15 replies to this topic

[Postal Pete]

I'm not talking about one of those pussy "Not responding" crashes where one can use Task Manager to shut down the prog. Yeah, clinical death of the Windows Vista session has to be declared every time I try to transfer a song to my MZ-N707 NetMD player. It usually happens around 40% transfered. I'd really like to use some dirty words to describe how I feel about Sony...

I've tried using all kinds of "alternative" software and methods but some of them won't work on Vista and the rest of them won't support my MD player model. So at this moment there is no way whatsoever for me to transfer any songs to the player.

[A440]

I'd really like to use some dirty words to describe how I feel about Sony...

some of them won't work on Vista and the rest of them won't support my MD player model...

Not to defend Sony or SonicStage, which has never exactly been user-friendly...but Vista broke a lot of programs, so save a little of your fury for M$oft.

Meanwhile, why not use Task Manager to check out what's running before you try a SonicStage transfer, and shut down anything you might not need. If you can see what's interfering with SonicStage maybe you can solve the problem.

[Postal Pete]

Thanks, mate, it seems to have helped the situation! I closed all processes that I figured wouldn't affect the system stability and SonicStage didn't crash anymore.

Edit: WOAH!!! Now I had Windows crash and show me a blue screen for a couple of seconds. It said something about a serious error and preventing damage to the data and it was doing something (counting percentages) and then it restarted...

I don't even dare to test anything with Sonicstage if my computer crashes and burns every time I try to transfer music.

Edited by Postal Pete, 15 September 2007 - 04:34 AM.

[Richard]

I think the issue could be related to some kind of driver or possibly hardware issue. Sonic Stage 4.3 works fine with all my MD units on my Vista Business laptop. Admittedly they are all Hi-MD and not NetMD.

What you could do is try and trap the error using Process Monitor to see what files / reg keys are being accessed. If you are getting a blue screen what is the exact error message?

[bobt]

Try updating your video drivers and see what happens
Bob

[Postal Pete]

Meh, I just had a "recording session" with no problems at all. This was after I had again closed all unnecessary processes, but earlier it still crashed when I did that. Now I tried converting and transfering many files at once, too, and it didn't crash. I'm gonna experiment further, but it looks like its some processes that could be conflicting with SS.

[sunder56]

I've experienced the same thing, howver only when transfering from CD to SS. Crash to blue screen. I just recently installed SS 4.3 Ulitmate a few days ago and have had success at archiving CDs to ATRAC lossless. I game at the same time while using SS and occasionally I get blue screen memory dump error. Is SS really that much of a resource hog?

I am using Win7 64bit Pro, 8GB RAM, Radeon 4870, Phenom II 965, Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5, OCZ SSD Agility 2 (C;\ drive), 1TB Seagate 7200 rpm storage. Certainly no slouch of a system, but had no problems running multiple applications until installing SS 4.3 Ultimate.

Any thoughts?

[sfbp]

No drivers at all? Just bare SS for the compression capability?

a. wonder if you need to turn off DEP?
b. is it possible that SS only crashes when swapping? Or when starved?

Just my $.02

[sunder56]

Yes, sorry guys, I have the drivers installed and I can transfer tracks between SS and my MZ-S1 with no problems. Will look into DEP as well as monitor resources closely when multiple apps are running.

[sfbp]

The 760 driver, I assume.....? Or are you running perforce in WinXP virtual machine? If the latter, there's a 64-bit real driver which will stop you from having to run in a VM which may well have some glitches when heavily loaded. Look in the downloads here.

[sunder56]

Yep, got the 760 driver - awesome stuff. I suspect that there may indeed be some glitches with it. Is anyone doing further development of it?

[sfbp]

OK, so here's what I think you should do:

- Completely remove everything including all drivers ("hidden") using the procedure outlined in the (now) famous post about RH1 slowdown.

- Make sure the MZ-S1 is unplugged and stays so.

- Once you have completely removed everything, recommend a complete reboot (remember the registry only gets properly backed up when removing things if you reboot). After that make a restore point (let's be thorough here!).

- Run your games etc with OTHER software and figure out if they are actually causing the grief. After all it may be that SonicStage is legit and the games are crashing it.

- Once you have got past that phase for a few days or hours, try reinstalling Sonic Stage but under no circumstances do anything that would cause a NetMD driver of any kind to get installed.

- If that works, try adding the S1 to the mix (with the netmd760.sys driver). Does it start to crash?

I don't see any other way to conclusively prove what is happening. I recall my son had a CPU or graphics card that was overclocked and it simply crashed Windows (this was XP and W2K both) all the time until the BIOS timings on the memory and such were slowed down.

Good luck, and we look forward to hearing of your endeavours.

[sunder56]

Thanks SFBP. Guess what. I did a little digging and found that my BIOS had reverted back to F1 (from F6). This board has dual BIOS and for some reason or other I ended up back on F1. I did have to clear my CMOS a while back when making some hardware changes, but that shouldn't have nuked my primary BIOS. Regardless, I'm now back on F6 (latest) and SS is rock solid while running EVE, World of Tanks and playing a Blu-Ray. Various BIOS changes have improved CPU performance and most importantly with version F3 memory performance was drastically increased - I'm thinking this was the problem all along.

I consider myself above average tech wise and feel like a dope for not taking this basic step in the troubleshooting process.

Thanks for all the sound advice, glad to be part of this community!

[sfbp]

sunder56, on 09 October 2011 - 01:49 AM, said:

Thanks for all the sound advice, glad to be part of this community!

We'll look forward to your contributions in due course

Stephen

[watergale]

I'm having mega problems with sonic stage. I recorded several on-line lectures onto my minidisc player and then back on to the computer. This messed up my windows media player (which disappeared a couple times). Then I started to have more and more frequent blue screen crashes when attempting to boot on and found that several times it was related to sonic stage extensions. I cleaned up the computer with pitstop and removed sonic stage. Now when I want to put sonic stage back on, pitstop absolutely will not allow it. I don't know if I should remove pitstop and put sonic stage back on....Every diagnostic I've run says the computer itself is fine. I hate to lose all my sonic stage files. I am especially fond of minidisc players, but I really like using the computer to make cds from my recordings....

[sfbp]

Hi there. Welcome to the forums. Let's start with the simple questions:

1. What version of Windows exactly are you using (including how many bits and what level eg home, pro, ultimate)?
2. What minidisc unit are you using? And what format of MD exactly, is causing all the grief?
3. What is pitstop? Generally anti-virus programs will prevent installations from running in a large number of cases. At the very least it needs to be disabled for install. You can figure out whether it's possible to reenable it after install by simply trying it.