Entire computer keeps crashing when trying to open Reason

[citrus]

So I made an account here not to long ago to see if anyone can help me with my problem.

I've made a decent amount of music with Reason in the past and had no problems being able to open the program. It had been a little while since I used the program I would say 2-months at most.

But now a day or two ago as of this post I have not been able to open the program but what's even worse is that now every time I try opening Reason my entire computer crashes and I would have to restart it manually by pressing the power button for a few seconds. Originally, I thought it would happen one time but whenever I open reason my computer would keep crashing.

This computer isn't too old since it was manufactured in 2013 and I have taken fairly good care of it. I have never gotten a virus that was a huge threat and I thought a virus is maybe what's cause the crashing but I've scanned my computer multiple times, with nothing popping up.

I had never has this problem in the past, even when I was still using Reason on windows 7 a few years ago, It had never crashed the entire computer. I now use windows 8 for all my music producing needs. FL studio will open and work but I don't use it anymore and Finale would work as well. For some strange reason the rack extension as well as the window that stores the license would open and not crash but not the program itself would.

I'm glad I backed up all the files in my cloud drive and other places but without the program how the heck am I gonna produce music? I absolutely love Reason ever since I learned how to use it in college. FL studio is pretty good but I have no motivation to go back using it.

Has anybody ever had the same problem as me? I've been trying to find solutions to fixing this.

[jappe]

it must be a driver that crashes your system. i suspect for the audio interface or midi controller. disconnect those, restart computer,and start Reason again.

[jappe]

...and also open the Windows event log and check for errors.

[jappe]

If you have anything connected to an Usb 3 port,you ma want to connect it to USB 2 instead. usb 3 have a blue alignment slot,look into the port and you will find out.

[Theo.M]

what actual reason version?

[citrus]

I use Reason 7.

Believe it or not I don't actually have a audio interface or a MIDI controller. Not yet at least. Most of my equipment is minimum at the moment. All I have is a keyboard and a mouse, as well as standard speakers that come with a computer.

I've checked the windows event log and while there were a couple of errors there are very few in between and most of them aren't serious.

I do have something plugged in one Usb 3 port and that's my wireless-N Dual Band which helps get a signal better. But the thing is it's been there for a very long time before Reason started crashing on me. I don't know why it would crash on me now of a sudden

I'm not sure if I have any USB 2 ports anywhere on my computer I will have to check later on.

[Theo.M]

are you getting a BSOD(blue screen) when it crashes? That will actually give the relevant driver crashing. Or is it a hard freeze?

....as the only thing that makes sense here is a driver conflict somewhere. The reason I asked which reason version is because 6 onwards use codemeter, and did you try re installing the latest codemeter driver? That might fix it!

Also i hate to say it but it could be a hardware fault somewhere.. Are you using asio 4 all for your on board sound? I wonder what happens if you unsinstall that - in case the on board sound chip has a fault and the crash happens when asio4all tries to access it.

Just thinking of whatever i can here.

Oh, did you go to device manager to see if there are any yellow exclamation marks next to any of your hardware?

[citrus]

I highly appreciate all of you doing your best trying to help me. I tried searching every for information to see if anyone else had the same problem as me but with no luck at all.

I did not know the term but after searching what it is and means. The correct term is that I'm experiencing a hard freeze and not a serious crash like a BSOD. I experience a hard freeze and have to hard reboot every single time now.

Forgive me, but I'm not the most familiar when it comes to fixing things on my computer. Do you know where I can find info on how to re install the latest codemeter driver?

I can't seem to recall or remember but i remember using Asio 4 for FL studio, I can't remember if I used Asio 4 for Reason but I think most likely?

I checked device manager but I have not seen any yellow exclamation marks anywhere on my hardware.

Would video recording my problem help to understand the situation?

[ravisoni]

Not sure if props can help with this, but reaching out to them usually helps. Or so I've heard.

[Theo.M]

I highly appreciate all of you doing your best trying to help me. I tried searching every for information to see if anyone else had the same problem as me but with no luck at all.

I did not know the term but after searching what it is and means. The correct term is that I'm experiencing a hard freeze and not a serious crash like a BSOD. I experience a hard freeze and have to hard reboot every single time now.

Forgive me, but I'm not the most familiar when it comes to fixing things on my computer. Do you know where I can find info on how to re install the latest codemeter driver?

I can't seem to recall or remember but i remember using Asio 4 for FL studio, I can't remember if I used Asio 4 for Reason but I think most likely?

I checked device manager but I have not seen any yellow exclamation marks anywhere on my hardware.

Would video recording my problem help to understand the situation?

Hi... no, a video recording wouldn't help as it's pretty self explanatory what you are actually going through. You launch reason, the machine freezes.

That's actually WORSE however than the blue screen of death because with the BSOD you can actually find out where the driver conflict *is*.

