Major VE Crashing Problem

[sonicether_29951]

I am currently running on Windows XP, and whenever I open VE it instantly crashes. I've tried opening it in various ways (standalone, vst in many hosts), I've tried reinstalling, I've tried rebooting, and I'm getting no luck!

I must say, this is very disappointing. From what I've seen (I can't seem to find the thread anymore), a few other people have been getting this exact problem. I do not think that it's a soundcard problem. If it were, it wouldn't work standalone, but it would vst (I think...). Here are my system specs (don't laugh!):

AMD 2.1 GHz processor

512 MB DDR ram

Creative Audigy 2 soundcard

That's really all of the relavant specs. I know, I really need a new computer!

I would appreciate anyone's help very much!

Thank you for your time.

[Paul]

Hi sonicether,

sorry to see you disappointed. This is a free (!!) update that will be improved with the help of everybody out there (as it is impossible to test the thousands of possible configurations there will be some improvements necessary :-)).

I was already testing what might cause that behaviour (it has nothing to do with Sonar), Markus was the other one showing similar symptoms in this thread

It might be, that 512 MB RAM are simply too little to make your system and the VE work together. Minimal configuration with the Vienna Instruments is 1 GB RAM. I really wonder what will happen with more RAM in your machine.

Your machine is at the absolute minimum of the system requirements, I´m afraid that the 512 MB RAM is the culprit. I´d go and get some more RAM.

Now I really wonder if Markus is using AMD as well....he didn´t include his computer specs so far.

We will keep an eye on it!

Best,

Paul

[Peter Alexander]

@sonicether_29951 said:

I am currently running on Windows XP, and whenever I open VE it instantly crashes. I've tried opening it in various ways (standalone, vst in many hosts), I've tried reinstalling, I've tried rebooting, and I'm getting no luck!

I must say, this is very disappointing. From what I've seen (I can't seem to find the thread anymore), a few other people have been getting this exact problem. I do not think that it's a soundcard problem. If it were, it wouldn't work standalone, but it would vst (I think...). Here are my system specs (don't laugh!):

AMD 2.1 GHz processor

512 MB DDR ram

Creative Audigy 2 soundcard

That's really all of the relavant specs. I know, I really need a new computer!

I would appreciate anyone's help very much!

Thank you for your time.

The posted system requirements for SE to work are 1GB of RAM with 2GB recommended:

http://vsl.co.at/en/211/442/484/485/682/370.htm

The same requirements are true for VE.

[markus_30526]

@Paul said:

Markus was the other one showing similar symptoms in this thread

 

Hi,

to get a better overview I repost my problems in this thread.

Ok, everytime I start VE, it crashes. I don't think it's a soundcard or driver problem, because I have the same problems on using all of my 3 available soundcard systems.

First, here are some more Informations about my computer an setup.

ASUS A7N8XE-Deluxe Mainboard with AMD 3000+ XP processor. 

Chipset is a Nforce2, latest driver (Version 5.10) are installed. 

2,5 GB RAM and overall about 1TB harddisk space.

My graphic card is a NVidia GForce FX 5200.

My available soundcards are: NVidia Nforce onboard Soundcard, Creamware Scope and Digidesign MBox2-Mini.

In Windows audiosetting, the NVidia Soundcard is the default for all general windows sounds and standard mp3 playback. For all Pro-Audio programs, I'm using the MBox2 and Creamware. Both have the latest ASIO drivers.

My OS is Windows-XP (German) SP2 with all the latest updates from Microsoft.

To list all my installed applications would be to much. I've office software like MS Office 2007 , some video editing like Quicktime-Pro and Avid Liquid. Some picture managing and editing programs like Magix Foto Manager and Photoshop and many more programs and utilities.

The most used audio software are ProTools-7.3, Sonar-6PE, NI Kontakt2, some NI Kompakt Libaries, Samplitude-9SE, VSL Vienna Instruments and many other RTAS and VST Plugins.  All these programs do very well on my machine without any significant crashes. Except ProTools, the other programs run with all my installed audio cards. PT works with Digidesign hardware only.

But now, VE comes and I would really like to use them. But it crashes right after starting the audio engine.

When I start the program and I'm fast with the mouse by clicking "Stop engine" until it does his automatic start, I can use the gui. Then I can move sliders and knobs, load instanced of VI etc. But as I click on "Start engine" the crash occur.

The crash occur with the standalone programm and loaded as VST plugin.

Because it crashes as VST too, I really don't think it's a problem with the audio cards, because I think as VST it connect to the sound engine of the VST host software, like Sonar or Sam-9SE.

 I have a german windows and the error message is as follows:

"ViennaEnsemble.exe hat ein Problem festgestellt und muss beendet werden."

In the dialog I have the option to send Microsoft a report of the problem. I think you all know this window.

After the crash, the VSLDaemon process resides in RAM and keep active.

Because some said, that onboard audio cards like Nvidia can cause problem, I tried to deinstalled and deactivated them in Bios. But with no luck, the crash also occur with no onboard soundsystem.

The crash must be something to do with the starting of the audio engine of VE or something that follows.

I see in the status line, "Engine started. Rate: 44100 Latency: 512 Channels: 2". It seems the engine was started at least right befor the crash occur.

So, tell me, how can I help you to debug this problem?

Maybe some VSL employes can contact me and send me a special debugging version that writes a logfile on what is happen.

I checked with WinDBG which dll's are loaded at start of VE and checked maybe outdated version numbers, but all dll's seems actual and original dll's of their vendor.

regards

Markus

[cm]

markus, i don't like to rant about the amount of installed programs, but office 2007 & photoshop & video editing on an audio machine might be somehow much ... especially if you also have a series of audio hosts and samplers installed. interactions between all those installed drivers and devices would be hard to track.

if an error report shows up, have a look into the details or send the content of the error report to support@vsl.co.at (you can copy&paste the content which would be sent to MS into a file and a quick info like *exception in blabla.dll ar 0x1234* is also available)

christian

[markus_30526]

I believe too, that doing some error tracking on a machine that do alive for about three years with many installed and uninstalled programs can be really hard.

I've take a look on to the detailed error report be sent to MS by myself and I'm really sure it will not help very much.

If the error report would show an exception in a specific dll it would be more helpful, but it doesn't. But, it contains an address in the VE exe file:

AppName: viennaensemble.exe     AppVer: 0.0.0.0     ModName: viennaensemble.exe
ModVer: 0.0.0.0     Offset: 000a6eb3

It's enough to post here or do I have repeat it all in an email to support?

I'll doing further tests the next days. I'll check if the problem is specific to my hardware, like mainboard and cpu, by attach a fresh harddisc with a new clean installation of windows xp. This should show me if the error also would appear with a new windows installation.

If on a fresh and new installation the error wouldn't occur I'll not take any further investigations and doing a cleanup of my system, except support of VSL have some interests on it.

On the other hand I plan a new PC with Windows Vista the end of this year.

markus