No clues, I'm afraid. As part of my philosophy of never doing things systematically, I had increased the buffer size in the soundcard's control panel. I brought it back to its old value, and the Tiny Tim/ Porky Pig quality subsided. 😀 Now I've got a lot of shiny new drivers and the same rusty old problem of clicks and dropouts every few dozen seconds.
are the droppouts or clicks happening cyclically (ie every say 30seconds without variance)? If it is consistent then it is highly unlikely it is a hardware problem (they tend to be very random). More likely some program that goes to sleep for a pre-determined time, wakes up and does something nasty!
The wireless keeps coming up, I just remembered that my old netgear wireless card used to try and connect to google, intel and about five other sites every 30 seconds (or maybe even more frequently) just to check whether the internet was still working!) Have you got a switch on your laptop to phyically turn the wireless off? I know you said you disabled it and it made no difference, but if it is off why does it show in the latency reports? 🙂
Another thing to try (though your music probably won't work at all), is to boot into safe mode. This loads pretty much nothing in the way of drivers or other software (which is why the music probably won't work, ie it probably won't have the firewire drivers)...
when you power on, after the initial screen comes up and before the Windows loading screen comes up, start hitting F8 repeatedly and hopefully you will catch it before windows starts. You should get a menu with one of the options to start in safe mode. (If anyone knows of a better way to get into safe mode please pipe up!)
After it starts try your music, if it doesn't work simply reboot and mutter something about another of wintermutes dumb ideas...
If it does work and still has the dropouts then we can narrow down to just those things that are running (which is a hell of a lot less)... or the hardware..
Tony.
The wireless keeps coming up, I just remembered that my old netgear wireless card used to try and connect to google, intel and about five other sites every 30 seconds (or maybe even more frequently) just to check whether the internet was still working!) Have you got a switch on your laptop to phyically turn the wireless off? I know you said you disabled it and it made no difference, but if it is off why does it show in the latency reports? 🙂
Another thing to try (though your music probably won't work at all), is to boot into safe mode. This loads pretty much nothing in the way of drivers or other software (which is why the music probably won't work, ie it probably won't have the firewire drivers)...
when you power on, after the initial screen comes up and before the Windows loading screen comes up, start hitting F8 repeatedly and hopefully you will catch it before windows starts. You should get a menu with one of the options to start in safe mode. (If anyone knows of a better way to get into safe mode please pipe up!)
After it starts try your music, if it doesn't work simply reboot and mutter something about another of wintermutes dumb ideas...
If it does work and still has the dropouts then we can narrow down to just those things that are running (which is a hell of a lot less)... or the hardware..
Tony.
It's a random issue; every 30 seconds is an average.
When playing music, I turned off the wireless with the keyboard switch and disabling the driver. That doesn't seem to affect the glitches. I didn't do that for the latency report because I was lazy, careless, and trying to get the basic info and post quickly. Oops.
When playing music, I turned off the wireless with the keyboard switch and disabling the driver. That doesn't seem to affect the glitches. I didn't do that for the latency report because I was lazy, careless, and trying to get the basic info and post quickly. Oops.
[SNIP=SY;2436652]My desktop computer that I had used as a music source has gone to live with Jesus. .........[/QUOTE]
Just check it after three days, if it is OK then it will last another 40 days!😀
Just check it after three days, if it is OK then it will last another 40 days!😀
Thinking some more the buffer thing could be a clue, but as yet my brain hasn't digested what that clue may be 😉
I also remember someone earlier mentioning speedstep, did you try disabling it (you might need to do it in the bios). I had a problem with my MythTV box with stuttering video. It turned out to be AMD's power saving that was causing the problem... when watching SD video the cpu useage was quite low, the computer decided I didn't need to be running at 2.7GHz so scaled it back to 1Ghz... this was plenty for the cpu requirements, however it also scaled back the bus speed, This meant there wasn't enough bandwidth for the video stream and caused the stuttering...
You could check your power profile and make sure it is set for high performance when connected to the mains here is a guide to accessing (scroll down half way for vista) Disable Power Management on Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek note it will probably be a bit different on a laptop having settings for battery and mains.
