Crashes all the time

I'm "using" PTF for about 3 months and it crashes al the time. My last project consists of 5 audio tracks an 2 midi. After 5 or maximum 10 minutes working the system hangs up and i have to restart again. Another problem is playing MIDI-tracks; i hear little cracks in the sound and sometimes the midi doesn't follow the audio. My configuration is a PIII 866 MHz, an ASUS CUSL2 motherboard,256 Mb Ram, a 30 GB HD (7200rpm), a Live 5.1 Platinum Soundblaster, a GeForce MX2 32Mb Videocard, an ethernet controller and a conextant Modem. Is this normal for a free version or are some settings wrong. ------------------

A couple of things to keep in mind: 1-It's Protools Free, designed to work with most(yeah right) audio cards, but probably hasn't been tested properly....hence the "free" part. 2-ProTools LE is a different version that is designed to work only with Digidesign's hardware that ships with it(so, you would hope they have the bugs out of that version) Based on earlier posts regarding PT LE, it seems to be alot more stable than PTFree. Also, it's originally a MAC program, so it'll probably run almost glitch free on that platform. A quick way to get rid of the noise that pops up after 10-15 minutes is to click on "hardware setup" and then click ok when it comes up and continue on(that seemed to work fine for me). Also, save everything you do as you go along(say, every minute or so)so you don't lose anything. I switched my Soundblaster drivers to these: based on an earlier post in this forum and it cleared up the sound breakup problem completely for me. So you might try that. Now I can run 8 channels of audio with a couple of EQ and D-verb plug-ins with no problems(well, with the odd system lock-up) And I'm running a Celeron 400MHz with an Intel BI440ZX board, SoundblasterLive card, 256MB Ram, 5400 RPM hardrive. ANd make sure that only PT Free is running on your system when recording, shut everything down using control-alt-delete, except for explorer and systray. Hope that helps Cheers!!

Hey man thanks for your help. Yes I understand all the points you have mentioned and they all are very good points and suggestions. I am going to try the drivers you mentioned because it seems from my conversations with others in the industry that SB live is the cause of most issues. Thanks for your time in posting to help out. Chris 8)

Post about those drivers, if they worked for you. I can vouch for your Mobo. I run the cusl2-c and PTF works perfect for me. I'm using the Gina sound card though. A friend of mine uses that soundcard and he has the same probs, so I'd like to tell him if those work. RM

Just to add something here, those drivers I recommended do work, BUT, download the manual too, because the mixer portion looks nothing like your old Soundblaster mixer(the new mixer doesn't have any kind of eq/treble/bass adjustments so it doesn't "colour" your sound, what you hear is what you get, so adding eq to your tracks is really what the final product will sound like outside of your computer) and it's a little tricky to figure out. But once you've got it figured out and start recording, you should notice a big difference in performance and sound. Remember to disable your Network card too while using PTF.