I thought I'd post this as it may help someone, though I very much doubt it. It does go to show that things arent always as they seem.

I had a 2 monitor Prolite setup and sometimes they worked and sometime they didn't. I updated the drivers, used one of the 2 graphics cards I have instead of both (4 displays possible with 2) and still had problems at various times. One of the monitors had an extention fitted as the fixed vga lead was about half a meter too short, so that seemed like a possible problem, exept it worked fine sometimes! So I tracked dowm an extention lead that had all 15 pins connected and hey presto everything worked fine for a while.

In the mean time while trying to solve the monitor problem I upraded to win7 64bit and was happlily using Cubase 64 and Wavelab 7 with my 2 ff800's. Having had enough of messing about with the monitors I went back to one monitor, and to be sure I had no more problems I pressed into service a Dell I had lying around. So far so good. I then decided to install PT9 and thats when the real fun began.

When I started Protools I found I could not use my FF800's. I then tried Wavelab without success. As a last resort I tried DIGIcheck 5.32 and this froze on me, giving loads of problems such as the app screen going white and have to force a shutdow. After checking and changing the firewire driver a few times (LaCie card), disabling the HD audio on the P5Q-E MOBO, re flashing both FF800's, checking interupts and anything else I could change in the fireface settings,even checked on the back of the units, and also updated every bit of software on the computer I remembered something that should have been obvious from the start. I had cloned a new system harddrive. Somehow during the cloning of the new drive some of the data must have become corrupted....argghh. So it was a case of formatting the disc and starting again. Fortunately I only used this PC as a DAW so it doesn't have a lot of software. But it demonstrates that when faultfinding you should first look for the obvious.

I reinstalled Win7 64bit, installed the latest drivers for the ff800's, changed the firewire driver to legacy, and hey presto it didn't work! I must admit at this stage I was beginning to run out of ideas. I was down to one graphics card as I removed the other one prior to the reinstall, and everything else was off the system. So as a last resort I reflashed both firefaces and it worked!

As a final check I ran DIGIcheck again and it..........didn't work!!!

I went in to device manager and noticed that the list of devices was refreshing every few seconds and this coincided with the HOST leds flashing on the firefaces, the rate of refreshes was not constant.

What to do next as I had already done everthing several times? I reflashed both firefaces to 2.77 (latest at time of writing) and still had problems. This time I was geting an error screen saying the firefaces had to have the latest software version which they already had.

So I switched off the second fireface and tried again. This time it all appeared normal and I could even record using DIGIcheck. I then switched off the first ff800 and switched on the second, again success. That seemed fine so I put both on...error screen you must have the latest etc. If I had been very wealthy at this point things would be getting smashed!!

Obviously at this point the problem was getting narrowed down, It was obvious that the 2 units were losing sync, I think..maybe, if you disregard a couple of other red herrings like the error messages.

The back of the units were checked again, the word BNC was removed and replaced, everything else checked just in case of who knows what, and both units reflashed with redownloaded software in case the previous files were somehow corrupted, which I knew they weren't.

Low and behold they still brought up the error message when I tried to open up the settings panel. Ok I thought, I shall uninstall both devices, and all audio devices and reinstal the firefaces on their own. It worked!!! Eureka!!! I could open the settings control panel and see both units. Unfortunately they were both called fireface 1!!

Ok I though I shall reflash both firefaces individually...so with 2 off I flashed 1, then with 1 off I flashed 2, I then turned 2 off for the update to take effect and switched both units back on. I then opened the settings control panel, or tried to, but was met with the error message that both units must be v2.77 etc.

I thought at this point I must have a faulty unit, so I recorded some multitrack files at 192k in DIGIcheck one unit at a time to see if I could force any errors, ff800 /1 passed with flying colours, ff800 /2 was losing ASIO sync, even swopping the firewire cables didn't help, only a few times but it was there. Problem solved, a fault on the unit. .

Before sendin it back for repair, an internal clock signal problem obviously, if you don't think to deeply! I went into the control panel for a last look at the sync options. And there it was staring me in the face, or should that be fireface! Despite having flashed the fireface to v2.77 it was showing v1.8 for the firmware!

So what was causing the problems to the ff800's that are now working fine. To get the answer you have to consider the BIG CLUE that I changed the monitor to a Dell, replacing 2 monitors that were most probably OK, and removing the extra graphic card that is brand new.

I have spent 2 days getting to the bottom of this so I am not going to reveal the answer just yet, you are welcome to guess of course. This is an obvious fault, I am kicking myself I didn't suss it sooner.

Cheers