Protools LE experience needed...

A friend of mine asked me to help him install protools on a windows based machine running Win98SE. It installed and runs fine on his Mac machine, but the windows install says it is missing some .dll files when I try and start the software. Will the software install and run without the proprietary sound card being installed? He wanted to try and use it with an ADAT pci card.

[quote author="BYacey"]Will the software install and run without the proprietary sound card being installed?[/quote]

Of course not! What makes you think after all these years Digi would do something - anything - that made sense??? :wink:

Do try to RTFM, search the Digidesign Knowledgebase, and visit the DUC. Every problem you can possibly encounter using PT, is covered in one of those three.

Peace,
Al.

The only Digi software that I know of to ever run without any hardware has been Pro Tools Free.

Aren't there some M-Audio interface cards that are now able to be used with PT? I seem to recall that since the M-Audio/digidesign "thing" a while back, PT supports their hardware now, and that this is a lower-budget "way in" to a PT environment if you want more inputs/outputs than the M-Box.

:?:

Mark

Yep.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProToolsMPowered-main.html

My last assistant left to work in LA, and now works at at M-audio... I should look him up...

Keith

[quote author="BYacey"] says it is missing some .dll files [/quote]

ohhhh. i remeber those. one of the reasons i dont use pcs anymore for work.
sometimes installs are dependant on other hardware. ie you might have to install soundcard first, then PT. just a guess.

what verison of LE is he trying to run on 98se?

First off, this is NOT the right place to be asking a Pro Tools question.

Secondly, you most definately need to have the Digidesign hardware installed and powered on before attempting to run the software.

I believe the "missing .dll" dialog suggests that some files the PT installation expected to see there already cannot be found. Why? I imagine it's because 1) hardware not installed yet, 2) A certain component of Windows containing these dlls (quicktime?) is messed up or not present, or 3) Windows 98se is too old for the version you may be trying to install.

Anyway, this shit happens a lot. Expect any number of problems in the near future.

The version I have is meant for 98SE, PT LE ver. 5.0.1 . I don't want to install the hardware because he still wants to use the Mac that already has the hardware in it. The ADAT PCI card should work fine as far as importing and exporting the tracks (If Protools will work happily with this card.)

nope.. you need a digi box connected..

no way around it... believe me theres some serious coders out there who have tried work arounds... if they cant get it going its just not going to happen...

the PT's for free used to run on older macs with O.S. 8 or 9 I believe...

this was the only one that could run without hardware... even then it was pretty limited..

have your friend caugh up the cash for an Mbox then all your problems will be solved


in reality your paying for the software... the mbox is basically a freebie..

With digi your soundcard is your giant dongle for PT

Im pretty sure PT Free runs on Win98 too.

Digi axed PT Free for Win2000 and XP.

get it here:

http://www.digidesign.com/products/...mplate=overview&CFID=2463604&CFTOKEN=15858924

features and limitaitions:

http://www.digidesign.com/products/...mplate=overview&CFID=2463604&CFTOKEN=15858924

1. Must have hardware installed.
2. Win98 = awful OS for ProTools, unless you like crashing and rebooting.


I suggest a clean install of XP with at least 1GB of RAM and at least 1.5GHz proc. (here's the good stuff) Install the Digidesign hardware after the clean and stableized OS has been installed. (I mean get all your other hardware set up B4 installing the DD audio card). Ok, so you've dropped the new card in, XP finds the hardware, and you load the unsigned (but that's OK) driver you downloaded from DD. B4 you get all excited, you may have to start back pedaling. Click start, programs, accessories, system tools, and system information. Expand hardware resources and view IRQs. If the DigiDesign hardware is sharing an IRQ, you may have some stability issues, namely digital hiccups. Ifin the IRQ that windoze put your hardware on is shared with another piece of hardware, you have 3 options. 1, ifin it's something like a NIC, you can simply disable that device while using ProTools. 2, you can try a different PCI slot. Typically, the top slot shares IRQ with the AGP slot, and the bottom 2 share with each other and often onboard hardware. 3, Do yet another clean install (sigh!) with a modified hardware abstraction layer (HAL) changing from ACPI to Standard PC. This will allow you to assign IRQ's from BIOS vs letting Windoze do it. The trade off is you lose some automatic power features such as wake on lan, and power down on exit. Ifin anybody is interested in this HAL thang, I'll dig up the step by step I wrote about a year ago. BTW, the IRQ issue can hold true for any demanding hardware. Gamers will ofter modify their HAL to enhance video speed.

I just copied this from another forum. It referrs to the Terratec EWS88MT but I've seen this IRQ issue with DigiDesign & M Audio as well.

I?ve had a couple of people ask me about setting up a Terratec EWS88MT under the Windows XP operating system. I figured I would go ahead and share what I know here under a thread entitled by the hardware?s name.

Disclaimer:
The method I?m fixing to describe is a modification to the standard installation of Windows XP and or 2000. I have done this successfully under both operating systems. For this to work properly, you are going to have to do a clean OS install. Terratec will not share this information because of liability associated with modifying the OS, but I did get an eMail wink form a techie over there. Back up all your data, breathe deep, and here we go.

