Perry/all: Display Problem, Core 2 Duo, Dual Monitor

[DennisC]

I mentioned Perry because I saw in another thread that you, Perry, have a very similar set-up to me, although I don't know if you are running dual monitors.

I am having display problems similar to what I read about in past posts concerning the Full Mixer eventually not re-drawing if I switch Fkey views during playback. I have done most of the suggested changes listed in those posts. I have not done the edit to the boot.ini file mainy because I recently did an edit to my boot.ini for another reason and I hosed my system.

MY system:

Intel E-6700 dual core CPU and the Asus P5W DH-Deluxe motherboard
2 GB Ram
Samsung Spinpoint hard drive for system and program files
Western Digital Cavier 500 GB drive SATA drive for audio
Dual monitors off of a Matrox G550
RME FireFace800
2 UAD cards and plugins

The Core Duo is overclocked but ran stable on a 100% stress test on both cpus for 24 hours. Side note - Before this Core 2 Duo I had a Pentium 4 chip running at 3.6GHz and had several edls running 60-90% SAW CPU utilization. With the Core 2 Duo overclocked those same edls had their CPU utlization cut in half.

Notes:
1) The SAW Option "Force single cpu" does not appear to force SAW to one cpu on my system. I have it set but when I open SAW and then open Windows Task Manager, I can then highlight the SAW process and "right click" to choose an option to "set affinity" which then pulls up a list of CPUs available to run this process on. This will show CPU 0 and CPU 1 as selected for the SAW process to use. I can uncheck CPU 1 but I have to do that every time I start SAW. Also, I am not sure if this has helped or not. More testing is required but it doesn't appear to be a total fix.

2) Region Memory Caching had to be turned off as the system was unstable with it on.

3) I tried to not have a paging file given the 2GB of RAM. This would not work and the system was very unstable.

If you guys think the boot.ini edit is needed, could you please post a "cut and paste" of the edit?

Other ideas?

FWIW, I have read all the posts I can find on this and have spent several hours trying different changes but with the problem being somewhat intermittant, it is difficult.

Thanks,

Dennis

[Carl G.]

[QUOTE=DennisC;68292]Dennis,
I have similar setup (but P5B board and Matrox APVe card)
I very very infrequently had that Fkey display querk when I had the older Matrox card (can't remember which one... I think the P650). Never knew what caused it but wasn't enough to even consider fixing. OH.. it ONLY happened under Single Monitor conditions then.

Now with the APV card and dual monitors - no problem with that at all.
(XP sp2)

[Perry]

I mentioned Perry because I saw in another thread that you, Perry, have a very similar set-up to me, although I don't know if you are running dual monitors.

I am having display problems ...............

Dennis

Hi Dennis,

I've only got a minute here right now as I have to try to get something out to ship in an hour... I'll come back afterwards and see if I can give you a hand... also.. feel free to PM me and I'll give you my email and phone number and I'll see if I can help you out since we do have similar systems.

Just to add quickly... it already sounds to me like you have done too much already in terms of tweaks.. fwiw I don't use the 'force single cpu' setting or much else along those lines. Ideally you'd be able to take advantage of the dual cores. I'd suspect a BIOS setting conflict or video card/driver issues. This could be related to the initial OS setup and/or the sequence that drivers were installed originally. Of course, it could be something else entirely.

At any rate... I'll be happy to give you a hand as best as I can. and since we have the same mobo I can go through that with you in depth.

Maybe someone else will help you figure things out before I get back (and hopefully that WILL be the case) but if not... I'm back in a couple of hours or maybe a bit sooner.

Again... if you PM me we'll connect directly for better efficiency and we can post the results later if it'll help others... if you like of course. :)

Hang in there... Back in a bit,

Perry

[MMP]

I'm still seeing this issue from time to time. The only thing I have done that reduces it is run in single CPU mode. The switch inside SAW did nothing to help on my system. Manually forcing the SAW process in Task Manager to one CPU affinity is the only thing that has worked consistantly for me.

I have been running my Vista machine in Dual CPU mode, and still see this from time to time. I had the Zoom mixer lock this morning & the Multitrack once in the afternoon.

I don't think this is likely to get fixed, as I am pretty sure it is only happening on machines with UADs in them.

Regards,

MM

[Perry]

Hmmmmm... weird. I'm not having this problem. I keep dual cpu happening too... I'm even over clocking (though done properly on a modern motherboard this shouldn't be an issue anyway).

