Me!!!

I built a dedicated DAW 3 years ago.   

I installed XP Pro. I installed my DAW software. I connected to the net long enough to let it authorize the programs that needed to be authorized. 

I then pulled the internet Cat5 and have not connected it to the net since. 

I believe it needed XP SP3 to run X1 essentials (or maybe something else...I don't recall exactly)... so I downloaded the patch on another computer and installed it from a USB stick. I did patches B & C on X1e..... but did not load D since so many folks were complaining at the time that it broke more than it fixed. Everything was working OK so I figured ...why risk it? 

My philosophy has been, from the beginning with this DAW.... Keep it off the net, do not upgrade and apply patches if the programs are working the way I want them to work..... in other words.... 

"don't try to fix it if it ain't broken."

As a result, I have a machine that boots quickly, runs smooth and stable, and does what I require of it. 

I have no firewall or AV on it and use care when I import projects from other folks.... I run a scan on the USB stick first before I plug in to the DAW. 

As a result, I can count on one hand the number of hard crashes I have had in the 3.5 years I've been running this machine. And I believe those were self inflicted due to what I did on the DAW at the time. 

My guess is, if I continue this policy, the only thing that will shut this down will be a hardware failure. 

John, these sort of things are the worst part of working with a DAW for me... it seems like it is always something (sooner or later), and it is always frustrating. I hope you get it srted out quickly and easily. I have mine set to notify me and I choose what to download and update. I balked at this one. like I said above but even though I stopped the download, when I shut off my computer it alerted me to NOT shut off my computer and proceeded to install two updates and configured windows this AM when I restarted it.

I am not certain why I wrote all that is to follow but after I wrote it I came back to say this... maybe someone is wondering what to do, weighing pros and cons and scared... don't be.

If funds weren't so limited I would buy another computer for browsing, or better yet a Studiocat for my DAW (I have been wanting that for a long time but it is the (always something thing) in January my insurance deductibles started over with a 1k on prescriptions and 10k on medical. I am at the age where I will probably meet my scrip deductible in a month... (I wont get into the payments except to say they are over 800 bucks a month for my wife and I( The deductible went from $2.5K to 5K to 10K in about 2 months back when our glorius leader started talking about healthcare reform. BTW, it also went, at that time, from an 80/20 plan to 70/30 and they added a 40 dllar co-pay for the first 6 office visits, which NO doctors office can understand... so maybe soon I will get a desktop and 24" monitor. It isn't ALL bad, the reason my costs are so high is: I started a business in 1989 and my wife started a CPA firm in the 90s and she started selling repurposed vintage fabrics on ETSY.com, then got an invite to sell on One Kings Lane. I don't want to violate the TOS but (God is good) she gets a check every week now from One Kings Lane for between 700 and 1500 a week besides her ETSY sales. She is "the virtuous woman" mentioned in Proverbs. She is catnapcottage on Etsy, on OKL she is just part of the store, no individual recognition but for that money, who cares? I run an exterminating business. I apopogize for goingso far afield but sometimes I ramble. I don't mean to hijack the thread in any way but you know... it is all related. For anyone's future... I HIGHLY recommend starting your own business if you can. Use minimal initial investment, use what you have if possible and rely on your "signifigant other" to see you through the beginning. IIRC, I made a little over 200 dllars the first month. I bought a toolbox for my truck, a used 1 gal sprayer, a container of pesticide, and a backpack sprayer and started knocking on doors. I cannt be "laid off", I cannot be fired. I built my business in the wealthiest neighboroods in NW Atlanta and east Cobb County (Marietta)... so I am a bit recession proof too. Yeah, the healthcare is higher because of no group plan but the Pros far outweigh the cons. I take every opportunity to tell people that, if they can... work fror yourself, it is SO much better.
Times are hard, jobs are scarce and many people do not have a vision for what they are capable of. Don't sell yourself short, you can make it happen. Just don't start out with payments that are a burden... that is where people fail.

So, what I started out to say is... I intend to resolve this by buying a second computer, a dedicated DAW... just not this month. John, sorry for the ramble. I hope you get your computer sorted out with little trouble. I am interested and will keep an eye on this thread.

