joto

I've used the kx drivers for a while, but have a problem when a program using the ASIO drivers crashes.

Using the WDM drivers in Sonar, I do not have this problem. If Sonar crashes I can simply restart (as long as I stick to WDM drivers).

But any application that uses the ASIO drivers, will after a crash, hang anything that tries to access the soundcard. If I try to kill the applications by using the task manager, a popup explains that the process is currently being debugged and cannot be closed. This includes the kxMixer, and anything that accesses the soundcard using more traditional API's, such as foobar2000, or standard sound events in windows.

I have an Abit kx333 motherboard, with an AMD XP 1700 processor, running Windows 2000. I use an Audigy 2, which is recognized by the kx driver as SB0240.

I've tried disabling ACPI, but it didn't make any difference.

dj_stick

firstly when running ASIO apps, close EVERYTHING not required, also check the issues page on the kX website for compatibility issues with VIA chipsets looks like u have one of those

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joto

Yes, I've updated to the latest bios firmware and drivers. I'm too chicken to try to fry my motherboard with the unofficial low-latency patch right now, but if other people have had the same problem and it fixed it, maybe I'll give it a go.

But I do not have any of the commonly cited problems with ASIO. There are no latency problems, stutterings, clicks, hangs, lockups, freezes, data-corruption, etc, in normal operation. Except for the above mentioned issue with ASIO, my computer is exceptionally stable. I can safely run e.g. foobar2000 at the same time as I'm using ASIO.

The only way to experience the problem is when some app using ASIO drivers crashes. And this usually happens in some faulty plugin that would probably have caused a crash anyway. In particular, I have no problems with ASIO apps crashing randomly, or for reasons I can't understand. It's just that _if_ they crash, I'm hosed, no matter what caused it.

Edit: I checked my motherboard. It uses VIA KT333 and VT8233A, which some quick googling didn't turn up anything useful for.

dj_stick

ok it sounds like ifthe program crashes it is still accessing the sound card, ctrl-alt-delete and go to the task manager, go to processes and find any process relating to your ASIO ap and end it

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joto

Nope. When the app (in this case Chainer.exe) crashes, then it disappears from the process list in task manager. Closing other applications works, if they aren't currently accessing the soundcard. If they are, they hang, and if I forcibly tries to close them in task manager, I get a dialog box with the title: "Unable to Terminate Process", and message: "The Operation could not be completed." "Access is denied".

Everything using sound will hang, including normal windows sound events, Midi-OX, and kxMixer.

I used to have another sound card in my computer, which I removed in the hope of fixing things. When it was installed, even apps accessing only the other soundcard (which was set as default in windows) would hang.

joto

I did another experiment and turned off NAV and ZoneAlarm. It made no difference.

Anyone have any ideas as to why this occurs?

dj_stick

it sounds like a very strange issue w/ ur computer… try moving the card to a new PCI slot and see if the bug occurs again

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joto

It still occurs.

NightBreed

Sounds like it's an issue with midi. Maybe another program is trying to use a midi port that's already active. I say that because of your mention of MidiOX. Are you running any midi loop back drivers? If so, make sure you have the feedback setup correctly. Midi will screw your computer if your computer goes into an endless loop and you'll defenatly lock up, regardless of the soundcard or driver. Cakewalk just, for some reason, has a better way of getting out of these loopbacks

joto

It happens without using anything special related to MIDI. My last tests where performed with Chainer.exe and an early (obsolete) beta version of the Peti_beta plugin that has a GUI bug when using the pitch bend wheel that causes it to crash, although it's repeatable with any other faulty plugin too.

Here's my latest test: I close everything accessing the sound card (including kxMixer). I then open Chainer.exe, then open some dialog box within it (in this case automation). This dialog box is modal, so I can't close chainer without closing the dialog box first. Now, I go to task-manager, and closes Chainer.exe. Because microsoft is weird, windows with open modal dialog boxes can't be closed "nicely" by task-manager, so it asks if I really want to close it. I answer yes. Result: same as before, anything accessing the sound card will hang!