Haven't really done anything 'special' that I can think of... just the standard tweaks I'd do.. along with newest BIOS updates and video card drivers and so on.

Must be a common thread here somewhere but I don't know what it is at the moment.

Ummm.... only thing I can think of right off is that it's important to install the motherboard chipset drivers right away after booting up windows the first time and then the video card drivers afterwards... not the other way around. Everyone with graphics problems doing that?

The other thing is the BIOS update. This can be a biggie! I'd say always update the BIOS to the latest version. And, to illustrate this (now that I think of it), I put one system together recently and got lazy and didn't do that right away and I was plagued with 'nebulous' problems until I did.. and that fixed everything.

I usually now, with the new motherboards, do the BIOS upgrade right after booting up windows... using the modern utilities that let you do this from Windows. That should be on the disk with the motherboard.. assuming your motherboard offers this feature. So you'd install the utility and then run it. Of course you'll need to download the new BIOS in advance. Then do the chipset drivers and the video card drivers.

Also.. if you're using ATI... I just install the drivers.. not all that other stuff. That's one of the things I like better myself about nVidia cards... I much prefer their software.. but, if you just install the ATI drivers only... that shouldn't be a problem.. and other than that issue I do like the ATI cards.

Perry

[MMP]

Well, this issue has followed me through 4 video cards, so I feel video card drivers are not the issue.

It has happened on both an Athlon X2 4400 and an Intel E6600. At first I was ready to blame VIA, but not now.

BIOS updates...tried every one available on the X2 system, E6600 system is up to date.

Happens in XP and Vista.

Tried latency adjustment software..etc, etc.

I most often see this when there is a lot going on in the EDL.
It has gotten better since Bob changed a few things trying to fix it, but the problem still occurs.

From experience, I think it has to do with SAW's threading being stamped on by either UAD high latency plugins, or any high latency plugin, or more likely a combination of plugins that don't play well together in the SAW environment. There are so many possible combos...I also believe it is more likely to happen with high latency plugins on an output bus...but again this is more a feeling than a situation I can prove. 'cause once you can prove it, you know how to fix it. Bob doesn't use this stuff, so he is unlikely to bump into it.

I am starting to keep a log with a list of plugins and their positions on EDLs prone to this problem, and will see if my theories hold any water.

Anyhow, glad to hear you aren't getting this annoyance in your day to day, Perry.

Regards,

MM

[DennisC]

Perry/MM,

Thanks for the input. Sorry I was away the rest of the day as we had some challenges at work late into the night.

I have the most recent BIOS and Matrox drivers. I will need to check on the motherboard chipset drivers. I doubt that those are the latest.

Also, I will try to get to some more experimentation to see if it happens without any UAD or other VST pluggins.

Any other thoughts please keep them coming. After the chipset check, Perry, perhaps I can email or call you and we can compare systems etc.

Thanks for all of your help so far, both of you.

Dennis

[Naturally Digital]

From experience, I think it has to do with SAW's threading being stamped on by either UAD high latency plugins, or any high latency plugin, or more likely a combination of plugins that don't play well together in the SAW environment. There are so many possible combos...I also believe it is more likely to happen with high latency plugins on an output bus...but again this is more a feeling than a situation I can prove.This is what I feel too. I don't use the UAD. I use a limited number of plugins to begin with but I definitely note more of these display issues when I use the Sonoris LPEQ, Compressor and Meter plugs... Especially in combination with the Levelizer in peak limit mode. In fact, if I stick with 0 latency plugins (usually the Sonalksis Compressor and EQ with the JMS Freeverb - for live 4x64 tracking) I can usually run all day long without the display glitch.

I have another machine with 2 Powercore cards and again, experience the video glitches more often when I use the PC plugins.

[Bob L]

The Force Single CPU mode option in SS forces my internal engine threads to use one CPU... this does not affect the Task manager from displaying options for both CPUs... using my option does not control DX threads and UAD threafds from using whatever CPU they choose... so this is why anything still goes when using external code like plugs.

The Boot.ini /ONECPU option forces the entire machine down to 1 cpu, therefore video drivers and other plugin threads are all forced to 1 cpu which generally clears the problem.

Since the latest 4.0c version I can no longer duplicate the problem on my duo core machines running both cpus.