For example, I used to get a BSOD back early 2000's whenever i inserted an image line vst effect into a project that already had waves effects in it. The BSOD showed me the conflict was with TPKD.sys. TPKD.sys was the ilok driver, and waves were the only ilok plugins I had at the time, so it helped me realise that I couldn't use ilok plugins with image line plugins. With ilok just being present on the system and dormant it was ok, it was when the driver was called on by an actual plugin being instantiated that the crash occurred. I reported it to image line, they were aware of it, and updated their plugins not to conflict with ilok.

A hard freeze is going to be a tough one to figure out the cause of. Personally I don't think it's your hard drive if it's only happening with reason. I think that it is either a driver conflict when reason tries to access your on board audio interfaces and freezes, or the on board audio is faulty.

Now I am going to give you a full list here, long post, but hopefully we can get to the root of your issues and fix it.

please take the time to reply with corresponding numbers as this info will help me alot to rule out various things.

1) Do you have any friends that use external audio interfaces. What I mean by this basically is a USB interface (i could say firewire also but have no idea if your motherboard supports firewire and i much prefer usb on windows).
The reason i ask this is because if you can borrow that interface even for an hour, and install the latest driver for it (ANY usb interface will do), and disable your on board sound (will get to that in a minute), and it *works*, we will have an answer.

2) You say you use on board sound - I need to know your motherboard model please. Now, you missed an important question above. When reason USED to work for you, what driver had you chosen for it in the reason 'preferences' ? i.e. was it just the standard windows driver or did you install asio4all for lower latency? (http://www.asio4all.com).

3) You are on windows 7 so please click the start button and type in 'control panel' (without the quotes), and enter it and find 'system'. Then find 'device manager'. I don't have my windows machine in front of me, but you may even be able to bypass control panel and just type in device manager and open it.

You will see a list of all the devices on your machine here. If there are any exclamation marks that means that there is a driver or hardware malfunction.
What i am going to ask you to do next, is navigate to the audio section in the device manager, and you will see your audio interface driver. I am going to ask you to right click and disable the device - if reason now launches, even though it won't produce any sound, again we will instantly know that the entire problem is something regarding the on board audio...

4) The latest codemeter driver is here:
http://www.codemeter.de/us/service/downloads.html
But before we get into that, i need to ask. Do you have reason 7 authorised to an ignition key, your computer itself or do you log in every time? If you only use the log in, you don't need the codemeter driver. Codemeter is the copy protection system that reason uses to store your reason and RE licenses when you want to use reason offline.

5) Have you tried uninstalling reason, downloading the latest version 7 full installer, and re installing? This is also done via control panel and "programs" which opens up a list of all installed stuff, and you can remove it with the proper uninstaller which you can access from there with a simple click. Please check to also see if codemeter is in your programs list and uninstall that too - basically anything related to propellerhead. If you have projects or refills yo have *bought* (in other words not the factory stuff or orkester which is included with reason) in the main reason folder in c/program files/reason - move those out first.
If in your programs list there is the authoriser as well, uninstall that too. Reinstalling reason will put all that stuff back. And if you go to your propellerhead account page and click licenses and manage licenses, and you DO use an ignition key, or computer offline authorisation, it will guide you to the correct codemeter driver there and then anyway.

IF YOU DO USE OFFLINE AUTHORISATION - MOVE THE LICENSE BACK TO YOUR PROPS ACCOUNT BEFORE DOING ANY UNINSTALLING.

Now, if none of this gives us any answers, then we have to go deeper and do hard drive sector tests and memory tests to see if there is any fault with your ram. We will also do a video card test as well.

But i don't want to get into all that complex stuff yet as I feel it really has something to do with the on board audio.

But the only way I can help you is if you take the time to properly answer and do what I suggested above without missing any steps.

Cheers

[jappe]

hi citrus,

do you have the default song template when you start Reason or some template you made?
a simple thing to try would be to create a new Windows account and start Reason from there.
clearing the Reason temp files is worth trying too.
about those errors you do see in Windows event log,do they have a timestamp thats nowhere near the crash?

do you experience any other peculiarities with your computer?

Do you have an internet connect when you start Reason?
If so,try without it, and start Reason in demo mode.
If not,connect before starting reason.
just typing this quickly before I jump into the beautiful Balaton lake so sorry if things I suggest has already been suggested:-)

[jam-s]

A hard freeze might hint at a defect sector on the harddrive/ssd. When the OS tries to read data from a broken sector it will freeze (for up to a few minutes) while doing so. You should really check the s.m.a.r.t. info of all your drives. another source for hard freezes can be faulty RAM , make sure to run memcheck on your entire RAM.

[freeQlow]

Where are the MAC Taters?

