Ultralite Mk 1 static on 1st boot, solid on 2nd boot

[ralfkr]

Hello.

Like many MUTU users running Windows, I have the show-stopping crackle & pop problem, but with a twist:

100% reproducible: The 1st time I boot up my system, my Ultralite will crackle & pop. Always. However, after a soft system reboot and a hard Ultralite reboot, the Ultralite is 100% solid for the rest of the session. Always.

My question: *** How can I diagnose what is causing the Ultralite to crackle & pop during the first boot session? ***

My system:
- Windows XP SP3 (same problem with SP2)
- Asus A8V, AMD X2 4400, ATI Radeon 9550, 2x SATA HDs
- two monitors: 1 DVI, 1 VGA
- 1 ADS PYRO PCI Express with TI chipset
- Ultralite Mk 1, 1.1.5, driver version 3.6.7.3 (I've also tried 3.6.8.1: same result).
- two hardware profiles: One with networking and related services switched off, the other not optimized. It doesn't matter which I use.
- AVT IEEE 1394 driver (also used XP's firewire driver with SP2 patch: same result).
- Optimized to run background services.
- All XP visual candy switched off.
- On-board sound switched of in BIOS.

My procedure:
- Start computer.
- Start Ultralite (during boot or after Windows is loaded; it doesn't matter).
- {Optional} Launch Firefox or Foobar2000 or Reaper or Cubase, etc... Ultralite will crackle & pop and be totally unusable.
- Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Restart
- Shut down Ultralite by holding Main Volumn knob.
- Start up Ultralight again while system is booting.
- Now all is well. 100%. Every time, even for long recording sessions.

What I've tried:
- Read just about every thread on the subject over the last year or so.
- DPC Latency Checker: No spikes reported, even when Ultralite is popping.
- Process Explorer: I look at it, but I'm not really capable to interpret the data.
- ATI Tray Tools and PCI Latency Tool to set my ATI display adapter's PCI latency. I've tried various settings and currently the primary adapter is set to 96 (default was 255) and the secondary to 64...


I know I'm luckier than many here in that I can actually get the Ultralite to work reliably. But, I'd still like to solve this problem. Thanks in advance for any insight that you can give me.

-ralf

[TheRealRoach]

Before you muck about on the system, I would suggest that you do a drive image of your main Operating System's drive, because like you said, your system DOES work properly after some jimmying. It would REALLY suck to start into system changes and re-configuration and then not have it work at all after.

So with that said, here are a few suggestions and ideas:
- My system used to blue screen half-way through the first boot of each day (i.e., only after the system had been shut down for about 8 hours). The second boot it would boot just fine and would be rock solid afterward (sound familiar?) I ended up discovering that if on first boot I went into the system bios and just let the system "warm up" for a few minutes (quite literally) and then exited the BIOS to let the system continue booting, it would work! It turned out to be a defective video card that cause the problem when it was thermally cold... or at least not warm enough. Likely a result of a tiny fracture in the connections that would conduct properly when they heated and expanded just enough. So, I would suggest you try the same thing: After at least 8 hours of being shut off (not standby), power on your system, but enter into the system bios/system setup (usually by tapping the "Del" key on system post), let the system idle there for a few minutes then "exit without saving changes" and continue into booting windows and see if anything behaves differently.

- A separate idea if the above doesn't pan out. On the first hard boot (when your audio interruptions occur), do a print-screen of all of your processes running in the Task Manager, AND all of your services running (Start->run->services.msc). Now do a soft reboot as you mentioned in your original post, and do another set of print-screens. Compare every aspect of both lists and see if there are any deviations, especially if there are a few processes or services present on first boot, but not on second (soft) boot.

That's all I got so far.

[acidrecords]

sounds like a bios problem...

if you reboot windows it updates a small part in the bios with you last hw config....

if it`s working with another pc without problems, then im sure it`s 99% bios related..