I have a nice little annoying bug that cropped up a few weeks ago.  Everything was working fine until one day I tried to make a digital cut and my MC stopped and gave me an error:

"Exception: SFCONS_VIDEO_UNDERRUN, DIOerr: Avid DNA detected Hardware Underrun"

Now it's to the point where making a digital cut is nearly impossible... stopping every few seconds or so.  At one time I also got this error:

"The application binary file has been corrupted.  Please reinstall the system."

Now, here's what I've done, but to no avail:

1. Threw out the MCState file

2. Uninstalled/Reinstalled Avid DIO Runtime

The DNA box is on its own firewire card with nothing else plugged into the card.

Any ideas?  Thanks in advance!

Media Composer 2.8.3
HP xw8400, 3gb ram

What about sync reference signals? Do you have sync ref going into both the DNA box and your tape deck?

Yep, ref is good.

I've done a little research and am now doing a mixdown.  But I highly doubt that this is the source of my problem since I've done countless long digital cuts before with no issues.

Ok - Mixdown of video and audio onto separate drives did not work.  Still getting the same error.

Fisrtly I'd check that this isn't specific to the project you are working on. Try other projects - if they work then it is likely something specific to that timeline and not your hardware system. Otherwise...

I've had similar problems with DIO being stubborn to correctly remove and re-install. Make sure you boot down after uninstalling prior to re-installing. Otherwise you may have to completely uninstal and re-instal MCA.

If that doesn't work and you feel comfortable tweaking around your windows directory you can manually delete the .inf file that controls the install of the flamethrower.sys driver. This will force Windows to access a new .inf file off your application Cd/dowmnload and hence hopefully install a completely fresh copy (rather than one already stored on your system).

Of course you've ruled out some change to your system that might be causing conflicting software, particularly anti-virus type modules and Quicktime updates (sometimes updates automatically)?

Thanks for your help, Mondo.

This problem is not project-specific.  I have already removed & reinstalled the DNA, shutting down as you specified.  No solution.

I have not yet deleted the .inf file for rebuilding the flamethrower driver, so I guess I'll give that a shot.  What's the .inf file name that I need to delete and where is it?

Now here's a nice (ha!) little twist...

While attempting a digital cut, MC stopped and gave me the SFCONS error again.  So I thought, "I'll disconnect the DNA and reconnect it to see if that helps."  So I powered off the box and got the standard "what do you want to do" dialogue.  I clicked "Software Only" and then got an interesting error: "The application binary file has been corrupted, please reinstall the system."

So I then power the DNA back up, wait for it to re-establish a connection and then I click the 1394 button to go back to it.  Lo-n-behold DNA doesn't even come back up.  It stays on 1394.

So I shut down the MC software and relaunch it.  Everything goes fine.  DNA is now reconnected.  I make my digital cut and get the same ol' stupid SFCONS error.  In fact, the longer I try to make my digital cut (by doing one assemble edit after another) the more frequently the error occurs.  Finally it gets to the point where MC stops down right after I start the cut.

Any ideas??

Are you shure that you processor is 5150 dual core? I have same problem with 2 quad core processor. When I remove one,  problem gone. Avid prior 3.0 on xw8400 don't work with 8 core.

After uninstalling & reinstalling DIO runtime several times and even reinstalling the Avid MC, I decided - just for grins - to bypass the firewire card.  I unplugged the DNA from the add-on firewire card on the back of the computer & plugged it into the onboard firewire on the front of the computer.  That did the trick!

This is one of the reasons that we don't support the DNAs on the PCI bus. You need to have them connected to the onboard FW bus.