The wheels have well and truly fallen off.........and are now back on again. FIXED

This should make a few of you have a wry smile. I'm having a nightmare afternoon/evening. As many of you regulars will know I have had a rock solid experience with X1 so far......... however this afternoon is pay back.

I had several X1 crashes this afternoon and a couple of BSODs for good measure. That's more in 2 hours than since X1 first came out, I think my count until then was 3 which were all induced by bugs. Anyway I suspect that it is either related to the latest Windows update or my attempts at setting up my BCF as another ACT controller. The reason being is that nothing else has changed on my DAW. It's not connected to the web except once a week for updates and doesn't get used for anything else.

No new installs for a long time and although it was mainly on a new song I'm working on, an old one crashed as well just to blow a hole in my single project theory.

I thought no worries I'll system restore, that failed. No problem then just restore from my weekly backup......... failed corrupt backup and now I've got a dead computer. Ok then check the monthly backup which was also only done Saturday, guess what? Corrupt as well...........

I done a bit of research and it seems that Acronis will sometimes report a corrupt file on verification even if it isn't so tried a restore from the monthly............. fingers crossed and    success. At least I now have a bootable computer.

Restart Sonar and it crashed within seconds, although I believe on opening the dmp file it was a Windows issue. The headscratching continues. How can a rock solid machine suddenly become crash city? Running a stress test at the moment to see if my over clocking needs knocking back a bit....

Anyway while I'm busy sorting myself out, learn a lesson from me. If you haven't got a recent backup, make two now, you never know when you'll need them..........

I may be back for ideas on how to fix other issues soon..........

FastBikerBoy


This should make a few of you have a wry smile. I'm having a nightmare afternoon/evening. As many of you regulars will know I have had a rock solid experience with X1 so far......... however this afternoon is pay back.

I had several X1 crashes this afternoon and a couple of BSODs for good measure. That's more in 2 hours than since X1 first came out, I think my count until then was 3 which were all induced by bugs. Anyway I suspect that it is either related to the latest Windows update or my attempts at setting up my BCF as another ACT controller. The reason being is that nothing else has changed on my DAW. It's not connected to the web except once a week for updates and doesn't get used for anything else.

No new installs for a long time and although it was mainly on a new song I'm working on, an old one crashed as well just to blow a hole in my single project theory.

I thought no worries I'll system restore, that failed. No problem then just restore from my weekly backup......... failed corrupt backup and now I've got a dead computer. Ok then check the monthly backup which was also only done Saturday, guess what? Corrupt as well...........

I done a bit of research and it seems that Acronis will sometimes report a corrupt file on verification even if it isn't so tried a restore from the monthly............. fingers crossed and    success. At least I now have a bootable computer.

Restart Sonar and it crashed within seconds, although I believe on opening the dmp file it was a Windows issue. The headscratching continues. How can a rock solid machine suddenly become crash city? Running a stress test at the moment to see if my over clocking needs knocking back a bit....

Anyway while I'm busy sorting myself out, learn a lesson from me. If you haven't got a recent backup, make two now, you never know when you'll need them..........

I may be back for ideas on how to fix other issues soon..........

It may be related. FWIW my imaging program wouldn't run under windows either after the latest MS update.

I forget what mine's called, Active Disk or something, as I uninstalled it from my HD since last Tuesday, so I'm imaging/restoring from the Boot CD for that only now which hasn't been a problem as it is what I prefer to do anyway.

I had a similar experience versions ago, it was a bad HDD.

Jonbouy


It may be related. FWIW my imaging program wouldn't run under windows either after the latest MS update.

I forget what mine's called, Active Disk or something, as I uninstalled it from my HD since last Tuesday, so I'm imaging/restoring from the Boot CD for that only now which hasn't been a problem as it is what I prefer to do anyway.

Sorry Jonbouy I was typing while you posted by the looks of it. Ah, that may explain some stuff then. I always backup before installing updates, I've been bitten before usually by my MIDIsport drivers which only need the slightest excuse to start throwing their toys out the cot. The number of times a Windoze update has upset them. They are even top of my suspect list because most of the crashes happened just after I'd touched my MCU, which is connected via the MIDIsport, but in fairness that may just be coincidence.

It could just be a system thing though rather than a SOnar thing 'cos I noticed other things crashing such as Windows desktop manager, whatever that is. ATI graphics card related I think. I think if/when I get it back to how it was I'll never update anything ever again. I'd forgotten what a PITA problems can be. I should be making music not WinDbg' ing myself to sleep.

i also had a similar episode that ended up being a dying system drive.   i have yet to have a crash since X1c, so i will be watching to see how this ends.      good luck!  

I'm sorry to learn of your situation as well.

Good luck.

all the best,
mike

I have learned something like that awhile back.

