the tragic love triangle between vegas, my computer, and my camera
 

So I got a new dell recently, and it's mostly fine, though I've been having a few issues that seem somehow related to Vegas and my camcorder (either the XL1s or the ZR80 I use as a deck) when connected via firewire, though this might extend to any external device that connects by firewire or USB.

So, here's the deal:

Everything will be going along fine, and then I turn on/off my camera while it's connected to the computer. If Vegas is running at the time, it won't shut down, ever. Not with a command to the task manager, not normally, not at all. Conversely, and this is new as of today, if Vegas is not running, and I turn the camcorder on/off, Vegas WON'T start, nor will it shut down it's attempt to do so when I use the task manager. In either case when, I try to reboot, the PC itself won't shut down either, ever. I have to do bad things to turn the computer off.

This is new to this computer, and I'm not sure where the issue is.

Here's what I can think of:

-Contrary to popular advice, I have Norton stuff on.

-I have a DSL, and usually leave it on all the time

-I have Windows XP home now, instead of Professional ('cause I didn't want to buy an upgrade I already had when I got the new computer, not knowing I have to have the special magic Dell XP Pro, not just any XP Pro. Damnit).

-Too many processes running in the background (the task manager says I'm not using very much RAM with any of them (I have a gig of RAM), so I don't know how that could be. I've made it so the ones I know I don't need won't be there on startup, but there's so many I can't ID just by their names, and I don't wanna go screwing with 'em.

So that's all I can think of right now. If anyone's experienced similar issues, let me know. Thanks.

Computer details:

Dell,

Windows XP Home

2.8 Ghz P4 w/ 1 gig RAM

It could be something totally unrelated to running software too. For example, maybe it needs a BIOS update. Maybe there's a known issue with that motherboard. Do you know what firewire chipset that board uses? There's so many things it *could* be that this will be tough to diagnose.

Well, the firewire is a Pyro card I got a long time ago. It's not integrated into the motherboard.

xp home is just fine for editing, and leaving the dsl connected all the time shouldn't be an issue either.

do you have more than one device hooked up to your firewire card?

You guys are good at deduction! As one who's had trouble with finicky firewire cards (turning my computer back on over and over until I finally cut power) this scene sounds slightly familiar. Only I never had a problem with Vegas.

Two cards are sitting in a drawer now, and the current one only has one working port (that's good enough!). You may have to try a new one, too, Josh.

Well, wait, here's the thing. Sorry if I didn't mention it before:

It works fine most of the time. It's only when I have recently turned on/off my camera (I THINK it's just the camera, could be those other devices however), and I try to turn on/off Vegas. As long as I'm careful to turn everything on/off in the proper order, smooth running.

Let me elaborate a little further. I can turn on/off camcorder, my USB drive, my firewire drive, like a monkey on crack who's fascinated with external drives and cameras, and have no problems. It's when Vegas enters into the equation that things start to go awry.

Yes, I have my firewire drive and the camera plugged into the same card. I could plug the camera into the firewire drive itself. . .someone told me that could 'cause issues a while back (one of you guys, in fact) which is why they're both plugged directly into the PC.

i dunno what it is, but windows has issues with teh firewire drivers, and when vegas is on, it hijacks that management.... but sometimes windoze doesnt like it..
to me, Vegas just freezes sometimes with my firewire device attached while on, so i have to turn the cam off, listen for the ding ding noise to tell me teh machine has acknowledged this.. from here i turn the cam back on, and everythign is fine agiain.. the beauty about vegas is that it wont crash if a device inadvertantly gets unpluggerd (cough.. like me kicking the USB cable and unplugging a drive from the front usb port.. cough cough)

It might be a problem with multiple firewire devices on the same firewire bus (a firewire card only has one).

Can you try having only the camera plugged in? (maybe attach the firewire drive via USB, or run some quick tests without it. I realize you may need the footage/data on your FW drive.)

I could try that. The problem is, if the. . .glitch occurs, I have to unplug the power supply from the PC tower to get the computer to turn off, so every time I do that, it's probably not too good. Know what I mean? I don't want to keep testing things and find out I'm wrong, and have to do bad things to my computer. There's no easy way to figure out if the problem's fixed until it screws up again.

Do you have an extra PCI slot for one of those 3 port firewire cards? I've had little to no issues with mine. It has helped me keep the one on my SB-Audigy2 open just for my camrea. The 3 port I use for: Canopus 300, 3 daisy chained 120gig drives, and deck. I've run this way for just over a year now without issues. The 3 port was $49.00 from Wal-Mart.

Interesting idea. I'll have to check if I have the extra port. Do you know what brand that card is?

I bought an el cheapo card a while back and it wouldn't work right, so I returned it and spent a little more ($75) on the pyro card, and have been (mostly) happy ever since.

I just called the big "W" it is made by Starti Tech and retails for $39.99.

Going back and reading your original post, with respect to the XL-1. This is the primary camera our students use. However we have almost always had capture issues with it in Vegas, not sure if it was a driver issue. So instead everyone uses our GL-2 as the capture deck if our DV deck is in use. This has always struck me as odd, I would assume if the GL-2 works so well then why not the XL-1. The good news is, the XL-1 has been insane in its reliability. We have had ours for over three years, with about 15-20 hours or more useage a week. We have never sent them in for cleaning or anything, and just two weeks age we had a drum peice go bad, $400.00 later Cannon fixed it and it is now great! This is a remarkable camera for durability.