Tony.
edit: LOL brianco!
I also remember someone earlier mentioning speedstep, did you try disabling it (you might need to do it in the bios). I had a problem with my MythTV box with stuttering video. It turned out to be AMD's power saving that was causing the problem... when watching SD video the cpu useage was quite low, the computer decided I didn't need to be running at 2.7GHz so scaled it back to 1Ghz... this was plenty for the cpu requirements, however it also scaled back the bus speed, This meant there wasn't enough bandwidth for the video stream and caused the stuttering...
You could check your power profile and make sure it is set for high performance when connected to the mains here is a guide to accessing (scroll down half way for vista) Disable Power Management on Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek note it will probably be a bit different on a laptop having settings for battery and mains.
Tony.
edit: LOL brianco!
Earlier in the thread, I tried turning off the battery monitor to no effect. Abraxalito mentioned the Speedstep as a possibility, and that seemed plausible, but he gave me no clue as to how to turn it off.
There's a joke about houses and mansions in there somewhere, but I've committed enough blasphemy for the week.
As wintermute suggests, its most likely in the Bios. So that's hitting one of the F-keys while the machine is booting up to get into.
buffer underrun. play with the buffer size in your applications. i'm not familiar with your softs except for the M-Audio and hiface drivers. they will have a buffer size adjustment and it sounds like your buffer size is too small for the speed of your connections and hardware. I could be wrong, but has all the hallmarks of that.
NVM I didnt see how long the thread was and hadnt cought the last few pages. it could be that there is more than one buffer setting conflicting. I doubt its the interfeace itself and I doubt its the playback mechanism itself. bit baffling though.
NVM I didnt see how long the thread was and hadnt cought the last few pages. it could be that there is more than one buffer setting conflicting. I doubt its the interfeace itself and I doubt its the playback mechanism itself. bit baffling though.
Last edited:
The M-Audio card was in the computer that died- this setup that's giving me problems is a Dell laptop with an external Firewire DAC (Echo). Increasing buffer size was the first thing I did, and it's set near the max.
I think (though I'm not sure) that you're wrong. The DPC problem is at the level beneath the buffers - its how buffers get emptied out into the DAC chip itself. So no size of buffer will result in the computer allowing the driver to empty the buffer into the DAC. Its just not allowing the driver access to the buffer without those huge (20mS) delays. The only buffer which might fix this problem is a hardware one on the soundcard (or DAC chip). Even then it would need to be one which held at least 20mS of audio, so 1,000 samples or so.
I read this to my wife, who kept saying, "Yes, yes." Congratulations.😀
Now that she's back home, she's going to take a flyer to see if she can fix the ndis.sys issue.
haha good luck SY.. Hopefully it isn't a case of shared interrupts (which can't be changed) on critical components in your audio chain! I'm sorry to say that the ndys.sys shouldn't be having an effect if your network is disabled.... You have tried disabling the inbuilt ethernet as well as the wireless haven't you???
Tony.
Tony.
Yes, I did. My wife thinks there's an IRQ conflict- I remember how to fix that in DOS, but Vista is apparently far more complicated. After I go to bed tonight, she's going to have a look. According to her, ndis.sys handles a bunch of stuff. I didn't understand what she was saying, but she did something in BIOS (turned off NIC?) which had the same effect as everything else I've tried.
LOL on same effect as every thing else you have tried 🙂 Yes tracking down Interrupt problems is tricky (and much worse on a laptop)... At least on a desktop you can try swapping cards to different slots... Have you tried different USB ports?
I was thinking ndis.sys was only used by the network card (NIC stands for Network Interface Card) either wireless or ethernet, but I do recall now that Firewire shows up under networks on my XP notebook as does bluetooth, so it could be being used for those too!
Hopefully the resident IT expert will be able to sort things out! 🙂
Tony.
I was thinking ndis.sys was only used by the network card (NIC stands for Network Interface Card) either wireless or ethernet, but I do recall now that Firewire shows up under networks on my XP notebook as does bluetooth, so it could be being used for those too!
Hopefully the resident IT expert will be able to sort things out! 🙂
Tony.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.