HW freeze when clossing

[biogon]

I´m trying out several demo Organ sets with the advanced version because of the limitations that my basic version 4.3 with USB key has. It has happened to me several times that when doing operations like closing HW or unload the Organ set, the save configuration or other window appears and HW hangs (does not respond more). The PC still works well without CPU and memory usage, but it is not possible to close the HW process. The PC can not be turned off normally either, the PC switch must be pressed.
I suspect that with only 8GB of RAM I leave the PC with no memory available when loading large Organs like Rotterdam that leave only 0.1GB or less free.
I have already installed the Hauptwerk program three times. I do not connect the USB key for testing advanced.
I use PC,W7 64b in SSD, 8GB RAM, AMD FX8320E
Someone had this problem or knows how to fix it?

[josq]

In my experience, when I have loaded organs that consume nearly all of my RAM capacity, HW needs quite a bit of time to close. For stability, it seems to be recommended to leave 10-25% of RAM unused (the more the better).

[mdyde]

Hello biogon,

To confirm and add to josq's reply, it is indeed very important that you don't fill the PC's RAM more than about 70-80% full, otherwise the PC is likely to perform extremely poorly, even to the point of appearing to have hung completely ('paging' the data that have been loaded in RAM out to disk, resulting in 'thrashing' when trying to access the data again, in turn needing to page other data out, and so on). The 'free' memory figure that Hauptwerk reports is queried from Windows itself, and shouldn't be considered to be reliable when the figure is less than about 20-25% of the physical (installed) RAM, since Windows pages data out of RAM to try to keep the computer from crashing completely, and thus will always report a small amount as 'free'.

The audio will also break up severely if you overfill the RAM and paging occurs. Hauptwerk should report warnings to that effect in its log in that situation ('Help | View activity log').

With 8 GB of physical RAM, I would strongly recommend never letting Hauptwerk's 'free' RAM meter go below about 1.5 GB. If it falls to that figure when loading then cancel the load and use 'Organ | Load organ, adjusting rank audio/memory options/routing' to disable some ranks (or to change some other rank options to save memory), then try again.

If you keep at least 1.5 GB on that 'free' RAM meter, does that eliminate the problem?

[1961TC4ME]

This post kind of caught my eye and this situation must be somewhat of on a PC 'case by case' basis. I've been able to successfully load larger organs of the 6 channel variety with the meter reporting as low as 0.2 GB of memory left without warning and without issue. That's what I'd call getting in by the skin of your teeth! Yes, I will agree it seems larger sets that consume the majority of available memory do unload rather slowly, I don't know if this is due to a combination of the size of the instrument and the memory used, or what. When I had 24 GB of available memory I had one set I had to tinker with (adjust bit rate) to fit into 24 GB, and again just barely. The first time I went to unload it, things did just kind of sit there like it had hung up and I got the 'Hauptwerk is not responding' message, but it did eventually unload, I probably waited about 5 to 10 seconds for things to happen. I now have 32 GB of memory, so the set in question now leaves about 3.5 GB of memory left with the same bit rate configuration. It still unloads quite a bit slower than the other sets I have, and I do still get the occasional 'Hauptwerk is not responding' message when I go to unload it, still takes about an additional 5 or so seconds for things to happen, but it does unload every time, I've just gotten accustomed to being patient and waiting as I now know what's going on. Kind of interesting, but in my case sets that take up say 5 GB less memory in my set up do unload immediately, no wait, no hesitation.

Marc

[biogon]

After expanding the memory to 32 GB and avoiding leaving less than 10% of free RAM, I have not had any more problems with the program. Thanks to everyone for the tips.

[mdyde]

Thanks for the update, and glad to hear it all appears to be working properly now.