There are a number of issues that can cause instability in a Microsoft Windows-based system. (This includes Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME.) The main thing that causes instability is placing the whole system under constant stress, which is what most PC-DAW and 3D Rendering set-ups tend to do. Any application that places the entire Windows 9x under a heavy load is likely to cause those "random" errors we all know and love to become less random, and cause any slight inconsistencies to show their ugly heads.

Believe me, there are a number of applications that will cause a Windows 9x system to break with monotonous regularity aside from DAW systems – Corel Draw is the prime case, but there are a number of other applications in the same boat. For that matter, Adobe Premiere 5.1 and Adobe Photoshop 5.5 are quite unstable under Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, but much better under Windows 98. There are always two sides to every coin.

Aside from the "normal" Windows problems (and I have used Windows since the Windows 1 days, and the product is so much better now it is unbelievable) there are a number of things that will cause your system to become unstable. These can be broken down into two major categories; Software and Hardware.

Firstly, there are a number of software packages that will overwrite certain .dll files with older versions – this is really, really bad programming and unfortunately really, really common. For those people running Windows 98, there is a tool Microsoft has provided to help check for this situation. You just need to run "sfc" (from the \Windows\System directory in a Command prompt), choose "Settings" and make sure "Check for changed files" and "Check for deleted files" are checked, then apply the changes, and run the tool. It will prompt you for every (and there’s quite often a large number of them) default Windows 98 file that’s been changed, and ask if you want to reinstall the original, or keep the current file. Make the appropriate choice – if your system is really unstable, sometimes replacing all files with the original ones, and then reloading the Windows 98 Updates and your software (in that order) will fix the problem. Windows Millennium takes some big steps in the right direction with its built in protection for system files. It won’t protect everything, but is a big help.

If you are running Norton CrashGuard – remove it. This will help stability issues – this program seems, from my experience, to successfully make any Windows system rather unstable all by itself.

Also remove and do not run any 16-bit applications you may have. 16-bit applications are not well known for their stability, and they have the uncanny ability to bring a working system to its knees. If an application has not been rewritten in 32-bit for Windows 9x, then find another app that will replace it.

Drivers are another cause of instability. If you do not have the latest drivers for your hardware (especially your video card and DAW hardware) then go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. More often than not drivers are released to correct bugs in earlier versions. Bugs usually equate with instability. Video drivers are one of the major causes of system instability and really need to be kept up to date. There are two sources for video card drivers (most of the time) these being the manufacturer of your card, and the manufacturer of the chipset on your card. For example, if you have a Gigabyte GF-1280 32MB AGP GeForce2 MX card, you can get drivers from either Gigabyte or nVIDIA (the manufacturers of the various GeForce chipsets).

Screen savers are another major culprit. They may look nice, but they also have no real benefit any more. If you have to use a screen saver, "Blank Screen" is a great choice. Also consider using power management to power the screen off after say 20 minutes of no activity on the keyboard/mouse if you are concerned with screen burn-in.

The second category is hardware. It is quite possible that hardware in your system works fine until it is pushed hard. Memory, CPU and the power supply are the main culprits. Modems, video cards, DAW cards, network cards and the motherboard itself, as well as the hard drive(s) and CDROM/DVD(s) are other possibilities.

When you buy a computer to be used as a DAW, you have to realise that you are buying a system that will get hammered for a decent part of the time you are using it. Creating and manipulating large audio files takes a lot of computer power, and places a lot of strain on the computer system as a whole. This is certainly not the place to cut corners for the sake of a couple of bucks. Downtime and frustration will normally cost you many times the "saving" if your hardware is not up to scratch.

I/O conflicts are the most common hardware problem when installing a new card. Until recently, I/O cards (this includes hard drive and floppy drive controllers, serial and parallel ports, keyboard and mouse ports, video cards, network cards, sound cards, video capture and compression cards and basically anything you can shove into an ISA/VESA/PCI or AGP slot) all had to have their own separate I/O address, Memory Address, DMA Channel and IRQ (however not all cards need each of these features). If you had two devices operating with the same Memory Address, at least one would behave strangely – same with IRQ channels. Quite often, onboard devices such as SCSI controllers or LAN cards and USB controllers will share IRQs with particular PCI slots, just like the AGP slot does. This can make for an "interesting" day’s work when installing your new hardware.

Some of the more recent motherboard chipsets and I/O cards now allow for sharing of IRQs, which greatly eases the installation of new hardware. For example, in this machine I have the following IRQ configuration:

IRQ 0 – System timer (reserved for the system)

IRQ 1 – Standard 101/102-Key Keyboard (reserved even when you configure the BIOS for a USB keyboard – but you can’t win them all!)

IRQ 2 – Programmable Interrupt Controller (reserved for the system)

IRQ 3 – COM2

IRQ 4 – COM1

IRQ 5 – Vortex Sound Blaster Emulation (I have an Aureal Vortex PCI card in this system)

IRQ 6 – Standard Floppy Disk Controller (usually reserved, but which may be able to be used if you set the BIOS up to not assign an IRQ for floppy disk – depends on your BIOS. This is useful only if you have no legacy floppy drive and use an LS-120 or Zip drive instead.)

IRQ 7 – LPT1 (which is also often useable for other cards as most of the time the printer in EPP mode doesn’t use an IRQ. However, if your LPT1 port is set to ECP, the printer only can use this IRQ – no sharing.)

IRQ 8 – System CMOS/Real Time Clock (reserved for the system)

IRQ 9 – Adaptec AHA-2940U2W PCI SCSI Controller (my onboard Ultra-2-SCSI adapter)

IRQ 9 – Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Host Controller (my onboard USB ports)

IRQ 9 – ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering (Win 98 driver for IRQ sharing)

IRQ 9 – SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus (ACPI power management requires an IRQ, and this is it)

IRQ 10 – S3 ViRGE PCI (325) (this is my secondary video card)

IRQ 10 – Intel 82558-based Integrated Ethernet (my onboard 10/100 LAN adapter)

IRQ 10 - ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering (Win 98 driver for IRQ sharing)

IRQ 11 – Vortex Multimedia PCI Platform (the sound card)

IRQ 11 – Vortex PCI Audio (the sound card)

IRQ 11 – Gigabyte GA 630 Voodoo Banshee AGP (my primary video card)

IRQ 11 - ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering (Win 98 driver for IRQ sharing)

IRQ 12 – PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port (I have a PS/2 mouse on this machine. This IRQ is reserved if you enable the PS/2 port otherwise it is free.)

IRQ 13 – Numeric Data Processor (the maths co-processor still requires this IRQ, even though it is now fully integrated into the CPU. This IRQ is reserved for the system.)

IRQ 14 – Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller (primary IDE channel. This is reserved if you enable the primary IDE channel otherwise it is free.)

IRQ 15 – Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller (secondary IDE channel. This is reserved if you enable the secondary IDE channel otherwise it is free.)

As you can see, quite a few of my devices share IRQs with other devices. This is good – if this was not possible, I could not have this much gear in this computer. (I used to also have my Dxr2 MPEG-2 decoder in this machine on IRQ 9, but have since moved this to another machine.)