Julien

"don't try to fix it if it ain't broken."

 
That is some of the best advice I have ever heard and some of the hardest to learn to apply (I have heard it more than one, lol). There is also an acceptable level of "broken".
I don't know how many times I have been frustrated by some small thing and made a change, then very soon found myself wishing that "Small thing" were all I had to deal with. I guess it is sort of like Harry said, "You have to know your limitations".
 
J

 I tried to keep my DAW off the web but even though I have other computers I can't seem to do that and I have paid the price for it a few times because I allowed someone else to use the computer and they got a virus, I have picked up a few myself.I have gotten 99.9% of them all removed.

 Im my experiences, if a person keeps another protected computer for  serious surfing or financial transactions,emails etc and  then a virus protected DAW for downloading music software and going to known safe sites, the risk is very minimal.

 The worst things to come along are Trojan back doors. These can pretty much get around even something like Malwarebytes. I know I have one in my DAW now. It doesn't make my system unstable and the people at Malwarebytes said they could help but recommended I wipe my system and start over.  Under absolutely no conditions do I ever do ANYTHING of a private nature on that DAW. I have run my system with it now for months with no problems on the DAW end. ....I'm thinking when I upgrade to win 8 and X2a I'll pull the plug on it in its present situation.....so yeah bad stuff can happen. The good news is that the computer is still a well working DAW.....Think of how many people have something like this and don't know about it.
 
 Windows patches are for the most part security fixes to threats. Sometimes the new fix misidentifies something in your system as a threat and removes or quarintines .
 
 You can opt to do a system restore to an earlier time and this might correct ther problem.( I see you did that)...I hate to ask this, but are you SURE the files that were downloaded were legit windows update files? It might not hurt to do a seperate virus scan to see if there is a bug in your system.

 Like others I have been very fortunate in that I have never had a problem coming from an update. Most of mine were from viruses.

 I worked with linux a little bit. I hear Rosegarden is better than it ever was but in order to work with linux you need to be pretty code literate . Linux based programs and procedures are almost never straight forward. Maybe I just had bad personal experiences, but rarely did linux programs ever go off without a hitch and it only takes a small problem to blow two hours of time you could be recording.Once set up they are rock solid though.

 You can get Ubuntu for free. I had pretty good luck with that but when it came to adding programs to it I always got tripped up.
 
 If all else fails I would restore from the factory DVD and turn off automatic updates, then I would either stay off the web on that computer or only go where things are ok,like to update Sonar.

 I think the trend in the future could involve being connected. We already see the apps everywhere and the cloud. Everything is encouraging toward a connectedness. How this will pan out and what is on the drawing board I have no idea but I have a feeling that this is the direction we are eventually headed into.
 
 If I could make a future prediction it would be that there will be apps for our DAWs or our DAWs could be apps.
 
 

I don't get it? Where are is everyone going to that they are getting all these virus's off the net?

I've never gotten a virus off the net. Ever. And I don't even run A/V protection. I always got them off those damn McAfee and Apogee 3.5" Shareware floppies you'd get at those computer shows, but never off the net. Damn boot sector virus's were the worst back in the day man. Grrr.

@Jbow:

"John, these sort of things are the worst part of working with a DAW for me... it seems like it is always something (sooner or later), and it is always frustrating."

I honestly don't think that's the case any more. I really don't. I think Sonar is that way, but I don't think anyone else is.

I've been running R -e -a -p -e - r flawlessly all week. The only time I got a hiccup was when I used a Cakewalk plug-in. I got the infamous meter spike to 1 Gajillion db and all of a sudden no sound. But ya know what ... The Big R put up a message on that track that stated something to the effect of ... 'No Audio Available' or something like that, for that track, and that track alone. 5 seconds later, the track became usable again and it was like nothing ever happened. It fixed itself. In Sonar, I would have had to shut down my entire DAW and done a hard reboot. And it happens a lot.

My point is ... we're all paranoid because of Sonar and to be brutally honest, I'm about done with them. I put my money where my mouth was and tried out other DAW's and it is much greener on the other side. Much much greener. You don't have to hand Jim or anyone else over a months salary for a computer to run a DAW. You'd be much better served giving THe Big R the $60 bucks they ask (for us home users) and spend the other $2440 you'd give someone else to build you a DAW on some really nice VSTi's and Plug-in's.

