Quote:

...Hi Mac - the drive is a new one - in a previous thread I mentioned that I had lost the old one and was having problems re-installing BiaB (which you all sorted for me) - so its not that.
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Windows XP Pro 32 bit, AMD Sempron 3200+ @1.81 Ghz,500g HD
2 GB Ram,
Biab2013 (and Proud!)
Cakewalk Guitar Pro2 (oldie but Goodie - now you know why I'm stuck with XP)



It very easily could be in need of defrag on the C drive after downloading and then installing all the new large files.

Your machine specs are very close to the specs of one of the machines I used for the beta testing his year.

Have used that machine both for testing and getting work done for quite a few years and at times have gotten the very same problem - skipping or even missing audio due to bad loading of Realtracks.

The disk could be new, as yours is, or it could be just a problem with the download of those large files, which are first always stored once in a Temp directory, then when saved are moved to a permanent directory, then when installed are decompressed to an even larger filesize first and then placed in yet another directory. That can cause fragmentation of ONLY the newly installed Realtracks and other program files.

Another issue -- I don't take Windows' Defrag report as having anything at all to do with large audio files like the Realtracks. Their algo was written with the average computer user's demands in mind, which typically consists of Web Surfing, Word Processing and other tasks where the need to stream large audio files from disk to ram and maybe back again just aren't as intensive.

So it therefore is a very good idea to run a defrag on the C disk after installing BiaB and finding the kind of realtrack dropouts that you report. Again, I've been through that enough to know that the defrag has, to date, solved the problem here the overwhelming majority of he time.

One trick about DEFRAG -- Good idea to wait until evening and start the defrag process before going to bed, it can sometimes take a long time to defrag today's much larger drive sizes.

Another tip: While the Defrag routine included in Windows XP can indeed accomplish the job, webearching for a program called, "Defraggler" and downloading and installing same and using it to do your disk defrags is advised with that XP machine. Been using it for some time measurable in years now, love it. A bit faster and a lot more comprehensive. I keep mine set to advise me of program updates available when Defraggler starts and almost always get any new updates before starting a defrag, the developers are topnotch and the defraggler program just keeps on improving and improving. Maybe from this alone you can tell how important it is to defrag when using realtracks on our older machines, regardless of hd size, age or the likes.

HTH,


--Mac

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