Failed to play back MIDI via sequencer

[Allen_Cheng]

BIT 6.0 Build 1009
VISTA SP1 x86 eng

TEST ITEM :
CPU / 3D / 2D / RAM / HDD / AUDIO / LAN / Video

ISSUE :
We got a error about AUDIO "Failed to play back MIDI via sequencer"

Solution :
Remove Video test ( We play bear.wmv in VISTA Video )

We didn't see the MIDI error after we remove the Video test .
Do you know playing bear.wmv will cause MIDI fail in AUDIO test ?

[Ian (PassMark)]

We have not seen this problem. Does the MIDI test fail immediately, or after many hours?

If it is after many hours then maybe the system is running out of memory in this test scenario. You could set trace level 1 logging to be on and see what memory availability is during the test (when the memory test is selected).

Regards,
Ian

Update 2012: This initial post was written in 2009. See later posts for additional information and possible solution.

[Allen_Cheng]

We have not seen this problem. Does the MIDI test fail immediately, or after many hours?

If it is after many hours then maybe the system is running out of memory in this test scenario. You could set trace level 1 logging to be on and see what memory availability is during the test (when the memory test is selected).

Regards,
Ian

Thanks for your reply , i will try to trace .

[psuturtle]

I have seen this problem as well on our Tylersburg workstation platform. We encountered the problem during extended life testing, which consists of a long duration stress test at elevated temperatures. The failure did not occur on every system (multiple systems in test), and was intermittent on the systems the error did happen to occur on.

During our testing, we were able to view a failure (fail to play back MIDI via sequencer), and then went in and immediately played a MIDI file using Windows Media Player. The MIDI played fine with no issues.

This led us to believe the issue was with the BurnIn program or some software issue, and that it was not a hardware issue.

Any further thoughts would be appreciated.

[Ian (PassMark)]

psuturtle,

Which version and build (e.g. V6.0.1009) did you see the problem with?

We had a customer report a scenario a while back where MIDI would fail (it appeared as though the driver failed) under very low available memory conditions (we believe they were running another stress type tool at the same time BurnInTest was running). Do you know what your memory usage was at the time?

Just because you successfully played a Midi file from WMP does not categorically mean you did not have a problem. An an example (only), if the auido device driver supporting midi failed it is possible it could have immediately restarted, and everythng then appeared OK. We have seen this with display device drivers, where we provoke a crash in the device driver and see the 3D test pause (block), the driver restarts and the 3D test continues.

Did you repeat the test without the elevated temperatures and find you did/did not see the problem?

Regards,
Ian

[psuturtle]

Ian,
Thanks for the response.

I'm checking on the exact version of BurnIn Pro that we were using at the time. Unfortunately this issue came up a while ago, so we're working on recalling some of the exact details. I'm fairly certain we were on the latest version of BurnIn Pro at the time we originally saw the failure (February 09).

I don't know what the exact memory usage was at the time. I think I saw in another thread where you mentioned a command line option or something that would display the amount of memory used? Or do you know of other ways to display this info during test?

I should also state that when we played the MIDI file immediately after seeing the fail, we already had WMP open with the file loaded, so it was just a matter of hitting play to hear the MIDI. I do agree though that it doesn't completely rule out the possibility of some sort of potential driver issue. But since other people seem to be seeing similar issues, it might be interesting to compare audio devices and driver levels. Our platform uses the ADI1988A.

I'm double checking our data, but I believe we were only ever able to replicate the issue at elevated temps. This could be due to it's intermittent nature though given how hard it was for us to get the problem to show up with any sort of repeatability.

[Ian (PassMark)]

The memory information will be logged if you run the memory test and set Preferences->Logging, Trace file detail level = Activity Trace 1

Regards,
Ian

[psuturtle]

FYI, another team has been able to reproduce this issue on our system. I had them enable memory logging per your instructions, and from what I can tell, we seem to be hitting the MIDI problem after seeing quite a few checksum errors for the CD/DVD file. Over a one month period of testing, it appears the MIDI fails are seen for a total of roughly 4-5 minutes. It doesn't appear to me that the system is low on memory, but I did notice in looking through the memory logs that there appear to be times that the Burn In program is attempting to test more memory than is listed as available (however the "difference" between available and tested doesn't appear to be negative).

I'm not too worried about customers running into this in the field, however we'd like to be able to avoid chasing the issue in future programs.

Is there any way to get you the log file? I would post it here but it is rather large.

[Ian (PassMark)]

Yes, you can FTP it here and I will have a look at it:
ftp www [dot] passmark [dot] com

Regards,
Ian

[psuturtle]

I'm getting a permission denied error when trying to access the FTP (incoming folder).

[David (PassMark)]

You can't list files or download files from the incoming folder, but you should still be able to upload.

[Ian (PassMark)]

Should be OK as an anonymous FTP. Maybe just zip the files and email them to us at:
help [at] passmark [dot] com

Thanks.
Ian

[psuturtle]

I sent you two emails....one with the log file, the other with the trace file. Thanks for checking into this.

[sivarocks]

Any solutions yet? I do see the same issue... using Win7.
(ran BIT right after fresh Win7 install - on Pinetrail Platfrom)

[Ian (PassMark)]

We have previously had reports that showed that the MIDI driver would unload, you would then get the BurnInTest MIDI error you see and then the driver reloads and the test continues. This would appear to be a device driver or sound card hardware issue. Our theory was that it was related to the the system having low available memory.

I would try just the sound playback test by itself and see if that fails.

I would also check the Windows system event log to see if it shows MIDI related events that may point to the problem.