The same thing happened in ACID (with no MIDI inputs enabled), when using ASIO drivers. In this case, I simply used the File->Open dialog.

__

Note: I just mentioned MIDI because it's yet another way of accessing the soundcard drivers for some unrelated function. I could have tried the joystick too, although I don't have one, so I would have to borrow one.

I do have MIDI Yoke drivers and directiXer-loopback midi drivers installed, which I sometimes, but rarely, find useful. I could try to uninstall them too, although it happened before I had them installed.

__

But at this point I feel you are all more or less suggesting a chicken dance of weird rituals without much planning on how it's supposed to fix the problem. Isn't there some way of enabling logging, or debugging the kx drivers so we can see what really happens?

NightBreed

All we can do is "suggest a chicken dance " seeing as how no one else is having this issue.

However, you say you have "no midi" ports open, when infact directiXer-loopback plugin is an acting midi port. It's a directx plugin which is probably activated the minute you open an application using audio. Try using "regsvr32.exe /u" against the directiXer dll file and see if you still get the hangup.. If you do, then you may need to update it to the 2.5 version of it.

joto

Ok, I did the chicken dance. I made an extra partition, and moved the cards around so that according to my motherboard manual they shouldn't have any conflicts.

I then installed W2k with "standard PC", Via 4in1 drivers, Motherboard USB filter driver, VIA Busmaster IDE driver, CNet PRO 200 NIC driver, W2kSP4, DirectX 9.0b, Windows Media Player 9 (I had it on disk, so...), NVIDIA GeForce 2MX drivers, kx drivers 5.10.0.3537, winrar, and Xlutop Chainer Demo, in that order (and nothing else). All the drivers were recently downloaded from the net. There are no other cards in my computer than the network card, the graphics card, and the Audigy2. The on-board RAID device is disabled in BIOS as well.

By inspecting device manager, I noticed that despite my motherboards manual, the onboard USB driver turned out to be shared on IRQ 5 with the Audigy2, so I went into the bios and disabled it. (Device manager showed no conflicts anyway..., and the reason I disabled it was that the "Use automatic settings" was greyed out in device manager, and I didn't figure out how to enable it so I could move one of the IRQs).

I then set up ASIO drivers in chainer, and no midi drivers, and performed the above mentioned experiment with modal dialog box and kill the process. Result: as before.

I then downloaded and installed the georgebreese.com PCI latency patch, and did the same experiment. Result: as before

Suggestions? (And by the way, why was the "Use automatic settings" greyed out?)

NightBreed

Try uninstalling Chainer for a minute. I downloaded and gave chainer a shot and got too many problems with it. Instead of the two vst hosts you are using, try using 'forte'' brainstorm from here http://www.brainspawn.com/ and see if you still get the same problems.

kronky

I have the same problem with Chainer and with Tracktion.
I have also another problem concerning the remote control, see this topic or this one .

In the 2 cases, it seems that we (all people that have at least one of this problem) are using Win2000 SP4

Maybe is it a win2000 SP4 issue ?

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Sorry for my bad english ;-)

dj_stick

perhaps it could be a windows issue - have you tried running windows XP with the same setup and programs?

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bleedwright

I also have the same problem with sonar 3 or energyxt (separately)
mainly when using softsynths.
- running win2000 sp4
- using usb midi (evolution)
I did wonder if it could be the usb, although in sonar forums it is suggested that some low quality sound cards (I'm using an sblive) fail to release midi drivers on crash, and so that's what brought me here.
Nevertheless, it would be interesting to know what kind of midi (if any) Joto is using.

bleedwright

I am experiencing the same problem as joto (ASIO program crash -> lockup -> reboot) in a separate thread.