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

Since the latest 4.0c version I can no longer duplicate the problem on my duo core machines running both cpus.Are you convinced the problem has nothing to do with the (SAW native API) latency compensation routines?

[Sean McCoy]

I don't think this is likely to get fixed, as I am pretty sure it is only happening on machines with UADs in them. MM
No. I recently added a UAD-1 card, but I was having the display glitches before that, and the frequency of the problems hasn't changed since installing the card. My system is a single CPU P4.

[DennisC]

Perry, what version is your CPU driver? I went to look at my drivers etc. and when I looked up the ACPI Multiprocessor PC driver is was version 5.1.2600.0 with a driver date of 7/1/2001 which seems old. And is the cpu driver the same as the chipset driver?

Further when I somehow listed the files associated with the cpu driver, three were shown:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll
C:\Windows\System32\ntkrnlpa.exe
C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe

I point this out because of the following: In my original post I shared how I have done all of the tweaks I can tell to do except for the boot.ini edit. I shared the reason was that because I previously did edit my boot.ini and hosed my system - specifically my system could not find the file:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll or it was corrupt.

A friend helped me restore the system using my Windows install disk etc. I was thinking this is where I may have picked up an older driver etc.

Anyway, Perry, could you look at the version of your driver?

Thanks,
Dennis

[Perry]

........

Since the latest 4.0c version I can no longer duplicate the problem on my duo core machines running both cpus.

Bob L

Same here.... don't remember exactly now... but I know I used to have problems like this at some point a while back... but I'm pretty sure that at least by 4.0c I no longer had this problem on any of my machines.. UAD-1's or not.

And... over the last little while, because of various circumstances, I went through 3 configurations with my main DAW: AMD 3700+ single core, socket 939 Gigabyte motherboard, 1GB ram, nVidia graphics; AMD 3800+ dual core, socket AM2 Asus motherboard (ATI chipset), 2 GB ram, nVidia graphics and (my current main DAW) Intel E-6600, Asus motherboard, 2GB ram, ATI graphics card.

On both dual core machines I run both cores.

Perry

[Perry]

Perry, what version is your CPU driver? I went to look at my drivers etc. and when I looked up the ACPI Multiprocessor PC driver is was version 5.1.2600.0 with a driver date of 7/1/2001 which seems old. And is the cpu driver the same as the chipset driver?

Further when I somehow listed the files associated with the cpu driver, three were shown:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll
C:\Windows\System32\ntkrnlpa.exe
C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe

I point this out because of the following: In my original post I shared how I have done all of the tweaks I can tell to do except for the boot.ini edit. I shared the reason was that because I previously did edit my boot.ini and hosed my system - specifically my system could not find the file:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll or it was corrupt.

A friend helped me restore the system using my Windows install disk etc. I was thinking this is where I may have picked up an older driver etc.

Anyway, Perry, could you look at the version of your driver?

Thanks,
Dennis

Sorry Dennis, got tied up with stuff.. I'll have a look at this and post back but I can tell you that with this sort of drivers sometimes it isn't unusual to see 'older' versions... including with the chipset drivers. The more important thing here (IMO) is that the BIOS and video card drivers are updated.. and that the video card drivers get installed AFTER the chipset drivers... and of course any other things like soundcard and so on that are obvious should get updated as well once the first steps are done.

And for what it's worth, sometimes I just apply the chipset drivers that come on the disk with the motherboard rather than download new ones. I'm not saying that it's not a good idea to download the latest of everything, but after spending time checking out every driver and finding generally that the various chipset drivers were up to date on the supplied disk, sometimes now I just go with the disk for this and haven't had any apparent problems. But, I should add that I have a separate computer for internet and other stuff and my main DAW isn't on a network and I usually disable this stuff... so it isn't really an issue for me in any regards on that computer.

My main DAW is JUST that! Maybe this is a factor with some of the people having problems???? Anything else I use that computer for (like games or movies)... I set up a separate drive with a clone of the OS and configure it accordingly... I never multi-task the DAW OS drive.

Another 'hidden' factor can be the 'revision number' of a motherboard. Even when we talk about the same motherboard, sometimes it's actually different in that later revisions may have fixed problems that existed with earlier versions.

