Anyone experiences spontaneous system reboot under Sonar 8.5.3 ??...

Hi Rob - first of all, you posted this in the X1 forum, not the "legacy" forum for 8.5 and below.

when you say "system reboot" are you talking about windows?  if so, this is not something that should be caused by sonar, but likely a RAM or Power Supply or hardware driver problem.  you need to check the dump file to see what is causing the system to reboot.

since you only experience this when using sonar, I would first look at soundcard and MOTU drivers, then firewire then video drivers.  but it could also still be RAM depending on how you use the computer.  there could be cases where you're not using the RAM like you do when using sonar.

Sounds like it's a non-Sonar problem and could be caused by any number of things. Start checking the obvious - download Memtest & check you RAM

 
 
+2
 
The problem is most likely RAM related... could also be power-supply related (if it's too lean for the machine)
 
Uncheck "Automatically Restart" and the system will blue screen.
Don't be alarmed when it happens.  It might list the exact culprit (look at the error message).
 
Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings>Startup and Recovery (click "Settings" button):
Under System Failure... uncheck (disable) Automatically Restart
 
As was mentioned, test the RAM. 
I'd use Memtest... and test a second time with an overall stress-test (using something like Prime95).
If you get an error with Memtest or Prime95, you need to rule out the bad stick/s.
To do this, test a single stick of RAM in the outer most RAM slot (the one closest to the outer edge of the motherboard - furthest away from the CPU).  Repeat this test for each stick of RAM.  When you encounter a bad stick, the machine will likely not boot. 

+1 to what has been said before.

Another thing to do in general to protect your projects is to regularly use "Save As" to save under a new project name. If the bug or bad memory issue hits while Sonar is saving your project file it could corrupt it and make your project unreadable. Not a nice thing. (This isn't Sonar's fault).

Once you have tested your RAM and ruled that out, the next obvious culprit will be the drivers of your sound interface. But first test the RAM. Not least because software like memtest can test it for you. Prime95 is one way of stress testing your system but personally I prefer IntelBurnTest based in the Intel Linpack tests. This application tends to detect issues in a few minutes that Prime95 only finds after running for hours. You can download it here: http://www.ultimate-filez...iles/IntelBurnTest.zip

UnderTow

super weird, very interesting. Thanks for sharing the result!

lanstrad


Hi guys,
Haven't results yet. I am trying Memtest for a few minutes for over a week, probably haven't gone through yet. Only time I tried to leave it do the job and go I came back and the computer was blackscreen unwakable... (Yes I have disabled Win7 sleep mode, so it was not that)....
Thanks to all of you for valuable suggestions. Just hope it's not my audio interface - never paid that much before and never had such a problem....
will post results for sure
Rob

then you probably do have a memory problem.
 
you should try testing just one stick at a time like someone suggested above.

lfm


I had BSOD on W7 x64 when testing firewire soundcards.

The Impact Twin from TC electronics and WDM drivers did that when ever I pressed Echo on an audio input. Every time within a second.

ASIO went fine.

Reaper worked fine both ASIO and WDM so Sonar did something when activating audio inputs that's for sure.

Testing a couple of firewire interfaces I gave up on the idéa of firewire alltogether. To much cpu wasted for just keeping soundcard up. I never got under 7% total cpu on a i7 860 cpu(20% on one core). 4 different firewire cards tested and a couple of different cables.

Firewire on PC= NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm running firewire on my PC with my MOTU just fine.  it depends on the soundcard drivers.

Beagle

lfm


I had BSOD on W7 x64 when testing firewire soundcards.

The Impact Twin from TC electronics and WDM drivers did that when ever I pressed Echo on an audio input. Every time within a second.

ASIO went fine.

Reaper worked fine both ASIO and WDM so Sonar did something when activating audio inputs that's for sure.

Testing a couple of firewire interfaces I gave up on the idéa of firewire alltogether. To much cpu wasted for just keeping soundcard up. I never got under 7% total cpu on a i7 860 cpu(20% on one core). 4 different firewire cards tested and a couple of different cables.

Firewire on PC= NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm running firewire on my PC with my MOTU just fine.  it depends on the soundcard drivers.

Well, I got it to run but there were too many things I just hated about firewire. If two major brands fail to make decent drivers then something is wrong for one. Focusrite Saffire Pro40 ran just fine, with Sonar as well. Impact Twin had a lot of issues with Sonar and transport, I had to start transport 2-3 times before it eventually ran.

Connectors are really bad design on firewire. Just a slight bend towards the wall from the table suddenly made audio crack up. Connectors type network cables are much better design. I never had such issues with network cables. Firewire have these circuit board long fingers that very easily loose connection.

