Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 -ACID Product Family

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Subject:Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 Posted by: ChromeSun Date:10/12/2002 12:25:11 PM =====SYSTEM SPEC===== o/s: Win2k-sp3 m/b: Abit KT7A-RAID CPU: Athlon 1GHz (AXIA o/c to 1.33) RAM: 512Mb GFX: ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV (Catalyst 2.3 drivers) SND: SB Live! Platinum (latest "LiveDrvPack") other cards: Intel Pro-100 NIC generic VIA firewire card Sigma HollyWood+ mpeg decoder Adaptec 2940AU SCSI multi-boot: Win98se Win2k-sp3 various USB devices misc IDE hard disks Matrox firewire drives (loop storage) IDE DVD-ROM drive SCSI CD-writer SCSI film scanner ========== Until recently I was using a Matrox Marvel G400 - because Matrox have never produced a working Win2k vidcap driver I had to alternate between Win98 and Win2k depending on what I was doing. However I would rather use Win2k exclusively and found a very good deal on the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV. (Full circle in a way - switched from ATI to Matrox in the late eighties 'cos ATI seemed to have lost its way post-Mach32.) Over-installed the Radeon onto my existing Win98se - OK, everything including Acid 2d, 3g and 4a seems to work. I had Acid 3g and 4a working OK in Win2k with the Marvel G400 and old Soundblaster drivers... Fresh install of Win2k (oh lord, do I really need so many apps to do a day's work!) - and what's this heading straight for my face? Hmm, looks like a brick wall. <thump> Yup, a very solid brick wall. Acid 2d is fine but 3g and 4a bomb on launch. And I mean really bomb - total lock-up as soon as the splash appears. After a hard reset, Win2k comes back up without scandisking and without any indication in any of the event logs! There's only one upside I can see - the serious frustration means I can empathise better with my users (I'm a sysadmin). Looking through the web in general and the SoFo forums in particular I see I may have been having an easy ride with Acid so far - until now I've never had an Acid-related prob I couldn't fix. The only glitch has been SoFo's insistence on cutting Acid's explorer access to customised system folders from Acid 3 on. (This is a real pain in the butt for me as I have about a TB online and I distiguish my music/graphics/programming/etc folders with custom icons. Yeah some luser could trash his o/s but surely a Preferences checkbox would allow the rest of us to say "I know what I'm doing - really!") Back to Acid bombing out... there's nothing to get a handle on because there's no error msg. I've tried various driver versions (sound and video) in Win2k without success. Tried messing up my Win98 a bit to see if I could get Acid to fail in the same mode... nope. I suppose it must be a clash with the Radeon AIW. I never use video with Acid but I suppose it must be trying to do some sort of "clever" interfacing to the vid drivers. Of course, all my other snd/vid apps are OK (stuff like MediaStudio 5, VideoWave 3 and Premiere 6). And Acid 2d is fine - it may be quick and dirty but I still like it - no MIDI though. Although it could be argued that since Acid 3 and 4 worked OK on this system with the Marvel G400 card, the current failure must be the fault of the Radeon 8500DV, I feel it's really Acid that has the problem. I don't have any other big sound apps I can install unless I start using some of the demos from Computer Music mag cover CDs so perhaps it isn't just Acid. But really, everything else on the system is just spanky so I have to point the finger at Acid. It's all very disappointing - I'm not a "pro" user, I just like producing stuff in Acid for my own amusement (did try the Madonna remix but, hey, that was hard work!). I've got a fair bit of outboard gear (Korg, Yamaha, Roland etc) and I like the ability to mix'n'match my MIDI and audio twiddles - Acid 4 looks like just the ticket on paper... welcome to Real Life(tm). So I'm weary of the install/uninstall loop at the moment - hence this long-winded moan. I suppose I'll have to track down some older Radeon and/or Soundblaster drivers. There's some good comments around the net about the Omega/Plutonium Radeon drivers - does anyone here have an opinion on them? How about the Kx SB drivers - any thoughts? TIA for any comments/advice.
