Pro tools lags all of a sudden on a DAW??

[JonnyMenace]

Hey all! First post here, so please be gentle!

I recently upgraded my DAW with a new Acer laptop, since my old Toshiba would not run Pro Tools 8. It is a Top-Of-The-Line acer, running XP SP3. The hard drive is plenty fast and I have 3GB RAM and a 2.2 GHZ Core 2 Duo processor. My Pro Tools M-Powered 8 used to run just fine, but recently, I'm starting to get a LOT of lag! Mixing and playback is fine, but whenever i arm a track and hit RECORD, or if I access the menus and change any setting, Pro Tools will NOT RESPOND for a good 25-30 seconds!

I'm a student at Cuyahoga Community College, in the Recording Arts program. Our "Studio Doctor" took a look and could not tell what the problem was. He says all my specs are WAY beyond what Pro Tools needs to run right. I minimized all the settings in Pro Tools, set only 20 minutes allocated space, and tweaked about every other setting that would eat processor power. There is NO pre-roll set. I even tried bumping back down to Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4. Nothing worked!

Now, I could understand if it ALWAYS did this, but it worked perfectly for 2 months, then all of a sudden started doing this! I rly didnt install any labor-intensive programs, so I'm wondering what could be the problem? I'm thinking about imaging my laptop, then stripping it of everything but XP and Pro Tools, but can anyone think of what else could be done? Has anyone else had this problem?

PLEASE HELP! This is SUPPOSED to be the heart of my recording business!

Thanks in advance for your help, and I'm looking forward to a lot of great discussion here on GearSlutz!

_JM

[shanabit]

Ill assume youve defragged your system drive and have done all the Windows Xp tweaks for running Protools. ?? Sounds like your HD is fragmented

Ill also assume that your NOT running your Session on the main drive and have a drive just for the session which is NOT USB???

Check this:

General Troubleshooting - Pro Tools LE on Windows (XP & Vista) - Digi User Conference

[JonnyMenace]

Originally Posted by shanabit

Ill assume youve defragged your system drive and have done all the Windows Xp tweaks for running Protools. ?? Sounds like your HD is fragmented

Ill also assume that your NOT running your Session on the main drive and have a drive just for the session which is NOT USB???

Yes and yes. Spent 2 hours on Digi's site looking for the issue, no luck.

[Stiff]

Originally Posted by JonnyMenace

He says all my specs are WAY beyond what Pro Tools needs to run right.

I'll be the dick and say there's no specs to go beyond at all. Pro Tools is VERY specific regarding your hardware. So even if you think your processor is ten times as fast as something else it might not run as well anyway because it's the wrong brand.

With that said...

Gearslutz is cool and all, and filled with tons of info, but for these types of thing you should post at the DUC. Post your full hardware specs and see if they can help you there.

Still, there might be someone around here that might be able to help you, but for a Windows machine you need to post your full specs... In case there's something not supported.