[Solved] GP Crashing with Win10 and Focusrite

I’m running GP 3.5 in trial mode and having problems with my Focusrite 18i20 Gen 2.

When I try to change the sample rate or buffer size of the Focusrite ASIO driver through GP the program hangs, the window goes white, and I get the “The application is not responding” from Windows.

It does not do this if I choose something other than ASIO with the Focusrite, and and doesn’t do it if I choose a different ASIO interface (e.g., Roland. I haven’t tried it with my MOTU or RME interfaces as those are on different machines.)

An odd thing is that it actually does successfully change the Focusrite to the sample rate and buffer size I select. It’s just that GP never recovers. With other interfaces, after I hit the “Apply” button a window briefly pops up showing a progress bar, but with the Focusrite I don’t get that. It hangs before that window pops up. But it actually does change the settings (which I can see through the Focusrite tray icon.)

After the GP hangs and I kill the window, when I open GP up again it uses the new settings that I chose. So I can actually use GP just fine. The issue is just that I have to kill the window and restart the application for the changes to take effect.

I tried turning off all antivirus and other system security stuff and it didn’t help. Also reinstalled the drivers.

It is unusual that it crashes only with that interface/driver.

Have you tried to creat a new (empty) gig or hold down the shift key on startup and then try to change settings.

Also … simply selecting “pause” or “disable” in your security software does not unload it from your kernel and it is still running.

Also make sure everything is updated.

Yes, it still happens when starting up with Shift held, and happens with a new or empty gig. And everything (windows, drivers) is updated. And it’s a very clean audio-only PC.

I’ll try killing the antivirus stuff at the service level. I only considered it because another poster said he was having a similar problem with a different Focusrite interface, and that shutting off his Kaspersky seemed to address it. [This thread: [Solved] GP3 crash with sample rate changes] (I’m only running the standard stuff Microsoft puts in Windows.)

When the Not responding dialog appears: How long are you waiting until you kill GP?

The not responding responding dialog does not mean, the app is dead but rather it being unresponsive (in that case probably waiting for the audio driver thread to complete something).

I let it sit there for over an hour once. A couple other times I gave it more than 15 minutes before giving up.

It also "blue screen"ed me once, and it actually crashed once and I submitted the crash log through the GP app process.

Okay - at that point, it’s reasonable to assume that nothing is going to happen anymore.
I sometimes have to wait a minute but never longer than that.

My issue has been resolved, but I’m not sure exactly what did it.

When I got home from work I loaded GP up again and tested it and it hung again. I went in and disabled system sounds. I didn’t have them directed toward the Focusrite anyway, but figured I might as well disable them. I loaded up GP again, changed the sample buffer, and got a blue screen reboot.

Then I decided I’d try the anti-virus route. Instead of completely killing all the standard windows firewall and antivirus stuff, I gave Gig Performer exception privileges. There are about 22 different windows protection rules you can give exceptions to, so I checked them all.

That appeared to fix the problem.

Thinking it would be helpful for debugging purposes to isolate exactly which one was causing the problem, I went back and removed the exceptions one at a time. After removing all of the exceptions (theoretically leaving it exactly where it started) it still works fine.

So the good news is it’s working fine now. The bad news is I have no idea why, which makes me wonder if the problem will re-appear later. (Only thing that remains different is I didn’t re-enable system sounds. I can’t imagine that being the problem, though.)

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Gotta say I admire (and appreciate) your persistence. It really does seem to be the case that anti-virus programs on Windows screw up Gig Performer somehow, as you noted, it has been reported a few times. I’m glad you took the the time to report back after these efforts, we do want our users and potential users to understand that Gig Performer crashes on Windows are generally due to AV problems rather than GP.