(NightBreed - "All we can do is "suggest a chicken dance " seeing as how no one else is having this issue. " )


I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that other people have the same problem. I am using sonar3 and/or
energy xt with asio drivers (kx 3537 debug),sblive and evolution usb midi on win2000 sp4 and 2.66ghz gigabyte pc + 512mb ram


The program crashes while using various softsynths - dx or vst - (but not neccessarily playing them, perhaps just tweaking properties with the mouse) and it is impossible to restart it because it actually has not closed and cannot be manually closed with task manager or taskinfo. When this is attempted, an 'access is denied' message appears and quite often taskinfo will freeze up as well. (Or sometimes the whole system freezes immediately.)

Attempts to access the audio driver (eg mp3 player) faill, and the only way to fix this is to reset the computer, because shutdown will not work.

Please understand, it is not the crashing that is the problem as much as the need to reboot.

-do NOT have via chipset
-have minimised background services
-am not using midi loopback or midi ox (I removed midox and the midi drivers and it made no difference)
-there is no midi feedback

And yes, using wdm drivers does not cause this problem,
but for various reasons I would rather use asio.

I don't think it has anything to do with any one particular software - sonar, energyxt or chainer - as it can occur in any of these.
Word in the sonar forums over at cakewalk is that this can be a problem with inferior sound cards. So I'm wondering is it an issue with the sblive! hardware or is it driver related and therefore solvable.

dj_stick

it appears that this issue is sonar specific, and it is sonar that is not releasing control over the audio drivers once it has crashed

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Eugene Gavrilov

sometimes kernel-level lock-ups can cause similar issues
the nature of them is not clear and is not necessarily related to our driver
(but, for instance, to the ks, usb core etc...)
try to install any debugging monitor (kxdev.narod.ru) and check its output

E.

perleeze

I didn't know wdm drivers could bypass this problem. Anyhow, i have the same issues. I use an asusp4p800e, with an audigy 2 platinum ex

Using the kontakt based east west symphonic library, occasionally sonar 3 will crash. It'll take down sonar the application. but occasionally it'll still hang around. The midi activity indicator will still be there. Right now, after the app has kicked the bucket, winamp is playing. But it's only doing the last couple of milliseconds. That program cannot be terminated using taskmgr, showing the exact same popup. When sonar is still shown in the process box, it too cannot be terminated, showing the exact same popup.

This happens on my other computer as well, which is not using the kxdrivers.

So, I'm pretty sure it's because of sonar not releasing the audio drivers that is causing the problem after it dies in a sudden load situation, but i'd like to hear if cubase SX users face the same thing, so don't go buying new hardware or trying funky settings.

Would midi drivers be affecting audio?

perleeze

Bump
no one?

bleedwright

This problem has occurred with cubase sx and energyxt as well as sonar3, and I think some standalone softsynths. It is common to software accessing asio drivers.

also

"sometimes kernel-level lock-ups can cause similar issues
the nature of them is not clear and is not necessarily related to our driver
(but, for instance, to the ks, usb core etc...)
try to install any debugging monitor (kxdev.narod.ru) and check its output" - eg

Are you asking me to send you a debug log?
If so, do you mean the log for the original crash? Because the problem occurs following the crash will a log for the original crash be any use?

If you want to see this log, will the dr watson one be ok
or would you prefer debugview?

Oh, and I forgot to say before, thanks for the kx drivers and all the effort thats gone into them. They are the best.



bleedright

bleedwright

Yes it has just happened on cubasesx (2), perleeze.

If I use wdm drivers while using midi and there is a crash, I find that I can restart the program without a reboot.
also I've had the same problem with no midiins or outs selected

So it seems unlikely to be a midi issue

Everything seems to point to asio drivers or the creative hardware.

bleedright

perleeze

You know, i have a suggestion to the kx team, is there any way to have a panic button that will simply just release the drivers? I've gotten too many hangs from bad plugins and everytime that happens shutdowns take ages and sometimes need to just hard reset and chkdsk. There're a number of undeletable files now

perleeze

Just in case anyone's wondering, sonar 3.1.1 kind of solves the lockup issue. During high cpu spiking conditions, previous sonars would lock up. This version seems to release the drivers, but you'll need to reboot to get it all back. In some cases though, with rewire on, everything will lock up as before.