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Old 04-05-2009, 01:04 PM   #1
magicchord
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Default Just updated my mobo, CPU & memory; REAPER locks up my system

Reaper 2.58 locks up my system when I'm playing back an existing project. Only pressing the reset button on my computer gets me out of that state.
Here's the details, as I've just updated my mobo, CPU, & memory and fresh-installed XP, maybe I have something set wrong:

Hardware: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard with Intel P45 chipset, 4G of RAM. 2 SATA drives for media, 1 ATA100 drive for system. 2 Echo Layla 24/96 PCI sound cards, Echo ASIO 7.3 driver.

OS: Windows XP Professional service pack 2.

Project is around 30-some tracks, WAV, 48kHz, only REAPER-bundled plugins used, no MIDI used. Split to stems into the 16 available Layla outputs for mixing in a console.

CPU not running hot. Bad memory? How to test some things: tips?
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Old 04-05-2009, 05:19 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by magicchord View Post
Reaper 2.58 locks up my system when I'm playing back an existing project. Only pressing the reset button on my computer gets me out of that state.
Here's the details, as I've just updated my mobo, CPU, & memory and fresh-installed XP, maybe I have something set wrong:

Hardware: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard with Intel P45 chipset, 4G of RAM. 2 SATA drives for media, 1 ATA100 drive for system. 2 Echo Layla 24/96 PCI sound cards, Echo ASIO 7.3 driver.

OS: Windows XP Professional service pack 2.

Project is around 30-some tracks, WAV, 48kHz, only REAPER-bundled plugins used, no MIDI used. Split to stems into the 16 available Layla outputs for mixing in a console.

CPU not running hot. Bad memory? How to test some things: tips?
Test your RAM with Memtest (you can download/burn an ISO to create the bootable test CD. Boot from this CD... and let all 8 tests run at least twice. If there are zero errors, your RAM is fine.


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Old 04-05-2009, 05:49 PM   #3
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Thanks. Will try that.
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Old 04-06-2009, 02:27 AM   #4
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Some thoughts:
a) does the PC lock up when you use other applications (MS Word, WMP, etc)?

b) does Reaper lock up if you start a new project and just create a very simple song?

c) does it lock up with your other Reaper projects?
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Old 04-06-2009, 02:41 AM   #5
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*sigh*: if you had less than 2gb ram before, i reckon one of your plugins isn't /3gb aware. search the forums.
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Old 04-06-2009, 08:08 AM   #6
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Heh. My previous setup had 4GB RAM and my new setup does also.
Memtest says my RAM is fine. I'll let it run through a few more cycles tonight.
I couldn't duplicate the lockup problem again the rest of yesterday, so this may take me a while to track down. Thanks for the suggestions. I'm confident I'll achieve a stable system.
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Old 04-06-2009, 12:00 PM   #7
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*sigh*: if you had less than 2gb ram before, i reckon one of your plugins isn't /3gb aware. search the forums.
You mentioned this another thread recently, and I've been searching but I cannot find any reference to the 3GB switch bringing down Reaper because certain plugins can't support it - I really want to prevent any such crashes - can you point me in the direction of any specific information where certain plugins have been found to do this?
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Old 04-06-2009, 04:40 PM   #8
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You mentioned this another thread recently, and I've been searching but I cannot find any reference to the 3GB switch bringing down Reaper because certain plugins can't support it - I really want to prevent any such crashes - can you point me in the direction of any specific information where certain plugins have been found to do this?
i don't know the names of any off the top of my head. i DO know when this sort of problem comes up, 99% of the time the problem goes completely away when the person having the problem turns off the /3gb switch.

