PLEASE HELP!!

My RayDAT had been working wonderfully for months... on a Win7 (64-bit) PC.

It started malfunctioning a couple of weeks ago.

Here is what I can see:

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When I boot up the computer, now, both the "Hammerfall DSP Settings" and "Hammerfall DSP Mixer" icons appear in the Windows System Tray...

... but then, after a few seconds, a Windows error message pops up in the middle of the screen that says "Hammerfall DSP Mixer has stopped working" and lists the following details:

     Problem signature:

     Problem Event Name:        APPCRASH
     Application Name:            hdspmix.exe
     Application Version:          3.2.6.0
     Application Timestamp:     4e39473a
     Fault Module Name:          hdspmix.exe
     Fault Module Version:        3.2.6.0
     Fault Module Timestamp:   4e39473a
     Exception Code:               c0000005
     Exception Offset:             0000771c
     OS Version:                      6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
     Locale ID:                        1033
     Additional Information 1:   0a9e
     Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
     Additional Information 3:   0a9e
     Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789[/q]

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When this happens, I select the "Close the program" option in the above error message.  The "Hammerfall DSP Mixer" icon usually-but-not-always disappears from the Windows System Tray.  Sometimes both icons disappear.  Sometimes neither.

Then I open Windows Device Manager... more than half of the time,the RME Card is not listed under "Sound, video and game controllers."

When I right-click on "Computer" and tell it to "Scan for hardware changes," two things happen:

     (1)  the folder tree disappears for a split second, and then reappears with "RME HDSPe RayDAT" listed under "Sound, video and game controllers."  So far, so good... but then;

     (2)  the folder tree refreshes itself over and over again (it's only supposed to do it once)... then, usually, either the computer freezes or I get a blue screen.

Even if the computer doesn't crash right away, and even if both the "Hammerfall DSP Settings" and "Hammerfall DSP Mixer" icons remain visible in the Windows System Tray, programs like Cubase and Kontakt will sometimes-but-not-always tell me that the RayDAT card cannot be found. 

I usually wind up forcing a power-down.  Upon rebooting, I often get a "Windows has recovered from a serious error" message, or sit and wait for a very long time at the "Welcome" startup screen... sometimes I have to force another power-down, mid-reboot. 

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At the suggestion of Jeff from Synthax, I moved the RayDAT card into another PCIe slot, to see whether that changed anything.

It made no difference, the above-described behavior continues.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers... nothing makes any difference.

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I can't think of any major change to my system... EXCEPT that this all started happening soon after I upgraded my driver to version 3.26, and my firmware to version 12.

Nothing extraordinary happened during those upgrades, and I can't say for certain that the problems began immediately afterwards...

What can I do?  How else can I troubleshoot the card, or my computer, or...???

THANKS!!

  — Alan