Sony Vegas Locks Up
 

I've been using Vegas since version 4.0. I've used it on several computers and never had a problem.

I just got a new Dell XPS 420. It has the following specs:

Intel quad-core 2.4 GHz processor
4GB 800MHz RAM
Nvidia 512MB GeForce 8800GT video card
Windows Vista Premium

Vegas seems to lock up intermittantly, a couple times a day. It sees to do it at random times, but the most common time is when I'm scrubbing. I wonder if it's the video card. I've updated with the latest drivers and have all updates for Vegas and Windows.

It has locked up After Effects once as well, but in my experience, Adobe is far more likely to lock up, regardless of the configuration.

Are you using the original OS as installed by Dell? While it may or may not help, you might try reformatting your hard drive and starting all over, taking care to reinstall your drivers in the order suggested by Dell. Hopefully they gave you an Vista CD.

In previous threads, testing the memory has been suggested as a trouble shooting tool. While your system is new (nice system by the way!) I suppose the memory could theoretically have issues.

If you suspect the video card try not sure how you can know for sure without trying another card.

I use an HP box with a DuoCore 6400 (? I think this is it) with a GeForce8600 3 gigs DDR2Ram and other good stuff in the box with XP and Vegas, as well as everything else, runs flawlessly.

I would bet it's the Vista OS and NOT the video card. Everyone I've talked too recently that uses Vista has complained about it (used with an NLE that is).

I know that doesn't solve the problem but maybe it's a direction you should be looking at.

Don

You know Don, I've heard about issues with Vista, but I've run both 32 bit and 64 bit versions without issues at all, like you.

I have heard it said that Vista issues can often be more hardware related, but I don't know.

Also might making sure to disable all unnecesarry startup items if you haven't already done so. I believe it is important to disable things in Vista like indexing, etc as well.

Another thing to look at Chris, is if you have your video files on a drive that is going to sleep, particularly an external USB or Firewire drive, that can cause problems. I have had a lockup issue in the past on my Dell when it was new, as the firewire card was faulty. Dell replaced it and everything was fine.

Good call, I did notice a tell-tale drive start up sound yesterday. It didn't coinside with a lockup, but my drives apparently are going to sleep. I'll disable that.

If its the 64bit version of Vista Premium, that *may* be where the problem lies.

It could also be something to do with Vegas if it's v8: there have been reports of problems with the latest versions. Some users on this forum have said they've rolled back prior to 7e (which I think is where the problems were first noted).

~

That said, I'm using a similar system to yours (tho its DIY... about $1.5K; nothing fancy):

Vista Ultimate 64bit SP1
Intel Dual Quad 2.4
NVIDIA 8800GT
Vegas 8b
8 gig RAM

No problems yet but only one month of use. 0 crashes, Vegas or anything else. So it's stable in my experience, fwiw.

Tweaks: uninstalled Sony Media Manager, disabled some services from Vista and turned off some features: generic tweaks, nothing specific to NLE's I'm aware of.

UPDATE
Just saw Jeff's comment about drives going to sleep. I did disable most of the power-saving features in Vista.

Make sure you keep Data Excecution Prevention to system processes and never do it for all files. 7.0e instantly crashes when loading a project if you have DEP on for all programs on Vista.

About drives going to sleep, there is an annoying feature in some drives I have had, particularly Fantom Titanium drives. They have a sleep mode that cannot be disabled. For example if I would work for a few minutes in Vegas and save to that drive, I would have to wait for it to spin up and get going before my project would save. It seemed to take forever for the drive to re-start.

I disabled the drive sleep settings in Vista and have not had a single lock up in Vegas of After Effects since.

Excellent!

I had a problem with Vegas locking up and finally figured out it was caused by my external Seagate Free Agent 500 gig drive with USB & eSATA connection. Vista doesn't seem to have a problem with it but Vegas is slow to respond anytime I access it and eventually stops responding altogether. It happens regardless of how I have it connected.

I have often wondered if there is a program someone has created for "pinging" hard drives to keep them from going into sleep mode and keeping them spinning. I hate the wear and tear on the drives from the constant stopping and restarting every 5-10mins that happens every time I save my work, which is much harder on a drive than for it to run continuously.

After giving Vista a try and liking it fine initially, I stayed up and reinstalled XP Pro last night. Wow, I'm so glad I did. No more of that intemittent thrashing of my hard drives.

I have also found that drives that were going to sleep on me no longer do that, and it is so much better. Is there a setting in Vista that I missed? I had the power options set on performance, but there must be another setting I overlooked.

I had thought it was the drives doing it on their own.

Near left in same windows where you choose performence or balanced, choose other options something, there you see a detailed list...