Firewire/1394 problems fixed

rmack350 wrote on 6/15/2004, 2:30 PM

Thanks John.

Although my drive stalling problems went away after switching to ADS drives, I've started having drives drop off the bus if I have a couple of drives and an ADVC100 connected. So I'll try it.

I had chalked the problem up to being a "timing issue". Meaning it could be any number of a million things.

Rob Mack

Caruso wrote on 6/15/2004, 3:05 PM

I also had been experiencing problems with drives dropping off. Additionally, I found that all externals would fail to re-appear after a re-boot, requiring me to manually unplug them (by disconnecting the first in the chain) and plugging them back into the firewire port. Then, XP would do it's thing where the drives are scanned and you're given that option to play, explore, or do nothing.

This is a problem that just appeared one day - previously, I could log off, shut down, restart, whatever, and those drives would always come back, just like my internal drives always do. In fact, when I first started using external FW drives, XP would stubbornly insist during reboot on seeing the same configuration of drives that were present when I shut down. If I unplugged one or more drives, it would sit there for the longest time searching for them.

I learned to either dismount the externals before shut down or never to alter the setup between shut down and the next boot up.

Lately, XP didn't care, because it never would find the externals on its own anyhow.

Looks like this little patch has done the trick. I've restarted three times without losing any of those drives.

Thanks.

Caruso

johnmeyer wrote on 6/15/2004, 4:39 PM

Looks like this little patch has done the trick.

It appears that this patch may also fix several other Firewire/1394 problems.

Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 6/16/2004, 3:45 AM

I will try this on my machine as I think this may be the problem I have, that I posted some time ago. The Panasonic's DV10000 seems to disconnect when capturing or recording at random intervals. Causes no end o problems as print of 2 hours and the pannie is still recording but no picture or sound is there.

It is hard to do a search as it is difficult to know how question to ask when searching for this error.

When working I have the ding dongs for no reason, and I am sure that is the Pannie logging in and out.

Might also be the cause of the stutter in Vegas when it appears to lock then comes back to live after sometime or when I disconnect the machine from the DV pannine.

Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 6/16/2004, 11:34 AM

Nope did not work on the main machine, after 2.5 minutes the Pannie disconnected, ding dong.

Having read the above have taken it out of a daisy chain and given it, it's on port on the PC, perhaps that will help.

So far so good.

rcrawfor42 wrote on 6/16/2004, 11:53 AM

I'll have to give this patch a try. I have an ADS box that disconnects when I plug my camcorder into the firewire chain.

Thanks for pointing it out!

Erk wrote on 6/16/2004, 5:48 PM

Johnmeyer,

>It appears that this patch may also fix several other Firewire/1394 problems. <

Such as... ? I'm wondering what you're experiencing because I"m having some nasty print to tape problems, with the connection (or data transfer, or - ? ) being broken for a few moments, at random intervals. My system used to print perfectly. I'm not having these problems capturing. I think it might be IRQ related, as I think it started after shuffling some components around. I get different (bad) results depending on what PCI slot by 1394 card is in.

Greg

PeterWright wrote on 6/16/2004, 6:23 PM

Thanks John - I haven't had many problems lately but I'll install it to stop the next lot .....

Incidentally, how do you get to find out about these things ?

johnmeyer wrote on 6/17/2004, 9:57 AM

Incidentally, how do you get to find out about these things ?

1. I find a problem.
2. I tell Sony about it.
3. They say it's not their problem.
4. I get ticked off and spend four hours of my life figuring out how to fix the problem.

The problem with the IBM-compatible computer software industry is that everyone takes the attitude that, if the problem is not in OUR code, then it is not our problem.

Alliante wrote on 6/17/2004, 1:52 PM

Well, Sony was right in this cas though ;)

It's amazing how intense the Microsoft Knowedgebase is; it's absolutely huge.

DCV wrote on 6/17/2004, 2:33 PM

Thanks for posting this. I'm going to give it a shot since I've been having lots of problems all of a sudden with my ACOMData firewire drives.

I checked out the Knowledge Base some more and found the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;831584

Ugghhh...There's always some trade off!

John

willisub wrote on 6/17/2004, 3:09 PM

I can capture, but not record back to Canon Camcorders. I can't preview without blue screen popping up. This is just on my laptop.

I tried the patch (2 times). With patch on XP Home, laptop doesn't even see camera. So much for that patch.....

Dr_Z wrote on 6/18/2004, 8:50 AM

If somebody has 1394 problems that are not fixed by KB 329256, one could also check out the Microsoft KB 830987. The problem described in 830987 is that each 1394 device has a device ID. Unfortunately this ID is NOT unique and Windows cannot handle two 1394 devices with the same ID. I don't how to check the 1394 ID of a device, but obviousely my external 1394 HDD and my ADVC have the same firewire ID. For the fix on KB 830987 one will have to call Microsoft. They will email you a download link. Because the fix is not tested, they do not want everybody to install it and run into additional problems... With my devices it's a hassle because I have to turn off the ADVC, boot the PC, connect the harddrive first, and then turn on the ADVC. Otherwise my ext. monitor will get no signal.

DGrob wrote on 6/19/2004, 11:47 AM

I installed this patch. On my V5 Capture/Advanced Capture window I LOST the "Dropped Frames - Capture Duration - Current Location" window completely. Went back to Windows Restore point just before this patch and got it back. FYI - take a look at your vidcap if you installed this patch. Darryl

mbelli wrote on 6/19/2004, 1:09 PM

I don't think Windows implements firewire properly or firewire is really bugy. I've never used firewire drives to capture, edit from and so forth.