Step 1
In bios, enable IRQs to PCI slots. IRQ sharing is the cause of problems with this piece of hardware. It absolutely positively has to have its own IRQ or it isn?t going to work correctly.

Step 2
Boot from your windows CD & blow away your old operating system. Now start the new OS install. During the initial stages of XP setup, there is a prompt to press F5 if you need to install SCSI or Raid drivers. At this point, you press F7. This will be followed by a prompt that allows you to change the hardware abstraction layer from ACPI to that of a standard PC. Now the change you made in BIOS will actually work. There is a cost, you lose all ACPI features. Typically this means you can?t wake on LAN and when you shut down, you?ll get the ?It is now safe to turn off your computer? screen vs. the machine shutting itself off. Oh boo hoo, at least your $400.00 sound card will now work properly.
Go ahead and finish your OS install.

I have read where it is not necessary to do a clean install to change the HAL from ACPI to standard. Supposedly you can do it while in safe mode. I have also read this will crash your machine in a big way, so big that you won?t be able to restart it. I am a big believer in the clean install. Yes it?s a pain to reload all your applications etc but in the long run you get a better deal.

Step 3
We?ll assume at this point your new OS is installed and you have all your drivers, including the unsigned Terratec driver installed too. You have also been down the Windows Update path and your system is configured and current. From here you need to look at the system information tool and verify that the EWS88MT is not sharing an IRQ with any other devices. You might at this point have to move the PCI card around to a couple of different slots, until you find one that has its own IRQ.

Step 4
Install your recording software. Before you get started using the software, you should configure some global parameters. You will have much better results if you application resides on one hard drive and your data on another. I am not talking about virtual partitions on 1 physical drive, but 2 separate hard drives. Even better results will be achieved by having 3 hard drives. C drive is for operating system only. D drive is for applications only. E drive is for data only. When recording on all 8 channels, there is an extreme amount or reading and writing going on. That is why it is a good idea to spread the different parts of the operation across more resources. On my machine, C is the OS, D is for apps, E is a CD reader, F is a DVD burner, and G & H are for data. C-F are on the IDE chain and G & H are SATA drives. A lot of folks say that your OS and Apps should be on the Raid drives and data on the IDEs. I can?t argue that because I have tried that yet. My Raid drives came kinda after the fact.

Depending on the amount of RAM and the speed of your processor, you will need to set the buffers for the application. The more horse power you have, the less buffering required. The more buffering you have to do, the slower the application will respond. It?s a balancing act of stability. You will need to spend some time here as it is only figured out by trial and error. If you plan to do a lot of automation and want a clean graphical representation, you?ll need to have a good video card with a lot of memory as to not tax the CPU, thus leaving more horse power for your sound app.

So that?s pretty much what I know about making a Terratec EWS88MT work properly under the Windows XP operating system. I have set up other hard drive recording systems using different hardware such as DigiDesign and Delta. Rather than experiment, I set them up the same way described above and those machines are smooth sailors. I don?t know if all these steps are necessary for the others, but if you are going to spend that kind of money on hardware that is this resource hungry, I consider it prudent to have it on its own interrupt just to ensure stability.

I suggest a clean install of XP with at least 1GB of RAM and at least 1.5GHz proc. (here's the good stuff) Install the Digidesign hardware after the clean and stableized OS has been installed. (I mean get all your other hardware set up B4 installing the DD audio card). Ok, so you've dropped the new card in, XP finds the hardware, and you load the unsigned (but that's OK) driver you downloaded from DD. B4 you get all excited, you may have to start back pedaling. Click start, programs, accessories, system tools, and system information. Expand hardware resources and view IRQs. If the DigiDesign hardware is sharing an IRQ, you may have some stability issues, namely digital hiccups. Ifin the IRQ that windoze put your hardware on is shared with another piece of hardware, you have 3 options. 1, ifin it's something like a NIC, you can simply disable that device while using ProTools. 2, you can try a different PCI slot. Typically, the top slot shares IRQ with the AGP slot, and the bottom 2 share with each other and often onboard hardware. 3, Do yet another clean install (sigh!) with a modified hardware abstraction layer (HAL) changing from ACPI to Standard PC. This will allow you to assign IRQ's from BIOS vs letting Windoze do it. The trade off is you lose some automatic power features such as wake on lan, and power down on exit. Ifin anybody is interested in this HAL thang, I'll dig up the step by step I wrote about a year ago. BTW, the IRQ issue can hold true for any demanding hardware. Gamers will ofter modify their HAL to enhance video speed.

Click to expand...

this is good info - but doesn't help a man who wants to run PT LE on 2 machines with one digi soundcard and another non-digi soundcard. PT Free (Win 98 ONLY) or a second PT LE interface is the only way.

Upgrading to XP and buying PT M-Powered ($300) and getting a compatible M-Audio interface is the cheapest way to get a full second copy of PT running. Something like an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 ($99) is compatible. This is combo is $50 cheaper than an Mbox and more reliable.