Why won't 64 bit run on my laptop?

  I'm have Win7 Ultimate on a new ( less than 6 mos old) Dell XPS laptop, trying to run Sonar 8.5 Studio. I've installed both 32 & 64 bit versions, but have been mostly running the 64 bit. 

My sound interface is a Focusrite Scarlett 8i6, which seems to be working fine. I don't think it's the culprit in this. 
I'm using the ASIO interface (Focusrite drivers). Setting the latency up or down (from zero all the way up to 20ms) makes no difference at all). 
Dropout happens when recording, or when just playing back. 
Almost no CPU usage in the meters. I've got 8 gig of ram, an internal 640 gig HD, and running the i7 chipset, quad core. 

In a nutshell: lots and lots of dropouts in Sonar, though they're not predictable. I've run through the normal list of usual suspects. I can run normal audio in other apps, and stream live HD video and stereo without problems. It's just Sonar that's giving me fits now. 

I'm pretty sure I've narrowed the problem down to bridging the 32 plugins (Bitbridge), but am still not sure. Also, in running the DPC latency monitor, it shows the NVIDIA drivers to be causing problems. I can't disable them, because the video card is hardwired into the laptop. 

I've shut off just about every service I can, but that seems to make no difference. This includes shutting off wireless, bluetooth, even my ethernet connection to the internet. Sometimes it will simply play and record without problems. Other times it won't run for even a second without a dropout. 

Here are some screenshots. One is my Windows Task Manager, showing the running processes. Another is my system specs. The others are shots of the Latency Monitor, which show various Page Faults and DPC execution times, etc. 

I'm just hoping maybe someone has a similar Dell laptop and has experienced (and maybe solved) this problem. 

One more thing: I've been trying to reproduce the dropout problem in Reaper 64 bit, using the same audio files and plugins, but it hasn't dropped out yet. I'm beginning to think it's a problem with Bitbridge clashing with system resources somewhere (Nvidia drivers?) . Oh, and I've purchased JBridge, as well. Doesn't help any, unfortunately.  

I've been with Cakewalk since Ver 1.0, on floppy disk. I plan to upgrade to X1 Producer, but am waiting until I can solve this issue. Thanks a lot. 

--john 


System information: 

Try killing the Windows Search service, which will stop a major CPU muncher, searchindex.exe.

Oh, and I should mention that I've even shut off all unnecessary Focusrite drivers, just to make sure. That makes no difference, either: 

John:  ah.... just what I wanted to hear [grin]. Yep, it's a Dell laptop, so came with Win 7 Ultimate installed. However, I do have install disks so can do a clean install. What bloatware, specifically? I've disabled some of Dell's stuff, have shut off a lot of automatic services like wireless, bluetooth, NVIDIA's programme, and some other stuff, but I'm guessing there's still more bloatware to be found. 

But in normal operation, there really aren't very many processes running when I'm in Sonar. I'm still thinking it's a driver clash somewhere. On another note, I did turn off the "Desktop Composition" in the "Performance Options" in Win 7. It has to do with the Aero Transparency, and I found some similar problems to mine on this page (toward the bottom of the thread): 

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=861291&page=4&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Didn't really seem to make any difference, though. I wish there were a way to replace the NVIDIA graphics card, just to see if it's the culprit. I hate to dial back to 32 bit version (since I have so many 64 bit sessions already), but might have to...

One more thing I will try (tomorrow), is to plug a 7200 rpm external drive into my USB 3.0 port and see if it'll run it. If so, maybe it's an access thing with my internal HD. 

thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to think on it awhile before taking a leap into a clean Win install. 

--je

How many total processes are running? Your screenshot only shows the ones that you started. Check the box at the bottom of that screen to show all processes running. 

IMHO, reinstalling Windows should be your last resort.