I particularly notice propblems in daisy chaining and having more then one firewire device attached to a firewire card, even though it might have 2-3 firewire ports. Believe it or not, I've even had problems with just plain firewire cables going into my firewire card attached to nothing, when another device was attached to the other port. Couldn't believe that.

So, what I do now -- only one firewire device per firewire card. So if I have to capture into Vegas, I'll disconnect everything firewire and just use one firewire cable going into my DV deck. If I want to access a firewire drive, I'll disconnect my DV deck and plug only that in. So far this way gives no problems whatsoever. A pain, but for me it solved random disconnection of firewire devices. I'm using an IBM P4 and ADS pyro card which is considered one of the best firewire cards -- yet I had to do this to resolve all this stuff. I do all my work with my internal drives and use my portable firewire drives just to transfer files or for backup.

At one point I was networking through two PCs using firewire -- incredible amount of problems in devices disconecting and the order I had to start the PC's even for them to communicate. I still do it for huge file transfers, but only use one firewire cable from one PC to another -- and no other firewire peripherals going through either machines.

The drag is daisy chaining with firewire and using all these devices is such a big value of going firewire. In theory it's all great, but in the real world, lots of probs. Don't know who the culptrit is, I suspect Windows.

Strangely enough I've been playing with USB2 and it seems more stable, but haven't thoroughly tested it yet.

MB

Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 6/20/2004, 2:49 PM

" can capture, but not record back to Canon Camcorders. I can't preview without blue screen popping up. This is just on my laptop."

I had the same problem on my PC, drove me mad...
If it s a AMD processor then look for the "POWER NOW" and set to "HIGH PERFORMANCE" the problem hopefully will go away.

Can be found in Display Properties, Screen Saver, POWER,

Erk wrote on 6/20/2004, 6:45 PM

zcheema,

I'm getting blue screen problems all of a sudden trying to print to tape, and I've got an AMD XP 2000+ CPU. I'm not seeing the "Power Now" or "HIgh performance" options within the Display Poperties dialogue. Just options about power saving, sleep, etc.

Using WinXP Home.

G

Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 6/21/2004, 2:38 AM

In the power options I have about 6 tabs.....
"Power Schemes", Alarms", "Power meter", Advanced", "Hibernate", "Power Now"

The item is described as "AMD PowerNow! technology adjusts CPU performance to meet the running needs of the applications".

This was the problem when printing as the CPU was going up and down like a yo yo, perhaps you have something similar this is used to save battery power. Do a search on "AMD PowerNow! Dashboard"

http://www.myplc.com/sony/amd_powernow_dashboard.htm

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1204_964%5E4396,00.html

InterceptPoint wrote on 6/21/2004, 8:16 AM

I was the poster of the "Strange Firewire Problem" referred to in the original posting in this thread. The good news is that the fix described in that posting worked for me for a long time. The bad news is that my Firewire connection to my Sony TRV 900 has now failed almost but not quite completely. It will occasionally be recognized by my XP Pro system.

Here may be a clue to the problem: I have an ADVC-100 that is recognized 100% of the time by my system. It never fails. I can force a failure however by connecting the TRV 900 to the system, turning off the ADVC-100 and then turning it back on. The ADVC-100 will NOT be recognized by XP until I turn off the TRV 900. It is then recognized instantly. So I know that I have a connection to the TRV 900 and it is affecting the XP firewire bus.

My only luck in connecting the TRV 900 has been to disconnect the ADVC-100 (the only other Firewire device I am using) and connect the TRV 900. That works very rarely but it is the only way that I can now make the connection. .

I am about ready to go buy a deck just to get rid of this problem. Recommendations for an expensive deck would be appreciated. The JVC stuff looks like the best bet to me based on very limited research.

Also: there is an excellent thread on this subject on the Dell forum that is current and continuing. The forum members there are working hard to solve this problem. I hope they succeed.

Here is the link

rs170a wrote on 6/21/2004, 12:50 PM

"Recommendations for an expensive deck would be appreciated."

I hope you did mean expensive :-)
At the college I work at, we have a pair of JVC BR-DV3000U decks and we've been quite happy with them.
B&H lists them for $1500.00
More info at http://tinyurl.com/37asn

Mike

InterceptPoint wrote on 6/21/2004, 1:00 PM

You got me.

My fingers may have said expensive but I'm afraid my pocketbook says inexpensive. Thanks for the input. $1500 is a bit outside my range but I could probably push it up to $800 or so if there is anything decent in that price range.

Caruso wrote on 6/21/2004, 2:52 PM

FWIW, I do all my capturing, editing, rendering, burning from my firewire drives. I have six of them daisy chained - as long as I get XP to recognize them at all, I have experienced no problems. Problems I have experienced is XjP dropping its recognition of one of these drives during critical transfer periods - in one case, the drive became corrupted to such an extent that no amount of persuasion would allow XP to recognize that drive - kept getting a "this drive needs to be formatted" message.

I'm no expert, but, fortunately, I knew enough to discount that message. Downloaded a program (GetDataBackNow) from the 'net, and was able to recover all critical files, then, transfer them to another drive before reformatting.

Since downloading/installing this patch, I've had no problems - keeping my finners crossed, but not holding my breath.

Caruso

Caruso wrote on 6/21/2004, 2:54 PM

OT - but, IE seems to simply disappear whenever I click to "Post Message". What the heck is that all about???

Caruso

Randy Brown wrote on 6/21/2004, 4:30 PM

>>"The JVC stuff looks like the best bet to me based on very limited research"<<

I would recommend the JVC SR-VS30U UNLESS you use the Canon XL1s (there is an issue that JVC has yet to resolve).
Randy