Subject:RE: Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 Reply by: Iacobus Date:10/12/2002 1:32:26 PM Does reducing the video acceleration help out any? It almost sounds just like the 02.2 CATALYST driver issue that Radeon users were experiencing (including me). I couldn't get ACID Pro 4.0 or Pro 3.0 to launch with 02.2, but 02.3 did the trick. Did you try anything prior to 02.2? ATI's previous driver versions are here. I know 02.1 worked fine as well. I can't help on the Sound Blaster question, as I don't have one, but I do remember users saying good things about those drivers. HTH, Iacobus
Subject:RE: Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 Reply by: ChromeSun Date:10/12/2002 3:32:05 PM Thanks Iacobus - success in a round-about way. You seem to be a guru for this forum so I'll note some details here in case it helps you to help anyone else... Before I saw your reply I dl'd the Omega/Plutonium XK1.1.18 driver and overwrote the Catalyst 02.3 one. It didn't stop Acid bombing but it did give me a 1400105032bit display at 85Hz ... the official drivers only offer this rez at 60Hz - I can only last 2-->3 mins at that freq. I'm using a good 21" CRT on this PC and 16001200 is great for still images (which I do a lot of) but the fonts are too itty-bitty (and the problems with dialogs and labels are just too much to use the "Large Fonts" option). So 14001050 is an ideal 4/3 rez for me. I hacked the Matrox driver with a hex-ed and I wasn't looking forward to doing it all over again with the ATI drivers! So the Omega driver gets a big thumbs-up for that, plus everything (except Acid Pro 3 and 4) works and seems just as stable as with the official drivers ... so far :o) NB Omega has some useful hints for BIOS settings on his Radeon pages - I don't agree with them all but they're not unreasonable. Anyway, getting back to your suggestions - I had forgotten about the vid acceleration setting... I've only had to use that once in the last several years ... and that was on a PC that one of my users insisted on getting over my express dis-recommendation... users - loathe them or ignore them, you can't like them ;o) So I dropped the video acceleration one notch to "Disable cursor and bitmap accelerations." and what do you know but Acid Pro 4 starts up with no complaints! Loaded up a biggish project and, plinkety-plink, sounds great. Thanks for your reply - I couldn't see the forest for the trees. regards, Chrome Sun
Subject:RE: Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 Reply by: nlamartina Date:10/14/2002 4:04:52 PM Chrome, Sorry I missed your post originally, but I see Iac took up the slack. =) My system is nearly identical to yours, so I can assure you that the kX drivers will certainly compliment your setup. The Creative drivers are built for general consumption, much like a Hollywood blockbuster, but also like a blockbuster, it lacks content since it's aimed at no particular target audience. Enter the kX drivers, the independant studio of the audio world. They're designed from the ground up for audio apps, and audio apps alone. You get better latency and a VAST amount of control, from graphically editing the DSP unit, to bussing effects onboard, to even controlling onboard FX parameters via MIDI CC's. Do yourself a favor and intall them. It'll be worth your time. Reply back here if you need any help. - Nick
Subject:RE: Acid Pro 4a bombs on startup in Win2k-sp3 Reply by: ChromeSun Date:10/14/2002 8:12:07 PM Thanks Nick - interesting comments. I'll have a go at the Kx drivers sometime soon... think I'll back up my working Win2k partition first though :o) Have just put Neverwinter Nights on this PC and the EAX effects are rather nice so I'll need to check whether the Kx drivers will be OK with that. If necessary I can always copy my working Win2k and just use the copy for games. Latency - never had a prob with this yet because all my outboard MIDI gear goes through a Yamaha UX256 to a spare laptop... any saved MIDI files are accessible over the LAN, so I don't tend to play directly into the audio PC. However, the control aspects of the Kx drivers sound good. regards, Chrome Sun.

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