And the cpu thingy, and special chips in computer for interface cards etc. Tweaking settings like hell, in bios, in windows.

Why bother with poor technical design?

I got an RME internal card with zero cpu waste and work like a clock. No technical issues of any type. Just a lot of time to make recordings and all the cpu can be used for Sonar and plugins.

If to try external interfaces again I think USB has developed more over the years and developers has put a lot of effort into USB. Firewire seems to be forgotten and is disappearing from market.

bitflipper

Firewire seems to be forgotten and is disappearing from market.

Yes, Firewire probably will disappear, but not for another 20 years. By then, its advantage of greater CPU efficiency will have become moot. But for today, it's still viable and I'd have no qualms about buying another FW interface. Aside from more rugged connectors and wider availability, USB doesn't really offer any technical advantage over Firewire.

At any rate, it's unlikely the OP's problem has anything to do with his audio interface.

It has to be something concerning kernel drivers. Graphics card or soundcard is my guess.

My old daw, an with XP 2.8G(P4 with HT) had this kind of sudden BSOD when running firewire stuff last spring( I tested my new daw and my former at the same time). It was very spontaneous, I just needed soundcard active and could work in any app.

An XP SP did this, and then MS has new SP out and reduced normal F400 Mhz firewire down to 100 Mhz and then it worked.

There is an article at MS about this. They had a fix to turn it back to 400 Mhz if you absolutely needed that but they did not recommend it. That says a lot about how firewire is treated in PC, they set down speed for 400Mhz to 100Mhz because XP cannot handle it obviously.

So I would not rule out firewire card in computer or interface or drivers or servicepacks.

Since firewire often share irq with diskcontroller it could be related to that just by coincidence.

I would at least borrow and test an USB interface and see if the same thing occurs. Would be a start to narrow it

down.

I think USB has an advantage being built into mobo. Not much firewire is there from start anymore. That's an advantage.

But I think USB has as much cpu overhead as firewire still, so there's not advantage. I was about to test RME new babyface but has not got around to it since I got the RME internal cards and is never going to leave that technology.

AS for OP question, I would also check if computer vendor has updated chipset drivers or bios firmware.

lanstrad


Hi guys, just an update.
 
BSOD disappeared for about a week, then since yesterday  went back to back immediately at 6 or 8 consecutive startups (just after Windows boot). Then ok, then again today. I opened the desktop for a check and realized a ''seek'' on the optical drive (blu-ray writer) immediately after boot-up triggered that BSOD.
 
I disconnected that drive and (cross my fingers): this is the fifth startup and... no blue screen (yet).   So hopefully this is the problem. What I am worried about though is when I got this machine a few months ago, I had another optical drive (a DVD) which I had moved from my old machine (so I had 2 opticals).  And there was a freezing problem when I tried to use it, so I removed it.  I am wondering if this is the drive itself... or something the mobo does with it (the drive I removed was installed in another machine with no glitch at all...)

When I tested firewire the controller card shared irq with disk drive controller. This was when pci-express type of firewire card was installed. And for some reason my newer computer could not set this, it was fixed for that pci-x1 slot. If you have other card, I bought normal pci cards as well to test what runs the best.

So make a check which irq your BD/DVD uses and see if any conflict. A conflict might even be shown in devices list if os finds it. Anyway you can find out through which hardware it's used.

lanstrad

 

When I tested firewire the controller card shared irq with disk drive controller. This was when pci-express type of firewire card was installed. And for some reason my newer computer could not set this, it was fixed for that pci-x1 slot. If you have other card, I bought normal pci cards as well to test what runs the best.

So make a check which irq your BD/DVD uses and see if any conflict. A conflict might even be shown in devices list if os finds it. Anyway you can find out through which hardware it's used.

Wow... Thanks for this. I have selected that FW card based on serious recommendations (Avid website, RME forums). If this is the case, I have no clue what to do...  Must add then when BSOD happened these last 2 days, the RME unit was not even under function - but I guess the FW card would load anyway, right ?  As I don't see myself replacing that card (it is so accurate), I would see nothing else but to get an external drive that would be connected just when needed.... But BD-RW external are certainly still quite expensive...
Thanks, I will try to see.
Rob

They are very helpful at RME so ask them if their driver loads anything when not finding the soundcard unit. All drivers must load very shortly as I see it to see if hardware is connected and up or not, this under os boot process.

I would still have a look at IRQ for BD/DVD and see if conflict with anything else.

Go into Windows' device manager and see if you have any yellow exclamation marks next to any USB devices. If there are, see this MSDN article. A driver conflict occurs when two drivers attempt to take control of the same piece of hardware. Resolution may involve disabling one of the conflicting drivers, or updating/re-installing the drivers.