This is another reason (in particular for a DAW IMO) that getting a 'mature' motherboard may be the wisest choice.. or certainly a consideration. I've experienced this first hand myself with very short lived motherboards due to revision changes that fixed problems that plagued the earlier version that I jumped on a little too hastily, as it was first released. I try to avoid that now unless there are very clear and reliable indications of other DAW users having success with brand new motherboard designs... and more than one of those too! Patience here can be a virtue! :)

Anyway... this may not have anything at all to do with your problem... and probably doesn't... but it's worth mentioning.

Back shortly,

Perry

[Perry]

Perry, what version is your CPU driver? I went to look at my drivers etc. and when I looked up the ACPI Multiprocessor PC driver is was version 5.1.2600.0 with a driver date of 7/1/2001 .....
Thanks,
Dennis

As I suspected... exactly the same.

Believe me I know how this is and the feeling of it.. been there... but I think you may be grasping for straws... and probably barking up the wrong trees here. :) I don't mean to be frivolous about this honestly... and I know how serious it most likely is for you.... it's just that I've done this very thing myself. If you start 'fixing' the wrong things.. things that aren't broken.. you can just sink deeper and deeper into the problem and soon there can be so many things wrong that's there's truly no hope of recovering. Been there; done that! :)

It may well be that you'll need to go back to square one and re-install everything from scratch to sort this out.. completely wipe and reformat the OS drive and all.... and go slowly and methodically at re-installing windows and all drivers and so on. Remove ALL cards from the motherboard first and re-install things one at a time; rebooting every time you make a change to be sure that the registry has every chance to get things right.

Also... set all settings in the BIOS appropriately from the get go (and don't forget the clock and calendar!).

A pain I know... but in the long run probably the fastest and least painful.

Unfortunately no guarantees that this will solve the problem but at least you'll have a clean slate to work with. And, I've had to do this myself a few times for sure. Sometimes when things go astray it's the best solution. I've seen Windows installs just go wacko for no apparent reason.. and just reinstalling and doing the same thing again works just fine... a mystery.. at least to me! But sometimes it's the only thing to do; otherwise you can spend weeks (or more!) and never get anywhere with it.

AND... I highly recommend that you make clones at several steps along the way and carefully document what each is.. using Acronis TrueImage (or whatever you have). That way you can step back to where things were at ground zero if any changes you try wreck what you have. I can't recommend this highly enough... the software is relatively cheap and well worth the price. In fact.. I'd say do that now... before anything else is done at all. Get the software and clone what you have.

Perry

PS: Of course.. it might be worth first deleting everything to do with the video card and then rebooting and re-installing those drivers. This might have no effect.. but worth a shot maybe. Of course too... actually 'truly' deleting everything to do with the video card is not necessarily an easy task and you'd most likely have to manually search through the registry to find remnants of the install... and.. forgot to add.. sure, feel free to PM me and I'll give you my email and phone like I said earlier. We could walk through the BIOS settings easily that way and see if we can come up with anything there or whatever. Be glad to help.

[DennisC]

Perry/All,

I think Perry is probably right. I think only a clean re-install will help. I have already done the "remove the video card drivers and reinstall". I even used Matrox's utility to make sure you remove everything. I do have the latest BIOS and the chipset driver looks to be "current".

I can't do a re-install until after this project though. I will do so probably in July and get back to you all to let you know if that solved the issue.

Thank you for your time and help.

Dennis

[Perry]

Perry/All,

I think Perry is probably right. I think only a clean re-install will help. I have already done the "remove the video card drivers and reinstall". I even used Matrox's utility to make sure you remove everything. I do have the latest BIOS and the chipset driver looks to be "current".

I can't do a re-install until after this project though. I will do so probably in July and get back to you all to let you know if that solved the issue.

Thank you for your time and help.

Dennis

Good luck with it Dennis! :)

FWIW, I can say that I used to have more problems that I've been having for a while now. It's very hard to be certain about why that is but I definitely did make a decision at one point to be more methodical about setting up new computer rigs for myself because I was very tired of the hassle and frustration... and the 'iffiness" of it.... with 'messed up' setups. Enough already! ;)

Rather than be a 'cowboy' about it, which is more to my own personal way to experience life in general :) , I stopped taking anything for granted or trying to take shortcuts or to 'hurry up' with it.

Just do step A then step B and so on.... methodically and thoroughly... and make sure at every step you have done things properly. And don't proceed if there's doubt.

