8/14/2005 8:47:45 PM

Hi there,
Since I installed the latest update of SSP (5.5.5.3.4) a few weeks ago our projection PC has been frequently freezing and crashing. The problem is whenever we use any of the (wonderful) newer Visualizations and Transitions. Such as Aurora, Clouds et cetera.
When I use any of these, the PC literally freezes and I have to do a hard reboot.

Here is a quick look at our PC:

Intel Pentium 4, 2.60 GHz
1.00 GB Ram
ATI Radeon 9600 Series


I have Direct X 9 installed and all the most recent drivers for my video card, as well as XP Service Pack 2.

Does anyone have any informtaion that may help me solve this problem? Or is there any way I can go back to the previous SSP version? (The Visualizations worked with that version.) Is there a better, but price-equivalent video card I could move to instead of the Radeon 9600 I have?

Any help would be very much appreciated!!!

Kirsten B.

8/14/2005 9:00:32 PM

Heres some ideas.

1. Does your computer have "Hyper threading". I had a similar problem with one of my PC's that had Hyperthreading enabled, It would freeze up etc whenever I would use the vizualizations and trasitions.? I simply went in to the bios and turned off hyper threading.. and it fixed mine..

2. Also have you downloaded the latest drivers for the video card.

3. Which sort of 9600 video card is it? 9600 pro?? 9600 xt?? etc.?

Hope this helps

Rod

8/14/2005 9:21:38 PM

Thanks for responding so quickly!

The card is a 9600 AGP with 128 MB.

Yes, I have all the current drivers.

I just disabled the Hyperthreading and so far I'm not seeing any of the old problems. I'll do some more testing and checking tomorrow, but so far it looks like that may have fixed the problem.
Thanks!!! 
I'll let you know if anything else comes up.

~ Kirsten B.

(This freezing.crashing was particularly awful while I was away last week and new people had to run SSP. They had no clue what to do!)

8/17/2005 5:09:46 AM

We are having exactly the same problem. I will try disabling hyper-threading and it looks like that will work. Does anyone know (SSP support people welcome to respond) whether version 7 or later will support hyper threading? Would be good!

8/18/2005 11:29:03 PM

If there's anything we can do to make SSP work better on a hyperthreaded system, we'll certainly try.  However, it's more likely that the problem is at the video driver / DirectX level.

8/19/2005 5:30:49 AM

So does that mean there is another way of solving the problem, by configuring/updating video driver/s and/or directX (I know next to nothing about either)?

8/22/2005 10:59:56 PM

I remember early on, the Clouds visualization had significant problems when hyperthreading was enabled.  Quite some time later, we wanted to take a closer look at the problem and, well, the problem no longer existed.  Since then, that machine had several driver updates, DirectX updates, and XP patches.  One of those things must have corrected the problem.

My advise is simply to keep your system updated.