I now have a DAW that stays off line until I need to register something.

But this business of a solid system suddenly becoming flaky...I really hope you get that sorted...

I doubt this is your problem but I once had a stable system that suddenly became unstable. It was even running Linux and not Windows. It turned out to be a low quality power connector for the hard drive. Why did is start doing it? Maybe I bumped the computer and it started making an intermittent connection?

I figured it out finally because when it happened one particular time, my ear was closer to the computer (maybe a I dropped something or was rummaging through a desk drawer, I can't remember) and I heard the HD click. Then the lockup.

Tried a different connector from the PSU and the problem went away.

Whatever it is, I hope you get it sorted!

Also, check the HDD temperature. I built a new computer recently and reused my old case. The HD was so hot, it was uncomfortable to touch it! I purchased a new case that has a front fan and allows the HDs to be installed right near the fan. Now cool air moves across the HDs and they all run at 32C now. I also have a self contained water cooler to keep the CPU below 30C while I am running Sonar and it is overclocked to 4.5GHz! I have got to believe my system is a lot more reliable now that it is running so cool.

Again, good luck with your particular issue.

Wow I hope that problem does not continue I almost feel guilty because I have been recording vocals whilst being logged to the internet and sometimes have things running like you tube or other things...such as msn and talking to indivduals whilst running sonar. I, I don't know what to say!

Just throwing this out....try loading your corrupt Sonar files in Safe mode.  Then save to another drive.  I know it appears to be a Hard Drive/Computor issue ,  but you might be able to save more work.    

F@KKER


I had a similar experience versions ago, it was a bad HDD.

+1 for possibly hardware issue, although the Win update is very possibly the issue also.

Usually the BSOD will throw out a code you can look up to trace to a driver or hardware device, etc.

D

Thanks for all the input and well wishes. I'm trying to restore the system disk from an image for the second time tonight..... Why ?

I made the mistake of connecting to the internet so I could access the debugging symbols for WinDbg and good old Windows update despite being on "Ask me before downloading & installing updates" kindly downloaded the updates that I suspect have thrown a spanner in the MIDISport drivers. It then insisted on installing them before I it would allow me to shut down.

Trouble is Acronis won't let me restore the image via the Windows interface, although it did via the Linux boot disk earlier. I think it's falsely reporting it's a corrupt image and therefore aborting the restore. System restore is most unhelpfully off, since the image restore.

So the situation is, I have updates installed that I'm pretty sure are causing the problems, two previous images neither of which I seem to be able to restore from and no system restore either. 

@garrigus - I don't really know other than I've always done it, I do get the odd driver update etc. but as you've correctly pointed out most of them are security updates which I don't need. I guess I'm going to have to either bite the bullet and restore the image via the Acronis boot disk and hope it re-installs rather than report it's corrupt or just wait for the next windows update and hope it fixes whatever I think it has done.

Stress test and ramtest etc have revealed nothing as yet, I'll leave them running overnight.

X1 runs but I'm getting random BSODs, the last one was a VISTA USB driver called by Sonar, I suspect the MIDIsport drivers just based on previous experience. I think the next move will be to run Sonar without the MIDIsport installed and see what happens.

That's a tomorrow job though, I've had more than enough for one night.

A separate box running Windows Homeserver 2011 has saved me once already.

This may be obvious, but how is your ram. I couldn't get acronis to install (albiet on my other machine) a previous backup and it turned out to be a bad ram chip. It (the ram) was damaged by a power outage here. I replaced the ram and the backup worked fine. FBB you mentioned you can't get acronis to install from windows. I'm assuming you mean that acronis doesn't work that way which it doesn't. I have been experiencing crashes with X1  and screensets all along. Ironically I also use a midisport 4X4 and have had driver install issues before. I definately feel your frustration. Almost a year with X1a,b,c and I still can't trust it. All my client work is still on 8.5

jm24


I have had vid drivers nuke too many of my computers

 

And then reseat all internal/external connections.

+1 and +1

Nvidia graphics driver update wrecked me.  It absolutely wouldn't play nice with an external HD that I had attached for backup purposes.  Anything that caused the external HD to become active caused the graphics card to crash taking the rest of the machine with it.  Rolled back to the previous version of the graphics software and problems went away.
 
On a non-DAW box had a RAM card wiggle just slightly loose once.  Computer started crashing and then wouldn't boot up at all.  A computer geek buddy happened to come by the day it happened.  He powered up the box and noticed that upon booting up the system speaker was emitting a series of beeps like morse code.  Turns out it is code: the pattern of beeps told him it was a motherboard problem, with further investigation suggesting a RAM fault.  He pulled the RAM cards out, cleaned them and reinserted them till they "clicked".  Rebooted and worked like a champ.
 
Best of luck to you finding your way back to cool runnings.