Also, err towards rebooting more than is necessary, if anything. Reboot at every step.. even if not prompted to do so. Don't install a bunch of stuff and then reboot... do it one item at a time. Reboot.. it doesn't take THAT long! :)

And if while setting up a new rig, things start feeling flaky or 'weird' at all, generally I'd just start over again from square one rather than finish and 'wait and see how it goes'. I already know how it goes! :eek: :D

Try this method.... In the long run this can save a lot of headaches IMO. Even one 'disaster' install isn't worth the trouble just to shave a few minutes off your setup time.

The other thing is to have all of your driver updates, BIOS, etc on hand before you start and on a disk or extra drive, or whatever, so that you can access them as needed, and in the proper sequence.

Alright... again.. good luck with it and let us know how it goes when you get the time to do it.

Cheers,

Perry

PS: About this particular rig of yours Dennis.... It's been a while since I used Matrox cards in my DAW rigs (but my wife insists on Matrox for her graphics computer.. fwiw). But, I remember that sometimes I'd have problems with those and there were always different driver versions available... MS Certified, Latest Beta, Unified, etc.. and sometimes this made a difference if I remember correctly.

This was one thing that turned me off from Matrox for my own DAW rigs actually... it seemed overly complex with that scenario to try out all the different drivers when I was having graphics problems. It was nice in one sense to have all the options available.. but I didn't like that I'd have problems in the first place. YMMV pf course.. and I hope it does! :)

I'm not saying the Matrox card is the problem (I honestly don't know if it is or isn't an issue) and I know there are a lot of people here using them.... but I just remembered that I eventually shied away from them and it seems that I had less problems after that.. though I admit this is possibly faulty memory and not to be taken as fact.

Just a thought... and wondering if you tried the different drivers from Matrox (assuming they still do that). Also wondering if there is a common thread here at all with others?

[Bob L]

I am not convinced of anything regarding these display issues... but it does seem to happen more often on machines that are using UAD cards or other similar hardware... but this is probably just due to the fact that the machine is being taxed more internally trying to service more hardware interrupts and some where along the line... threads get stomped on.

I have made continual progress with internal code changes in SS, but I am also convinced that the problem is shared among other drivers and plugins needing similar attention to dual cpu issues.

Bob L

[rdubost]

Phew ! This is awesome !

I was running into video refreshing with my (old) system. I came here as usual, threw some keywords at the searcvh box and found this thread in like ... 5 seconds.

quote : "2) Region Memory Caching had to be turned off as the system was unstable with it on."

let's give it a try :

- alt tab/saw/options/turn off region peak caching
- Right click in MT, try some Fkeys, adjust levelizer threshold ... problem disappeared.

This is no news, but this forum truly IS what they should call support ! When I think we have had the same for like 14 years, completely free I have to make some internal adjustments to completely realize what working with SAW is worth ...

Thanks you SAW community, M. Lentini first.

Roger.

[DamonD]

Hey Dennis,

I hope you fixed your issue... but just in case you didn't.

The version differences in files are caused by doing a restore form the original XP CD. Once you do a restore from the CD, you need to reapply ALL of the Windows Updates you had on the system, so all files will now match versions again.

Good luck
Damon


Perry, what version is your CPU driver? I went to look at my drivers etc. and when I looked up the ACPI Multiprocessor PC driver is was version 5.1.2600.0 with a driver date of 7/1/2001 which seems old. And is the cpu driver the same as the chipset driver?

Further when I somehow listed the files associated with the cpu driver, three were shown:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll
C:\Windows\System32\ntkrnlpa.exe
C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe

I point this out because of the following: In my original post I shared how I have done all of the tweaks I can tell to do except for the boot.ini edit. I shared the reason was that because I previously did edit my boot.ini and hosed my system - specifically my system could not find the file:

C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll or it was corrupt.

A friend helped me restore the system using my Windows install disk etc. I was thinking this is where I may have picked up an older driver etc.

Anyway, Perry, could you look at the version of your driver?

Thanks,
Dennis

[Carl G.]

Phew ! This is awesome !
quote : "2) Region Memory Caching had to be turned off as the system was unstable with it on."
let's give it a try :
- alt tab/saw/options/turn off region peak caching
- Right click in MT, try some Fkeys, adjust levelizer threshold ... problem disappeared.

Roger.

Roger,
I noticed in your post you said "Region *Memory* caching" needed to be turned off. But the next sentence describes that you turned off *Region *Peak* (data) caching. (The item above *Memory* caching on the Options menu).

Which one did you turn off that made the problem go away?
(Just a curious mind)