DC 7.11 crashes when trying to play a file

[James]

Ever since I downloaded the 7.11 patch, I have been crashing when trying to play a file. I have never had this problem with any previous version of the software dating back several years/versions. I load a file, hit play and ?crash??..each and every time. Per the error screen, here is the ?error signature?:

AppName: dc7.exe
AppVer. 7.0.9.0
ModName: ntdll.dll
ModVer 5.1.2600.5512
Offset: 0001b1fa

Does any of this mean anything? I don?t see other posts on this so I assume this is an incident limited to me. Any thoughts?

James

[sus4chord]

I'm sure Craig or Rick will have a more complete answer, but in the meantime, just to be sure, I would check that 1) your hard disk is defragged (you don't want large audio files scattered all over the place); 2) you've run chkdsk (just to be sure you don't have any bad sectors); 3) wherever you defined your temp directory in DC has enough space on it. If you have more than one drive or partition, I would put the temp on the non-OS drive/partition; and 4) check your temp folder to make sure it doesn't have a bunch of un-needed old files in it.

Just a few basics first. I run a number of different audio applications, and these things seem to keep things running smoothly. Sometimes the problem is the program; often it's just something like the above on my system. This way, I eliminate the obvious stuff first.

Also, did you reboot after installing the update? I don't think you need to, but it doesn't hurt. A lot of people have an aversion to rebooting (saying "I shouldn't need to, so I won't"), but if you're running Windows, it can solve a lot of problems instantly (and then they're still trying to figure out their problem, while I'm happily working away on a new project).

[Craig Maier]

Hi James -

Can you check and see if the soundcard preferences are still the same as what you had originally set them for? It could be that they system switched from MME's to WDMs or visa versa. The soundcard menu is found under edit\preferences\soundcard.

Craig

[James]

Thanks John and Craig for your replies. John, yeah, I keep my computer defragged, etc. As for the reboot, I even did a reinstall but kept having the same problem! I was ready to go back to my disk version (pre 7.11) but??..Craig, I tried what you suggested and it now works. I would have more faith that everything is fine, but I reverted the setting back again and it still played fine. Confusing. But, what is important is that it is now working. If it rears its head again, I will add to this post and we can go from there. Thanks all!

James

[Craig Maier]

James,

You may want to double check the soundcard preference setting in Diamondcut to be sure that it is pointing specifically to your sound card and not "Primary Sound Driver" or something vague like that.

Craig

[jfritz]

Glad it worked our, even if there was an element of magic.

Another thing that's always worth a try is checking that you have the latest driver for your sound card. I recently went round and round with the tech support staff of the manufacturer of my pocket recorder. I could hear the bizarre artifacts and they couldn't. I finally tried the same sound files on my wife's pc and discovered that they played fine. I downloaded a new driver for my sound card--M-audio 2496 which hasn't had Vista drivers for very long--and the problem vanished.