32-bit windows was NOT designed to run with more than 2GB RAM. the whole infrastructure supporting it is an ugly, ugly hack, and all it takes is a single process doing one thing wrong in one place to take the whole thing down (and the problem won't show up on a 2GB system). then everyone blames reaper for crashing.

the only really safe way to do it is to move to a totally 64-bit environment - then it's instantly clear which plugins work in that setup.
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Old 04-06-2009, 06:46 PM   #9
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i don't know the names of any off the top of my head. i DO know when this sort of problem comes up, 99% of the time the problem goes completely away when the person having the problem turns off the /3gb switch.

32-bit windows was NOT designed to run with more than 2GB RAM. the whole infrastructure supporting it is an ugly, ugly hack, and all it takes is a single process doing one thing wrong in one place to take the whole thing down (and the problem won't show up on a 2GB system). then everyone blames reaper for crashing.

the only really safe way to do it is to move to a totally 64-bit environment - then it's instantly clear which plugins work in that setup.

I'd love to have more accurate information about this - so far I have produced two entire albums on Windows XP with a 3GB switch, using literally dozens of plugins both new and old...and I think that the only one that has ever given me issues was Vintage Warmer. (Which works fine with the 3GB switch as an RTAS plug in PT8 - in fact, Digidesign highly recommends the 3GB switch with PT8)...

The reason I am staying on this issue is because before I did the 3GB switch, I found so much contradictory information, and when I pushed for more info from people who said the switch was a bad idea, it always turned out that the people warning about it never used a system with the 3GB switch. And without it, I wouldn't be able to produce the music I am doing, which relies heavily on sample-based instruments, so I would want to try to make sure that anyone else going down the same road would have access to correct information...

Of course, there may be other factors - it is entirely possible that my ASUS MB and Intel Core 2 Duo chipset is fine with the 3GB switch, where maybe someone on an AMD system would run into problems. Maybe my 512MB video card eats up enough of the RAM that the plugins never notice there is more than 2GB...

Maybe Digidesign's strength is that they publish lists of supported plugins and configurations - since the switch is recommended for PT8, maybe following Digi's recommended supported guidelines is the way to go...You just might have to weed out a few plugs here and there that are known to work as RTAS but not VST...
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Old 04-06-2009, 08:06 PM   #10
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that's cool and everything but there's maybe a decade's worth of Win32 code out there that was built and tested with the assumption that 2Gb-3Gb would be used for device addressing and 3Gb-4Gb would be windows private-use addressing (if i'm wrong here i'd love for a guru to point out where the mistakes are).

there's a code example in this link which demonstrates how subtle these problems can be: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...12/213468.aspx (code's a bit ugly but there's a LOT of ugly code out there in your favourite plugins, i reckon...)

even if a dll is large-address aware, stuff like that could still exist in there. hitting a single line like that will bring down the whole DAW - but on a 2gb system it'd work perfectly.
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Old 04-06-2009, 08:17 PM   #11
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oh, and also /3gb can have other side effects:

Quote:
So reducing the amount of (virtual) space available to the kernel can seriously affect disk caching and the ability of various components to allocate memory - probably reducing the number of asynchronous I/Os that can be pending.
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Old 04-06-2009, 11:07 PM   #12
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It occurs to me after reading your post and the link you provided, that any program can have bad code and fail to account for certain conditions. Some plugins and hosts perform poorly with some chipsets, some are optimized under certain conditions, etc. In other words, plugins can bring a host to its knees for a variety of reasons.

It doesn't strike me that there is any particularly greater risk of crashing running the 3GB switch, unless there is some documented issue.

A good example: Amplitube simply crashes every host for me, regardless of the 3GB switch or not...Reaper, Tracktion, ProTools, all bring my computer to its knees even with 2GB.

I think it's more helpful to document badly written plugins, rather than evangelize against using the 3GB switch...unless, of course, you're publishing software which crashes with the switch but is reliable otherwise - then I could see why one would want to discourage it!
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Old 04-06-2009, 11:48 PM   #13
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It doesn't strike me that there is any particularly greater risk of crashing running the 3GB switch, unless there is some documented issue.
the risk is that up until one or two years ago, hardly ANYONE (developers OR end users) were running systems with 2gb+ RAM. as a result, there's loads of code out there that is totally untested with that set. normally with programs this isn't a problem because they'll only be marked as /3gb compatible if they're fine, but AFAIK DLLs (i.e. VSTs) get loaded into the parent process (i.e. Reaper) and take on that attribute from there (er... right?).


