Suspect G2 USB hangs computer

mosc

Sometimes my G2 gets in a funny state that crashes my XP machine and causes it to take a very long time (10 minutes) to reboot. I hope this is just a problem with my G2. I wonder if other people have noticed this.

My XP box would sometimes crash or hang. About a month ago, it started taking forever (10 minutes) to reboot. It would just get half way through the bios stuff and hang. Intermittently it would get to the XP boot and then hang. I was sure I had a motherboard, CPU, or memory problem.

As a debugging exercise, I unplugged all external components - all USB devices (G2, printer, scanner, etc), network, Firewire, serial devices - everything. The machine rebooted instantly. Shocked

Next I start plugging things in, one by one. I found that the G2 was the culprit. Shocked

A couple of days ago, I deinstalled and reinstalled the G2 USB driver. This solved the problem. Maybe it got corrupted. I was happy.

I noticed something on the lights on one of my USB hubs. When the G2 is connected but the editor isn't running, the light on the hub is not lit. Fire up the editor and it goes on. Close the editor and it goes out. All of my other USB gear works differently. If a device is plugged in, then the lite is on.

I suspect the G2 has been put into some kind of state by the corrupt driver where it was doing something to hang the USB controller. I don't know. My concern is how can the G2 cause the computer to hang during the BIOS?

This morning I came into my studio and there was a message that my XP rebooted overnight do to an error in an unspecified driver. Coincidentally, my G2 was hung. It produced no sounds and I couldn't get it to change patches from the front panel. It came back after a power cycle.

I didn't put this in the bug section because I'd want to see someone verify this kind of problem.

Another wierd thing with the G2 USB. When you plug the G2 into a different port, XP doesn't recognize the device and you have to reinstall or reloat the USB driver. My other USB devices work on any port once they are installed. EGW said his G2 behaves similarly to mine in this respect.

dasz · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:12 am Post subject:

Yes, the G2 looks like it handles USB different than other USB devices.

When a G2 is turned on for example, you do not see a "remove this device icon" in your system tray (next to the clock ) on XP. When you plug say an iLok key or a digital camera, you do see it.

As I recall there are/were 2 versions of the G2 USB driver. The newer one may have addressed problems with the G2 connected together with other USB devices, I can't recall this for sure.

/Dasz

mosc · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:25 am Post subject:

I downloaded the latest verson of the driver from the Clavia site.

I can understand how a driver can become corrupted, but it is very rare.

Jan has reported the G2 engines will hang if they are left on for a long time - more than a few days. I wonder if these are related to the problem I'm seeing.

3phase · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:33 am Post subject:

i ve hanging problems with my G2 since half a year...dont know what causes it..
maybe its related to the editor connection...

at least i never had a hang sofar on stage ( thanx god )...
but i dont trust the situation so much when you just had 10 crashes in the studio the night before your gig...

But...

this thread shows me one possebility...sofar i never had a hanging g2 on stage...
maybe because ther was no editor connected?

Sofar i was thinking its a midi problem with my machinedrum...but mother misty just stated that this is probably not the case...maybe its even more complex interaction between certain midi/editor combinations? I really want to find out what is going on because i am constantly close sending the machine in for service...but this cost only a lot of mone¥ for transport when the problem is caused by external configurations...

I will check when i get the next hangs if they disappear without editor connection.

mosc · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:50 am Post subject:

blue hell · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:50 pm Post subject:

blue hell

Afro88 · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 3:07 pm Post subject:

My G2 has never caused my computer to hang, and has never caused the computer to take ages booting up... scratch

I have noticed that the G2's USB light doesn't turn on unless the editor is running though.

dasz · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject:

Me, I've never had my G2 freeze anything, except people's expressions when listening ot it Cool

/Dasz

dasz · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:26 pm Post subject:

Perhaps a test we could try is to send lots of midi messages to the G2 to make it freeze (vs waiting days for the hang).

This way we can isolate the problem (is it the # of midi clocks, cc's, or ??? )

I could make a Max patch to test different types of messages, if you like or you create some app to do as well. Only problem for me is my free time may be short very soon.