I've been using The Big R on an 8 year old laptop using the onboard sound card and it hasn't hiccuped once. Hell, Sonar won't even install on anything that old anymore after the A patch.

Ya know why I'm here right now?

I decided to give Sonar a shot at a new project I'm recording.

I have one instance of SD3
2 Guitar Tracks, one with TH2 and the other with Guitar Rig 4.
EQ, Comp, and Console EMU on the two guitar tracks and the EMU on the Master bus.

My CPU meters are going in to the red, so I have to freeze. 3 tracks ... and I have to freeze.

I start with SD3 ... click 'Freeze' button ... it goes through the motions, finishes, and bam ... no audio and the 'Freeze' button is not blue. It's like I never clicked the button. No warning message that disk space is low, no error's, nodda. Tried it again, and a third time. Same thing every time.

This shiznit just does not go down like this with other solutions. It just doesn't happen ... not to this extent.

Cudos to you Bub.... it isn't easy for most people to change, even when they are not pleased with what they are getting. I've given it some thought because it is so cheap, there is another I was looking at last week, Harrison M-i-x-b-u-s. Sometimes I wish I were not so "invested" but these are so cheap, why not have them too... I'll be interested in how it turns out for you. I enjoy reading the forum over "there". The "Yep" thread should be required reading.

I have an old Dell Inspiron 5100, I have an idea... I could reformat, reinstall XP SP3 on it and do all the tweaks. That might be fun. Keep me posted.

J

Restore? What are you nuts?
Windows just laughs at that; totally useless!
Image, Image, Image; the only thing that works!
I have a 1 tet drive half full of image files; I MIGHT be a bit obsessive.
I did let Windows update my Cat back in December, it had been 2 years.
Got lucky I guess, everything works fine.
Bread crumbs children, that's how we find our way home; IMAGE...

Tom

I'm firmly in the 'ain't broke, don't fix' camp. My friend's son built me this PC 5 years ago, with XP SP3. I turned off automatic updates, and have never updated anything to do with Windows.

It's on the 'net (duh..yeah..), I run AVG daily, Malwarebytes and Adaware weekly, and have had maybe 2-3 Trojans in the last 5 years. One caused me to do a system restore to 7 days previous, but that's it.

I'm working...

DeeringAmps


Restore? What are you nuts?
Windows just laughs at that; totally useless!
Image, Image, Image; the only thing that works!
I have a 1 tet drive half full of image files; I MIGHT be a bit obsessive.
I did let Windows update my Cat back in December, it had been 2 years.
Got lucky I guess, everything works fine.
Bread crumbs children, that's how we find our way home; IMAGE...

Tom

+1 to that.
 
No problems here with the latest updates at all, if there were I could restore an older image completely in about 6 minutes.  The last problem I ever had with Windows update had to do with a dodgy IE8 update when that browser was pretty new a few years back now.
 
I connect to the internet all the time as well.
 
My W7 reliability has been flat-lined at the top for over a year now and anything that starts showing up as problematic in the event logs gets dealt with straight away.  I beta test for a few MI vendors into the bargain and updates are crucial for testing on current configurations and the internet is way too much fun to be locked up over some precious idea of bogey-men coming to spoil any of that fun and I've never EVER lost a project or had problems with one for that matter because of an internet connection.
 
Every wicked thing out there has an equally cunning policy to foil it, imaging plays a big part in that.
 
Anyone who doesn't image their OS in these days of cheap and quick storage needs to play catch-up.  No need to blame the internet for malware or dodgy updates that we all know are there and I can't believe the time people waste cleaning that stuff off or even worrying about it when at the first sniff of anything untoward you can get back to a known good image in little more than the time it takes to post here about it.

I had numerous problems with XP SP3 and Mcafee. I have had almost zero problems wtih Windows 7 and Norton 360. 360 blocks everything nasty. I is running very well with W7, IMO. I really don't remember getting anything bad with W7 and 360... however I spent many hours removing this and that malware with XP and Mcafee.

J