Hi Matt & Co.

This is kind of an addendum to a problem I had recently with EI where I suddenly weren’t allowed to save my project and then had a subsequent crash in EI.

I’ve lived with the problem for quite some time now and don’t know where to turn with this, so I thought that maybe some of the bright minds here could shed some light on this issue.

I recently bought an 8-Core 3Ghz MacPro.  Awesome machine except for the problem which occurs from time to time.  I’m beginning to think this is a system-wide issue since I have experienced the problem now in Photoshop CS2 as well as EI and Also in After Effects 7.0.  But these are a little more forgiving than EI.  EI just crashes the other apps let me save a copy or save a little later.  Maybe it’s a Rosetta Stone thing who knows?

How the problem plays out:
EI:
1.  From time to time I suddenly can’t save my project file.  When this occurs EI eventually crashes and even though I can still work in it as long as it doesn’t involve writing stuff to the disk, there’s no point in it since I can’t save what I do.
2.  Renderama won’t render more than one job in the render queue.  Once the second job starts both local and networked cameras stops because of a file access error.  If you restart the Rama app and make a new job it works fine again until it hits number two again.

Photoshop:
Suddenly an open document won’t save.  If you wait a minute it’ll suddenly save again.

AE:
A render fails from time to time, probably also because of some disk access problem.

Now all this is most likely due to some sort of systemwide disk access/permissions error.  I have tried to reinstall the system disk to no avail, and obviously I’ve run disk utility and it makes to difference.

Now , Apple’s legendary ability to deny any fault on their part considered, I’m really open for suggestions to sovle the problem or would be happy to hear if other people are experiencing the same issues.  It could be a harware issue, but my gut tells me that it’s software related.

Thanks
Jesper

Hi Jesper,
Unfortunately I don’t have an Intel Mac yet, but it sounds a lot like permissions problems as you said, or perhaps some bad RAM (3rd party?) or other hardware problem.

See if your boot disk has a “hardware test” volume. Booting off of this will allow you to run a battery of hardware diagnostics. If one of them fails, you’ll need to send the machine in for repairs.

As one last software tool, though, Diskwarrior has been an indespensible tool for correcting disk directory damage.
Historically I have been able to solve 99% of all recurrent problems with some combination of permissions repair and Disk Warrior. The other 1% may require OS re-install, or be hardware failure.

Good luck!

Dave

Can you tell me what error messages you receive in each of these programs when you try to save and cannot?
I think EIAS is crashing because it gets left in unstable state when it is unable to complete it’s save operation.

What version of EIAS are you running?

Thanks both, for your swift reply.
Yes, I’ll get you the error messages next time they occur.  Matt, we have mailed back and forth some times before on this problem, I’m using the latest build of EI: 6.2.2

Jesper

I don’t recall you mentioning you were having the same problems with other programs. That’s why I didn’t clue-in right away
that this was a problem you had e-mailed me about.

If multiple applications are reporting that they are unable to save from time to time, then there is definitely something wrong.
My guess is that either due to a problem with the disk itself or the disk controller, the drive is actually going offline from time
to time. So when these applications attempt to save, the OS is telling them that the disk isn’t available.

Is it possible you have a setting in place for energy saving that is causing the disk to spin down even when the computer is running and in use?

I did think about this because that was one of the few things within my control.  But the only place I know of is the Sys prefs. in Energy Savings where you can ask the Disk to spin down whenever possible and this was the first thing I checked when this prob started.

However, when I try to rerun the Renderama app, and start up job number two in the queue is still fails even after quitting Rama and Camera and rebooting.  Like the job has gone bad.  If I then delete the job and make a new one exactly the same from EI, it just runs.

Wouldn’t this lean towards some kind of permissions issue?

The second job which always fails I send to Rama less than a minute after the first one it completes. So again I don’t think the disk can spin down between these two actions, just in case you think it’s an issue with the second job being written to a disk which has shut down.  And it is very consistent.  Always the second job and forward in the queue.

I just looked in my Energy Saving settings and the “put disk(s) to sleep when possible” was deselected.  However my system was set to go to sleep after one hour of inactivity.  But what is the likeliness of this being the culprit?  I set it to never go to sleep, because I have become a superstitious guy over the years ;O)

I don’t know if the settings are the problem. It is possible you have a separate hardware issue that is causing the disk to spin down.

Actually I think it might be unrelated to any single disk since it’s happened to a externally mounted Firewire disk as well.  That was Photoshop.  If it is hardware related it might be a bus problem.

Hi Jasper

I had a similar problem with EIAS crashing etc and for months I couldn’t work out what the problem was,
http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6611

In the end it turned out to be bad Ram. For some reason EIAS seems to be far more sensitive to bad ram than other applications. Ie you spot little odd things happening in Photoshop whilst EIAS just completely crashes.

I not saying that this might be your problem but I think it is well worth getting a utility like Memtest 4.2 to check your memory just so that you can rule it out. When I had my problems I wasted months playing around with settings and deleting applications like virus checkers, because I just couldn’t believe it was bad ram, as all the other applications seem to work ok.

I hope this helps

Robert

PS I have just had another read of your posts and I can say that the situation you had with Renderama is exactly what happen with!

RobertB, thanks for your comments here, and can you add your comments to your previous thread? Folks would benifit from knowing how you resolved it when they stumble upon it there.

Jesper, I’ve had a similar problem, and have not been able to find bad ram in tests yet.  For me I’ve found that hiding applications, specifically EI or slaves , will cause them to no longer become available… or to appear and be unresponsive. 

Photoshop will also freeze up or not save if this happens to EI.  Force quitting the applications will not always close them in this state, and the dreaded forced restart is required.  Rebuilding permissions, Diskwarrior, Techtool, et al, doesn’t seem to have much effect in staving it off.

It doesn’t happen frequently, and it always happens when you can least afford the time loss.

take care,
Yon

Hi Yon

Indeed, I was going to put up my conclusions to my previous thread but unfortunately I didn’t find the solution until after the old forum was shut down and how is un-editable.

Robert

Robert,
It figures.  Your comments on that thread seemed too detailed to skip the end.
Hope the request didn’t sound like a dig.

Take care,
Yon