Just an Idea

for getting to the bottom of this.
/Dasz

mosc · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:11 am Post subject:

I added XP to the list of spell words. Anytime someone has a word to add to the list, just let me know.

I'm not seeing any MIDI problems as far as I can tell.

To be clear, when I dinstalled and installed the USB driver the booting problems when away. That may be all I was experiencing - a corrupted driver.

OT - this is something that has bothered me since day one using computers. All executeable programs (any file actually) should have a checksum built in. The OS should check it on every execution.

glitched · Joined: Mar 25, 2006 Posts: 80 Location: phila., pa USA

Mosc, have you tried installing ONLY the G2 in your system? If you haven't, uninstall/reinstall the driver and device (directly to the pc; no hub) and see if it plays nicely.

If you don't get any crashes, I would suspect the problem has to do with the fact that the G2 is a USB 1.1 device. The majority of your other devices are probably USB 2.0 and the problem comes in when your computer has to "downshift" to snail-like USB 1.1 speeds.

The vexing part of troubleshooting a crashes like these is that it could be one or all of the following: BIOS, chipset drivers, XP USB driver, G2 driver, or G2 hardware.

Sorry if I'm not a lot of help, but these issues are common; when in doubt, blame Microsoft!

By the way, it wouldn't hurt to check your motherboard manufacturer's website for BIOS updates.

-d
glitched.org

mosc · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:57 am Post subject:

Glitched, good to have you here.

If you live in Philly, be sure to come to the electro-music 2006 event.

Yes, it could be a 1.1 vs. 2.0 thing. I try to keep the 1.1 and 2.0 stuff on different controllers. I have been running my G2 on a dedicated USB card. Tried different ones but the problem remained. The main problem was the driver corruption.

The spooky thing is how can a driver effect the boot performance? I can only guess that the G2 can get into some strange state that confuses the computer. Things have been running fairly well for the last few days. Very Happy

This is not just a Microsoft issue. I've seen issues like this on my OSX machine with a MOTU 828Mk2 on Firewire. These wierd types of things can happen on any OS.

Anyhow, welcome abord... Smile

dasz · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:35 am Post subject:

Yes, blame Microsoft!
/Dasz

ps.: But I do give em lots of credit for .Net platform and the new Visual Studio!

glitched · Joined: Mar 25, 2006 Posts: 80 Location: phila., pa USA

Whatever the issue may be, it's a shame, that's all.

You can bet I'll be at the event! Creating electronic music can be very isolating, so it'll be great to get out and hook up with other hermits to see what they're working on. I'm hoping there's at least one hot electro-chick there.

The real question is, which t-shirt do I wear? Will it be the classic Kraftwerk Man-Machine in red, Boards of Canada in green, or should I go the kbd manufacturer route? Roland or Moog? Lots to think about in the coming months.

-d
glitched.org

mosc · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:04 am Post subject:

You could by one of last years electro-music 2005 tee shirts online. That would be great for Friday. You could by a new electro-music 2006 tee shirt at the event for Saturday or Sunday. Then you have only one day to wear a lesser but still interesting shirt. Laughing

dasz · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:47 pm Post subject:

Well, there are other cool t-shirts as well Wink

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-10523.html

/Dasz

slave to this · Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:45 am Post subject:

just to chime in on this. i booted into os9 on my mac desktop g4 the other just to toy around with turbosynth, (the first time since i've had a g2) and it hung my computer as well. too bad the editor doesn't work for os9 or this might not be a problem. it takes about 5 minutes for it to recognize all of my hardrives and partitions then gives me some prompt about downloading software for the g2 because its unrecognized. good thing i dont need os9 much anymore.

sheridan · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:56 am Post subject:

Hi there.

My G2 hasn't made my computer hang ever, but it does occassionally lose it's USB connection. When this happens, adjusting the cable makes no difference and I have to turn it off and on again to re-establish the connection. I think that it happens if I ever load a patch and then immeadiately change to performance mode, or do two other similar operations too quickly... not sure though.

It doesn't really sound too related to your problem, but I thought I'd mention it.

Also, it might be worth mentioning that my G2 USB is connected to a USB 2.0 card with none of the above mentioned problems.