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ICD hangs with Win2k, reproducible

Posted: Saturday, 10/19/2002 -- by David Moisan. Subject: ICD hangs with Win2k, reproducible

I've been having trouble with Designer hanging during use. Our machine is a Dell Dimension 4300 (P4, 2GHz) with 256M RAM, GeForce 2 MX video and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for sound. The OS is Win2k (now up to SP3); ICD is SP4.

During normal use, ICD will sometimes (1 time in 10) stop responding to keyboard inputs. Sometimes, ICD will die and leave MMOS.EXE running (as seen in Task Manager). Other times, ICD will die upon start up; I'll see the menu screen but the buttons don't function and the Windows desktop shows up behind it, like a dead DirectX game.

This workstation is set to have ICD start automatically upon login. It is not connected to a network.

I have been able to reproduce the problem with a test script; this script is just 10 pages, each with some text ("Test Page n") and a different background and an wipe I selected at random. The first page plays an MP3 file while the last page stops playback and loops back to the first page. Interval for each page is 1 second, as tight a loop as I could get.

The test script consistently crashes at the last page of the script, the one that stops audio playback and loops. No audio is present (not even stuttering audio) and it is frozen on the last page.

At first I thought it was bad drivers, and smoked out a few of them with Driver Verifier, but Scala still hangs. My video and audio drivers are known to be up to date and I have removed one questionable driver (Intel ATA driver, replaced with the MS driver).

What other avenues do I need to investigate?

Take care,

Dave

Posted: Sunday, 10/20/2002 -- by Tom Graham. Subject: ICD Hangs

I had similar problems with a new computer recently.
I cured the problem by reducing the graphics acceleration in systems/properties/performance.

worth a try,

Tom Graham

Posted: Monday, 10/21/2002 -- by John Schilling. Subject: Toss the "Turtle Beach Santa Cruz "

The TBSC is *not* recommneded. [read that as: strongly advised against! All hype and nice reviews--not a stable card]

The AD1885 AC'97 CODEC (with its current WHQL driver) that is built into that unit's motherboard is a good solution.

Alternatively get a nice stable and cheap USD$15 OEM PCI card based on an ESS Technologies Allegro4 or Mastro-2E and the WHQL ESS Technologies drivers--or a CMI 87xx with CMI's WHQL drivers.

Note: That unit is a P4 with SDRAM. The P4 is almost totally wasted in this type of solution. [the computer equivalent of putting a 265 B.H.P. 5.3 Liter V8 engine into a Trabant...]

As to getting stable preformance by "reducing graphcis acceleration Settings". The only value that provides is disabling parts of the video card's device driver. If this is a cure that helps--that indicates a defective video device driver and a newer, hopefully less buggy, version should be obtained.

Current nVidia WHQL drivers have been fine in extended testing.

BTW: Current Intel "IAA/Bus-Mastering ATA driver" is strongly advised over the current Microsoft EIDE driver for Intel 845 chipsets.


Regards,

--John Schilling, Scala, Inc.

Posted: Monday, 10/21/2002 -- by David Moisan. Subject: Is IAA stable?

Re your recommendation of Intel's IAA; I had heard this to be buggy and unstable. Is it that much better than the MS drivers?


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