Buy a Mac, end of story.
La-La-La-La-Lalla-La-Lahh

[EnochLight]

I now use windows 8 for all my music producing needs..

citrus,

Windows 8 comes with the ability to "refresh" the OS install, so if your issue is a bad driver or funky program causing the instability, you might try doing that to see if that fixes your issue. The other alternative is to completely wipe and reset your OS install (also a new feature in Windows 8), but that wipes all data and installed programs, so make sure you back up your shit first and de-authorize your computer first if you have authorized it in your Propellerhead account. Otherwise, it's likely hardware failure if those options don't fix things for you.

Alternatively, try restoring to an older System Restore checkpoint (like really old, preferably around the last date things worked fine) and see if that fixes things for you.

Good luck!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... h-reset-pc

[citrus]

Everyone, thank you so much for all the solutions as of this post I don't have the time to answer all of you at the moment. But I'll be sure to get back to all of you when I have the chance, which shouldn't be too long. But feel free to offer more solutions as there's never to few.

[gak]

Where are the MAC Taters?

Buy a Mac, end of story.
La-La-La-La-Lalla-La-Lahh

I'm sorry, I know it's not productive, but I had to lolz.

[freeQlow]

Connect the dots, LA LA LA

Buy a MAC bah bah bah

[citrus]

Okay,

@ Theo.M: I have done my best to follow all of your instructions And got to a certain point with all of them.

Solution 1). unfortunately, all the friends I have are not musicians or create music of any kind (Although, I wish I could have when I was taking certain music classes at college) so they don't have an external audio interface. (Though I should get one in the sometime future)

Solution 2). I used a free program to check what my motherboard model was and its a MSI 2AE0 (P0) I do have Asio4all installed on computer when I check. I do recall installing it (was optional I think) when I installed and used FL studio back in the day. Anyways, if I remember correctly I believed I used a standard windows driver. I don't ever recall using asio4all on Reason anyways.

Solution 3.) I understood and did most of what you asked me to do but got a bit confused and chickened out a bit as I didn't want to mess or do something wrong. And I wasn't sure which was the audio section. Screenshot attached to where I'm stuck at. Don't know if its Audio inputs and outputs or sound, video and game controllers.

Solution 4.) I have Reason 7 on my computer itself.

Solution 5). I do use offline authorization since I have the license on the computer. I have not tried uninstalling and then reinstalling reason. But I will give it a try and tell you how it works out

(P.S sorry if it took a little while to reply back)

@ jappe: I can't recall sorry, and the errors? Yeah they have a timestamp and they are nowhere near where the crash took place. Some errors range from 1 month to a couple of years

I do have an internet connection when I start reason. I will try your suggestion to see if that works

@ jam-s: All of that sounds really complicated and new to me. How might I run S.M.A.R.T and remcheck if I may ask?

@ EnochLight: I may try the refresh feature you mentioned. But wiping out my computer sounds a bit extreme. I will try your solutions when I run out.

[Raveshaper]

Go to the Start Menu.
Type "Device Manager" in the search bar.
Select the first listing (Device Manager).
Click "Sound, video and game controllers" to expand it.
Edit: Locate the item "IDT High Definition Audio CODEC".
Right click the item and choose "Disable" from the choices that appear.
Open Reason.

If you opened Reason successfully, the problem is with your onboard audio driver.
If you did not open Reason successfully, then there is another issue.

[OldGoat]

A hard freeze might hint at a defect sector on the harddrive/ssd. When the OS tries to read data from a broken sector it will freeze (for up to a few minutes) while doing so. You should really check the s.m.a.r.t. info of all your drives. another source for hard freezes can be faulty RAM , make sure to run memcheck on your entire RAM.

citrus, you should really check this, an entiere freeze of the OS is mostly caused by a memory- or a harddisk-failure:

To check (and repair) the harddisk:

1) Use your Windows 8 Search to find and open cmd.exe as Administrator(Click on the Start-Menu-Button, then a new screen appears, just type "cmd" (without the quotes), a search-result called "cmd.exe" should appear, right-click this result and choose "Run as Administrator")
2) Enter the following command: chkdsk /F /R /B /X C: (assuming that C: is the drive/partition that must be checked, haven't done that for a while, it should prompt that it will restart and check the disk)
3) Wait for completion, the tool might fix some issues, if it has fixed something, I strongly recommend getting a new harddisk, because such problems will occur again and one day they might not be fixed anymore.

To check the memory:

1) Download and run the following tool: http://hcidesign.com/memtest/ , please RTFM: http://hcidesign.com/memtest/manual.html .
2) If it detects errors, buy new RAM

[citrus]

Hello everyone I would like you to inform you all that I have resolved my hard crashes for now. I simply upgraded windows 10 and it worked like a charm. I can now use Reason normally again and even itunes another program that was hard freezing on me is working now as well.

Thank you all for the solutions. I'll definitely at keep all of them as a future reference.