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I think it's more helpful to document badly written plugins, rather than evangelize against using the 3GB switch...unless, of course, you're publishing software which crashes with the switch but is reliable otherwise - then I could see why one would want to discourage it!
ha, i haven't released any c++ win32 code in years. all my work now is .net based.

writing reliable software is really hard, though. any plugins that play nice with /3gb are almost certainly available in a 64-bit version, so you may as well move to a 64-bit platform and do it properly (if you're that desperate for another 700Mb of accessible RAM, why not go all the way to 8Gb?)
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Old 04-07-2009, 02:31 PM   #14
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64-bit would definitely be the way to go. I'm patiently waiting to see if the next 64 bit version of Windows will put Vista to shame. If it ends up being the same nonsense, that's when I think I'll consider switching to a Mac...

BTW, my kudos to you for being a .net programmer - I had a few C# projects a while ago, and I never really took to it - I ended up going on the side of PHP and Cold Fusion...Fortunately, we can largely ignore memory pointers in all of the above languages, at least!
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Old 05-06-2009, 07:43 AM   #15
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related? http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=314768
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Old 05-06-2009, 08:14 AM   #16
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Off Topic (sort of)

Does anyone know whether Windows 7 will be better at addressing >2GB RAM???

I mean 32 bit Win7 compared to 32 bit Win XP.
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Old 05-06-2009, 08:17 AM   #17
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You didn't mention your graphics card, so I assume you're using onboard video? You might want to check that it's not using the same IRQ as your soundcard...it's not likely to be your problem, but onboard video, with its using of system ram, generally sucks.

Also, did you make a point of downloading the latest drivers for your motherboard from Intel? Did you make sure to disable onboard sound in your bios? And, in case you have a bitchin 3d video card you didn't mention, are you sure your power supply is up to the task (though a wimpy PS usually causes a reboot I think).
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Old 05-06-2009, 08:32 AM   #18
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I don't think this was mentioned before -- if an OS or hardware change causes Reaper to hang, the first place I would look would be the audio device driver. If you can start Reaper at all, switch the audio system to waveout/onboard and don't enable the hardware audio interface at all, if the project then plays, it indicates a problem with the audio device driver.
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Old 05-06-2009, 08:36 AM   #19
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^^^Actually, I'd say make sure that all of your drivers are up to date, including chipset, video card, BIOS etc... Any system can be a buggy P.O.S. if the system drivers aren't up to date.
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Old 05-06-2009, 12:24 PM   #20
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Quote:
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Does anyone know whether Windows 7 will be better at addressing >2GB RAM???

I mean 32 bit Win7 compared to 32 bit Win XP.
the address range you can address with 32 bits, just isn't more than 2 GB (/3GB with switch=hack).

64 bit allows for *a lot* bigger address range, which is logically the next step. --> upgrade
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Old 05-06-2009, 06:19 PM   #21
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First thing I would check are the drivers - audio interface, processor & chipset, etc.

However, my gut feeling is that your memory timings in the system BIOS are wrong. The motherboard auto-detect of CAS/TRAS settings on RAM seem to be very commonly mis-detected. Lockups are the primary symptom when your BIOS memory timings are wrong. Have you had any lockups outside of Reaper? Or is this a pure DAW that you don't put through its paces doing anything outside of Reaper?
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Old 05-06-2009, 11:52 PM   #22
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do your PCI cards work with other software on your current machine?

I upgraded my old MOTU 2408mkII (PCI) based machine, only to find out they'd changed the PCI standards in the meantime from 3V to 5.5 or the other way around and my card didn't work properly. probably not the issue here, but just a thought.
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