SAWStudio Lite crashes

[PieterS]

Bob,

I was recording a choir yesterday and had SSLite 3.9c crashing a few times on my laptop (P4 Toshiba Satellite A60).
It happened almost consistently when I adjusted the gain make-up fader of the track compressor during playback. When you do this, a large fader pops up and when I moved the hand-like knob, everything freezed and SSL crashes. Sometimes with a message like: "sawstudiolite.exe caused an error...", sometimes only a lot of stuttering and no crash. I had no plugs loaded, just a plain recording setup. Haven't had the time to reproduce it on my main machine yet. It could be a hardware issue, but maybe others have had this before.

The good news is that recording this way works extremely well! I used a setup with two ADA 8000's and RME digiface and an extern harddrive. I was setup and ready to go in minutes in the control room and beside the crashes everything worked perfect. Very smooth. Didn't mis a hardware mixer for a minute, in the box works fine for me. Quick and easy.

regards,

[Bob L]

Pieter,

Some systems have had trouble with the Windows function that restricts mouse movement to a rectangle... I use this function all the time when grabbing knobs and control zones to keep the mouse from wandering all over the screen (I hate software that does that).

If this function call fails on your machine and the cursor is free to move outside the popup fader... this would cause a crash...

Can you go back and verify if that is what is happening?

Make sure that while the fader is grabbed, you cannot move the mouse outside the popup fader.

Bob L

[PieterS]

Hi Bob,

back home i can't reproduce the error yet. I'll try to recreate the setup exactly as the other day.
When adjusting the fader the mouse cursor does get restricted to a very small rectangle, so that doesn't seem to be the problem?
I'll keep you posted.

[SoundSuite]

Pieter,

Does this Toshiba have a glide pad instead of a nub to move for mouse?
If it has a glide pad, check your taskbar in lower right of screen (by the clock) for an image that 'mirrors' the movement of the mouse/glidepad to their icon on the taskbar.

If so, try disabling Toshiba's mouse software temporarily and use an external mouse, I've seen this glidpad software cause issues on a Toshiba laptop before.

This is a test for Pieter, not a 'gotta fix' tweak for all Toshiba users ;)

[PieterS]

Bob,

I can't reproduce crashes, but I do get strange behaviour. Try this:

When you click on the little arrows and drag down or up quickly and immediately release the button when the fader appears, sometimes the locking of the cursor doesn't work. You can then freely move the cursor and click other buttons with strange results.... If it doesn't lock, there also isn't the hand-like cursor, but the normal cursor. It takes some training to do this, but I think this is what I experienced during the recording. Why it doesn't crash now is not clear to me.

Jon,

I have a glidepad, but no taskbar icon.

[Mountain Media]

Bob,

I can't reproduce crashes, but I do get strange behaviour. Try this:

When you click on the little arrows and drag down or up quickly and immediately release the button when the fader appears, sometimes the locking of the cursor doesn't work. You can then freely move the cursor and click other buttons with strange results.... If it doesn't lock, there also isn't the hand-like cursor, but the normal cursor. It takes some training to do this, but I think this is what I experienced during the recording. Why it doesn't crash now is not clear to me.

Jon,

I have a glidepad, but no taskbar icon.Pieter, I can recreate the scenario above, though I haven't gotten a crash. It probably has to do the the interaction between timings on whether mouse button presses are clicks, holds, etc. I am using a Toshiba with an AccuPoint II pointing device when I recreate this. I can not get it to recreate on my studio DAW with a 'real' mouse.

[Bob L]

I'm sure there are many ways to break things... in fact its amazing to me that any of this computer stuff works at all. :)

I would say... if it screws up when you do that... Don't do that. :D

A basic wheelmouse can work wonders in keeping the stability of all this stuff... and some mouse timing tweaks in the Windows Control Panel can sometimes work wonders.

In fact, its interesting to note that after the fire, I bought a half dozen Microsoft Basic optical wheel mice to get my machines up and running again... every machine started doing the mouse cursor jump to the corner routine that Yura was talking about... I thought there was a problem with the machines... as it turns out... a simple switch to some inexpensive Creative mice fixed everything on every machine all at once... so its a true lesson how some of this basic stuff can cause grief and mess up otherwise stable systems.

Wouldn't you know that Microsoft can't even get a basic mouse to work properly... and they run the industry. :D

Bob L

[mghtx]

Wouldn't you know that Microsoft can't even get a basic mouse to work properly... and they run the industry.

Scary actually. :eek:

[Yura]

yep!
you do laugh!

I didnt catch it.
My pointer started to jump aside again


It was my last black joke:)
still works fine on my old bedraggled mousepad, pulled out back from garbage pit.

[SoundSuite]

Jon,
I have a glidepad, but no taskbar icon.
Roger, worth a shot :)

[PieterS]

Yes Bob, I agree, you can't tackle every problem, but...
this is reproducable and can cause things to crash under some circumstances (hardware?). Especially because this can happen accidentally too when you are a bit careless with the mouse button. Maybe worth looking in to?

[PieterS]

b.t.w.

I do have a optical Microsoft mouse on this machine... hmmm, and the cursor is flying around too sometimes. Well, maybe it is all connected.

Pieter

[Bob L]

Interesting... you may want to try a Logitech or the Creative optical mouse and see if things just get fixed by themselves... its worth the $15 in my opinion.

Bob L