Something strange happened to BIAB on my Vista laptop. I have been using MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) for years with no problem. A few weeks ago, BIAB has become very 'sluggish'. If I click on a part marker or next song icon, it takes considerably longer than it used to. And rebuilding the song list takes much longer.
I went to a restore point a few weeks back and all worked fine. However, when MSE updated the problem returned. When removing MSE, BIAB works fine. I tried another antivirus and the problem returned. Disabling the antivirus problem does not cure the problem. It seems like all is fine if no antivirus is present.
BIAB factory reset did not help. I ran a full virus and malware scan and found nothing.
NOTE: Also make sure that the C drive still has enough free space to be able to work with temp files etc.
If the defrag program reports less than 15% freespsce, you are going to have to remove some things, either by copying to another drive or perhaps simply deleting them, BEFORE running defrag program of any kind.
AV doesn't bother any of the machines I have it on....
Watch those automatic backups and especially the restore points program. My machine had filled the HD with restore info. I reset the restore to use a smaller and limited size area and waa laa, I recovered more than 50% of the HD capacity.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
Thx for replies. Disk frag is not a problem - I use Defraggler on a regular basis. Plenty of free space.
It has to be something with AV software. Problem still occurs with AV disabled. It only works once AV software(s) are removed. My 10 y/o XP machine runs BIAB and the same AV software - BIAB runs just fine there.
I'm thinking a re-install of BIAB but don't look forward to hours of install for RTs. Any hints here?
Can you set your A/V software or MSE to completely ignore the C:\bb\ folder? (presuming this is where Band In A Box is installed)
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Also, have a look at Task Manager to see what memory different processes are using. I recently had an issue with an application of ours running slowly on a client's system, and found a problem to be a separate application had gone runaway, hogging most of the available RAM:
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
I run Vista and all it well. From what I read, it sounds like all is good when MSE is removed. I've never used that on my machine. I've been running Avast! (free) for years and all is good. It might be worth trying (a) removing MSE and then (b) installing something like Avast! This will allow you to compare the two and see if maybe it's an MSE-associated problem. That would be much quicker than re-installing BIAB.
Another thing you could try is to start up Task Manager. Then start BIAB performing a task and watch to see what other programs are also active when BIAB is working. This might help narrow things down a little.
Regards, Noel
edit: I see Videotrack beat me regarding Task Manager!
Monitors data on running processes in real time, does not capture historical data, except for CPU, Disk, Page File and Network activity graphs. The data in the graphs cannot be saved.
Process Explorer can be used to view detailed information on the currently running process on a system; including which images or executable code is loaded in memory for a process and the handles to the registry, file system and other types of handles. You can also change the priority; suspend and kill processes and even certain threads of a process.
process Monitor (Process Monitor.exe)
Monitors File, Registry, network and process activity by process. Collects data when running and can be filtered to track down process issues. Process Monitor replaces FileMon and RegMon, except for back level operating systems.
Process Monitor runs on Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2, Vista, 2003, 2008 and Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit.
Lenovo YOGA 900 Window s 10 Home 64bit M4 pro Mac mini 1tb HD 24GB mem casio wk7500 presonus audiobox i2 usb interface casio wk-7500 biab & realband 2025 everything pk both with Current builds
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