ago, I think it's ok on that part.
I've reinstalled scope onto the old one...It works by now...I must wait to see, as i've seen that often happens when i'm really doing music, and not multimedia (maybe high rate transfer is in cause).

[garyb]

well, if heavy use was the cause, i'd suspect heat or an underpowered power supply.

a shared irq could easily be the culprit.

[guppy]

It seems that scope reinstall was the solution!
This is the uaa audio I told about :

Do you have the need to desinstall this driver with scope ? It's linked to the graphic card for hdmi sound, and the fact it takes the same irq than a pulsar2 card was not clean for me.
And as I remembered that having 2 audio drivers in the same time can lead to problems, i wanted to desinstall it from the computer. As it doesn't appear anymore on the irq side, I hope it's ok...it seems ok !

I wonder if the fact that the pci express bus shares the same irq than my pulsar2 card means that the pci ports are emulated with pci express as with chipset 1155 on this motherboard... Do you know if it could be the case ?


My motherboard is an asus p7p55d with 1156, but I can't load more than 7 masterverbs, and it's always the pci which shows the limit in my setup relatively quickly (when I'm mixing with lots of asio output it's even worse of course)

[garyb]

just disable the HD audio if you're not using it.

[guppy]

The problem was that it loaded at every startup.

[garyb]

in the device manager, highlight, right click and choose "disable". it will never work again until you choose "enable".

you can also disable it in the bios.

[guppy]

No, with this motherboard, it seems that I can't stop hdmi audio from the graphic card in the bios, and despite the fact that I disable it from the device manager each time, it was reloading at each startup
But now it's stable with the exclamation mark, it looks ok, no more uaa microsoft in the irq.

[guppy]

Ok, so the freeze problem has not completely disappear
Maybe should I look on the ram...I've already took a look on the bios setup (I made the last bios upgrade to see if it was a solution for my problems), but maybe not enough on the ram side.
Heat shouldn't be a problem since i've put a big fan on the cards.
The power supply is a corsair HX520w which looks nice and heavy.
But it happens less frequently than before.

I take this opportunity to ask you something else that's strange with my scope system:
I understood that when I use some of the effects in the channel insert of the stm, the number of the channel disappeared (and doesn't reappear at all)...

It's not link to this install, because I had these problem when I was working with scope4.5 too.

[guppy]

If you force-close Scope (either by the X button on the top-right of the window, or End Process in Task Manager), and re-start Scope, is Scope responsive?
If yes, then it must be a software problem.

Are you running other software at the time? A DAW etc.. Try running Scope for a period with nothing else loaded... it may be that some other software is causing an issue with Scope.

It works perfectly if I restart scope after ending process in the task manager, so it doesn't stop the workflow as a blue screen.
I tried to understand why and how, but without any result by now

[Eanna]

Have you checked out the other things in my post?

Think you should consider simplifying the hardware connected to the computer, disable some devices (such as networking, and use motherboard video hardware if it's available) and unplug as many USB devices as you can. I'd start with as light a setup as I could first, to see if the problem goes away. Then little by little, add things back, and see what component introduces instability. This is worthwhile doing, since those changes you made have been shown to make a difference, so we're probably 'in the right area'.

Could be a motherboard problem too I guess...

If you have a stable wordclock or sample rate source, try slaving Scope to it (by ADAT or SPDIF sync, or Wordclock if you have a Syncplate and a master clock on BNC connectors).

[guppy]

I'm thinking about my small laser mouse that doesn't answer perfectly...
I must check all of that so
Thanks for all Eanna !

[garyb]

do you have a midi controller connected? if so, it may help to use a midi filter to filter active sensing. the midi filter is in the midi menu at the top of the routing window.

the fact that some of your mixer channel markers are disappearing might make me think there's a file system problem. try rerunning the installer.

[guppy]

Yes, i have a berhinger bcf for the STM.
the channel number has always disappeared, and i'm sure it's when I use some effects into the channel insert, and only at this moment.
But since that i've reinstalled windows and scope many times, it was already there with scope4.5 as I can remember.

[guppy]

Ok, i've just understood that the channel numbers that disappear are link to the Orbitone Impressor compressor in hannel insert: Each time I load a preset, the number disappear.
Same with the other orbitone plugins I got (Faza, flanga, sfera, from a bundle)