I've been using many versions of PowerSDR with nearly no glitches for over a year, on a AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 GHz) system with 1.25 GB of RAM. The sound card in use is the Presonus Firebox with firmware updated successfully last summer, and the latest 1.21 driver. DirectX and my Nvidia drivers are all up to date, as well as Windows XP updates and with OS optimizations recommended by other SDR-1000 owners.
I use the parallel cable that was supplied with the SDR-1000. However, despite the smooth-sailing for months, all my versions of PowerSDR (beta & production, 1.3 through 1.8, plus K6JCA and K20X versions) have all started exhibiting the following behaviour, with no other applications or unnecessary processes running: 1. Fine receive operation for approx. 1 minute, then... 2. Rapidly increasing CPU utilization, from ~35-40% (w/display enabled) or from ~12-25% (w/no display) to higher levels, then 100% CPU, then... 3. Audio motorboating & stutter, display freezing, and complete PowerSDR lockup, all within a few seconds. This is usually accompanied by full lockup of Windows. Lockups take just a little bit longer to occur when I have the display turned off, but CPU still goes to 100% followed by full lockup. 4. The lockup is normally so bad I can't do a CNTRL-ALT-DEL to gracefully shut down... I need to switch off the computer with the power supply switch. What could be causing this behavior? I have checked and rechecked every aspect I can think of, including trying "Fail-Safe" and "Optimized" BIOS settings on my motherboard. I've reviewed my start-up services (via services.msc) over & over again, and tried some less aggressive settings after re-reading various XP optimization recommendations from the Flex-Radio reflector and elsewhere. I have tried deleting the .MDB database and starting fresh, as well as uninstalling and fully reinstalling a few of the PowerSDR versions. I usually run very conservative latency settings (large buffers) in the PowerSDR setups and on the Firebox Soundcard. I don't mind latency, as I'm using the SDR in receive-only mode. I typically have the Process Priority setting at "high" or "above normal". Going to "real time" doesn't offer any improvement. For the life of me I can't think of what changes I may have made to this desktop PC to cause PowerSDR to react this way with all versions. I used to be able to run PowerSDR with other applications concurrent, for hours at a time, perfectly. Now I can't even run it alone for two minutes without lockups that require a complete reboot! Thanks in advance for any pointers or direction! Guy Atkins KE7MAV Puyallup, WA USA www.sdr-1000.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/
