Hi Audiofolkz

I mainly use Ableton (live 9.6, on Win 7 64bit)

On my audio machine, I can use a plugin fine, but every so often, I'll click on it and it will vanish, leaving me looking at the main Ableton screen only.
I can bring it back with the spanner icon, but his keeps then happening. It's a real pain!

Kontakt does this the most, but other plugins too
It seems to be worst with large memory Kontakt libraries

Separately, when I use Kontakt, it seems to flash to 'not responding' for a few brief time regularly
I'm wondering if this is connected maybe
I have 16Gb memory, so that shouldnt be an issue, but there's possibly something in how this is being handled.
Yesterday, I tried the Retcon library and this was impossible to use. It opened, but the image was flashing the whole time. This could be some graphics driver issue?

At present, I'm not sure what to update or turn off. I don't use the machine for internet, so have terminated a lot of functions.

I'd be grateful for any ideas please.

Thanks
T2000

 

Update - I now see that Retcon has a background image that's actually designed to flicker (flash).
Still though, it seemed to create a burst of 'not responding issues', preventing me from using the library sadly

 

Any ideas please?
This is so annoying!
I try to use Kontakt, but the gui disappears when Im clicking on it and I have to click the spanner twice to get it back.

Not sure if its a Kontakt bug, graphics bug or ableton bug???

 

Didnt find anything on search engine with different keywords, looks like your issue is pretty unique... You didnt said if it was always like that or it just started one random day.

What is your HDD system?
Do you have SSD?
Where is your Live 9 installed?
What is your GPU?
Since when did you last formated your PC?
Is the issue happening only with Kontakt?
Is the issue happening with Vanilla plugins?

 

Good questions RedThresh.

I've installed Live 9 (9.6) on an SSD (C drive with the Windows 7 OS)
The libraries are either on an internal HDD, or an external USB HDD.
I've never formatted the PC, but have only had it a couple of months.

The concerning thing is that I agree, it seems a unique issue.
Maybe that's also a good thing though, as the solution must link to something unique.
I can click on a note on the Kontakt keyboard say a couple of times and it will be fine... then randomly, it clicks through to the Ableton screen. Kontakt does seem to say 'not responding' sometimes for a quick flash, so possibly it happens if I click while it's not responding and Ableton 'sees' me as clicking on the main screen instead? I tried taking off Windows security options to see if that was conflicting with Kontakt.

I'll check the vanilla plugins, check if Kontakt behaves this way with everything, check in another DAW and get back...

 

Ok so it's not HDD/File system slow or corrupted (young system, SSD, young HDDs)

Next step is like you said :

-Testing Vanilla plugins (first)
-Testing Kontakt in another DAW

If Vanilla plugins works without an issue then it's Kontakt related, if not well the issue is bigger.

The fact that Kontakt is randomly stopping responding is for me a big proof that the plug is having troubles, this kind of "stops responds" issue is often system related (conflict, driver compability (audio?)) or memory related (leaks, wrong paging... etc)

Although GPU related isssues in audio domain is kind of rare, it happens, so knowing your GPU Brand and model + driver build would help or at least put aside this possibility.

 

Done a bit of testing with latencymon
I think the issue is hard page faults causing a brief freeze that means I click through the vst window.
Its also a problem with other vsts and daws

Hal.dll is flagged plus some other drivers
Im going to try a minimal boot then work up to see where the issue arises.

Bios update Ill try also
So far, Im at a loss how to stop this glitch
Will post my gpu details also. It and the soundcard are on board basic that came with this hp.
I had replaced the hdd with ssd. Hopefully that isnt to blame as I dont want to reinstall windows.
Possibly usb drivers so Ill try files from the internal drive

 

HAL is hardware abstraction layer.

A BIOS update might help, if there is one. But most likely drivers, C, VisualBasic, .NET blah blah.

Things to try?
How about network? Disable network adapters? Onboard sound disable? Sound through gfx card disable? Disconnect hard drives one at a time? Other hardware? Recently installed software (if it is recent thing)?

Background apps? Skype or other malware? Drive encryption? Bitlocker?

Power supply dodgy? Overheating CPU/dirty fans? Born unlucky? Cursed by a witch?

 

Have you dedicated a USB-drive to Readyboost?
Or maybe allotted some amount of page file (virtual memory) to a USB-drive?
If you have and you are experiencing page faults, it could be the USB-drive has too many Reads/Writes and is basically wearing out.
With 16GB of RAM this isn't necessary anyways.

 

I've aimed to disable everything I can think of and turned off all net, bluetooth etc.

It's an HP laptop and I only use onboard sound and video. Trying my usb Maya 44 would make sense for identifying the problem so I'll try that - but Id like a solution that lets me use onboard.

One thing that may be key. I stuck an SSD drive in and copied the factory Win 7 install over to that. Maybe that means Win isnt seeing things quite right?
There dont appear to be any other obvious issues. Just seems that when I use heavy VSTs, Ableton or other DAWs can't get the data or the cpu struggles for a few milliseconds, causing it to not respond and so mouse clicks go through the VST window.

This seems to be a problem with the internal HDD as well as usb HDD. Ill test with only the internal SSD. What's Readyboost? I havent tweaked the page file but maybe it isnt all on the C drive SSD? Whats the default out of interest? Will try disconnecting drives.
I hadnt thought about C, visual, .net etc. Should I try updating? Drivers and Bios are all latest. Aero is off but Ill check desktop manager and will see if any graphics changes help

Izotope Isis was really bad last week and I dont recall that always being the case so maybe this is caused by some change I made?! Unfortunately I have been in the process of setting everything up on this laptop, so not clear if it ever started out fine. Part of me feels a Win install would be a good idea, although thats a pain

Thanks for your tips and pointers

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2017

If you installed Windows to an SSD I don't think Readyboost will even be available. It's basically tech that allows you to use a removable device as a write cache potentially speeding up disk reads. Like a dedicated device for virtual memory (page-file).
This would have been an option on your old HDD. On any removable memory device Right-Click > Properties > ReadyBoost.

To set your Virtual memory to system defaults:
Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings.
Select the Advanced tab and go to Settings under Performance.
Click the Advanced tab and Change under Virtual memory
Make sure your SSD is the ONLY drive listed under 'Paging file size for each drive'
Select 'System managed size' for the SSD and click Set.
Check 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives'. Click OK and OK to Restart
Click Apply on the remaining Performance Options window and restart the computer.

That shouldn't be a problem if you cloned the disk properly. Nothing is cleaner than formatting and fresh installing though.

I have the C++ Runtimes 2005 thru 2015 and Kontakt has never given me problems.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2977003

If you haven't already, check for new graphics drivers. If you're already on the latest/beta drivers, you could try going back a driver version to see if it helps then updating again to current if it doesn't. Remember to restart the machine after video driver installation.

 

Definitely a few things for me to test there. Thanks all