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Preset All of a Sudden Locking Up Helix


kraftybob
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Strange thing happened this morning.  I was playing a little before work and when changing presets all of a sudden my Helix LT locked up.  I had to power off to clear it.  Playing a little more and it locked up again.  Restart.  The only change I made to my presets recently was earlier in the week I deleted a snapshot and made it a stomp instead.  I did this on two difference presets, but I could move in and out of both without a problem.

 

I decided to import my previous setlist from back up (July) to back out the snapshot changes in the off chance that had something to do with.  But it still locked up.  After some more troubleshooting I realized that preset 3A was causing the lockup.  I could move around to any preset, but as soon as I selected 3A it locked up.  I then fired up HX Edit and when I used that to change presets it didn't lock up - even when I selected 3A. 

 

Preset 3A is called Clender Fean that I downloaded from CustomTone in March and have been using pretty often since.  At first I thought it was corrupted but it worked up until today.  Even if it did recently get corrupted, it should have been fixed when I did the restore.  Also, it shouldn't have mattered if I used the foot switch on the Helix or HX Edit.  You would expect a corrupt preset to lock either way.

 

I deleted the preset (copied a blank over it in HX Edit) and it no longer locks up.  I then added and amp and reverb and it's still working fine.  I have not re-installed the original patch yet (will likely do that this weekend), but since 3A is working now that rules out a bad foot switch.

 

Bottom line is everything seems to be working fine now but I'm wondering if anyone else experienced something similar?  I'm running v2.92 which I installed in July and it's been working flawlessly since.

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There are two certainties here:

 

1) Helix is a computer.

2) Computers do weird $hit.

 

If it's working now, then it's working...I wouldn't burn too many calories trying to figure out what caused the hiccup. You could spend the rest of your days doing that, and never find an answer. 

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Basically what crusinion2 said. Had this happening three times as well, needed to boot in preset restore mode to get rid of the faulty one(s). I got over it because it didn't happen in a long while.

There seems to be a certain connection between changing the "architecture" (routing, switch layouts) of complexed presets and the chances for a preset to get corrupted, especially when doing things on the unit itself (never happened to me when using HX Edit), but I wouldn't even remotely imply it's really like that as it simply didn't happen too often (and for me it was with 2.8x).

My personal conclusions:

- Don't change anything significant in important situations without a computer at hand. As in: parameter changes yes, anything else no.

- Always do local backups once connected to a computer.

 

Apart from that, while I perfectly understand the possible issues that may arise with complexed computing systems, it still leaves a little unsecure feeling here and there. In addition, I never had this happen before on any of my MFX devices (and I owned quite a plenty over the years). But then, none of them has even been remotely as complexed as the Helix, so I still understand things.

 

Oh, fwiw, I'm not sure whether that helps at all, but I do some clean ups more or less regularly. Usually, I only need a mere handful of presets for my live duties and another handful for the rare occasions I'm recording without my own computer at hand, so I regularly export everything and consolidate both my needed presets and the corresponding IRs - the latter unfortunately still being a certain hassle, but as long as I keep my patches limited, it's ok.

When done with that, I overwrite everything not needed with empty patches.

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Thanks for the responses.  I don't plan to troubleshoot any more than what I've already done - just wondering if others have seen this (and possibly a fix?).  I'm in IT so I fully understand not going down a rabbit hole when a "Ctrl-Alt-Del" of the Helix, and removal of the offending patch, took care of the problem.  If it keeps happening that's a different story, but I played again at lunch and it's running fine now.

 

I don't use a lot of presets - probably less than 25 - and of those I probably only use half on a regular basis.  If ever I setup/download a patch and don't care for it I overwrite it to delete so I do try to keep my Helix cleaned up.  Probably because I'm an IT guy, whenever I make changes I always run a backup - which is stored on my NAS with mirrored drives so even my backup has a backup LOL.

 

Thanks again.

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  • 6 months later...

Mine used to freeze up every time I pressed the "amp" button.  The unit became completely unresponsive.  It still made sound but you couldn't edit or even switch banks or snapshots or turn knobs.  It started after I updated to 2.8 and ended when I updated to 3.0.

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