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Jon Best 16 July 2003

I posted this on pCDaw also, but I figured I'd get you all's ideas;

I've had this problem a couple times before, but after a recent
reinstall/latest drivers 'house cleaning,' it's popping up even more.

My DAW keeps either freezing, or going into extreme slow motion, mostly in
Nuendo. The mouse is still active, but everything else takes several
minutes; normally almost instantaneous screen redraws, menus, any command.
For instance, I can hit f3 to pull up the mixer, and the screen eventually
brings up the mixer after moving the other windows around as normal, but it
takes like five minutes. I can solo a track (muting the rest), and the solo
button on that track lights up 30 seconds later, followed by the mutes on
the other tracks lighting one at a time every 10-15 seconds until it's done.

I can even save and shut down Nuendo, although the process (4 or 5 commands)
takes fifteen minutes. After shutdown, I can pull Nundo back up without a
reboot, and it works as usual, albeit with a greater likelihood of a
slowdown. A reboot puts everything back to normal.

The first time it did this, it did it a couple times, and that was it. Now
it's doing it at least once a day or so, which is unacceptible.

Any ideas?

DAW;

ASUS P4T-E
P4 1.6A
1G Kingston RDRAM
RME Hammerfall (latest bios/mods)
Multiface
Matrox G450
Several Maxtor drives
PLEXTOR 12/8/32
Nuendo
Wavelab

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Comments

SonOfSmawg Wed, 07/16/2003 - 20:31

I use Maxtor HDDs exclusively. If you're up for a fresh install, get the Maxblaster3 utility (which you can d/l from the Maxtor site) and put it on a floppy. It allows you to totally "zero" the drive. It takes several hours to do a 60Gb drive, but then you have a totally clean drive, with absolutely no remnants hanging around.

Also, when you do that fresh install, make sure you put your OS on a small partition. If you're using XP Pro, and you're ONLY going to put the OS on that partition, you only need it to be 1.5Gb. And remember, never fill a harddrive or partition more than 85% or you will lose performance.

Once that is done, create a partition for your programs. Figure the total space your programs will need and double it to get your partition size. This leaves you room to add more programs, yet still keep you under 85%.

When you have the rare opportunities of having storage HDDs empty, "zero" those out, too. Your partitioning scheme for these drives is up to you, but remember, the larger the partition, the more scattered your data will be, so the slower your data will be accessed.

Also, check your memory. If you have access to other memory, preferably a different brand than what you have, try it. A lot of times, motherboards are finnicky about what memory they work well with, ESPECIALLY Asus boards.

When you do your installation, make sure that you do it properly. Remove all hardware down to "barebones", install the OS, then install the mobo drivers, then install your video drivers. Now start re-installing your hardware a piece at a time, hardware and drivers. DO NOT leave your tower all assembled, format and partition your harddrive, install the OS, then start throwing drivers in it willy-nilly. A PROPER installation is essential.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck!

:c:

falkon2 Thu, 07/17/2003 - 07:43

This has happened to me on a couple of different machines as well, but running SONAR, not Nuendo. Exact same symptoms as that you describe, and coming in different severities.

The systems were running XP and using Audigy with the default (though up-to-date) Creative drivers.

However, my personal laptop runs SONAR without a hitch so far. What sound card and/or drivers are you using?

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