Speech Recognition/Crashing/Creative Audigy

[Lizbet214]

I am trying to use speech recognition because I type for a living and have fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis. My hands, arms, shoulders, and upper back just plain old give out sometimes when I have a lot of work do to, which is almost always. I transcribe dictation sent to me and would like to speak it into Word or another program and have most of the typing done for me.

The problem is that whenever I use the speech recognition in Word or the freebie IVOS, my system resources goes up to 100%and everything freezes. I have a gig of ram. I keep only the minimum open and have the minimal open in the background that I am aware of. It also happens if I load Word using the A switch.

I don't understand this. It does work from time to time but if I try to reset any options or get it to move a little faster or work a little better or use it too long, my system freezes up. Does anyone know why this might be?

When I check the task managaer, the speech engine is using up to 99% of system resources. What??

I am using Windows XP, Word 2002 Student Version, and have a Creative Audigy LS sound card. Is the sound card perhaps not compatible with MS English ASR V5 speech engine? Any help is much appreciated. It's driving me batty. Thank you.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

It is Maxing out your CPU? I would fool around with the hardare acceraltion protocols in windows XP.

Changing Hardware Acceleration Settings for Graphics Hardware
Windows XP Professional uses hardware acceleration to improve display performance. If using hardware acceleration causes a problem, such as mouse pointer problems or corrupt images, you can turn off some or all hardware acceleration features. By turning off hardware acceleration, you can manually control the level of acceleration and performance supplied by your graphics hardware, which can help you troubleshoot display problems.

Hardware acceleration for your graphics hardware has six settings. Table 9.4 shows the settings and their meanings.

Table 9.4 Hardware Acceleration for Graphics Hardware

Setting Description
None Disables all accelerations. Use this setting only if your computer frequently stops responding or has other severe problems.
1 Disables all but basic accelerations. User this setting to correct more severe problems.
2 Disables all DirectX® Graphics accelerations, as well as all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations. Use this setting to correct severe problems with DirectX accelerated applications.
3 Disables all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations. Use this setting to correct drawing problems.
4 Disables cursor and bitmap accelerations. Use this setting to troubleshoot mouse pointer problems or corrupt images.
Full Enables all acceleration features. This setting is recommended if your computer has no problems.

Note

If you use multiple monitors, changing hardware acceleration settings affects all monitors.
To change hardware acceleration

Right-click the desktop, and then click Properties.
In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab, and then click the Advanced button.
Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then choose the desired level of hardware acceleration.
Windows XP Professional supports write combining, which improves video performance by speeding up the display of information to your screen. However, increased speed can also cause screen corruption. If display problems occur, you can disable write combining to troubleshoot this problem.

To disable write combining

Right-click the desktop, and then click Properties.
In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab, and then click the Advanced button.
Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then clear the Enable write combining check box.

 

[Lizbet214]

Yes, it is maxing out my CPU. I watch the green box from the task manager when I try to use the speech program and it goes all the way green and stays there when I try to use speech. Then Word freezes up. I sort of understand your post and will try to find these options. I am assuming they are in the control panel. I do know one game I played awhile back asked me if I wanted to turn on hardware acceleration and I did so. It made the game much better. Usually when I end the game it asks me if I want to turn it back off and I do that, but I don't remember it asking me the last few times. I will open that game first and see what opens are checked and uncheck them, then print out your post and go to town.

I appreciate your taking the time to help me with this. I have some problems with arthritis and fibromyalgia and if I could get this speech thing up and working, maybe it would help.

I will post back. Thanks again.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

NP! I would really like to know if this helps. If not, tell me what happens after you monkey with the harware accel. protocols.

 

[Lizbet214]

My computer runs faster, but unfortunately, the problem persists. Thanks anyway!

My computer information:

Sony RX752
Pentium 4
2.0 GHz
1 G Ram
Windows XP
Logitec speakers and microphone (plugged into sound card)
Sound card: Creative Audigy
Word 2002 For Students

I have tried to reinstall just the sapi5 speech engine and its files, but my Sony recovery disks do not have separate disks for the operating system and it won't let me access them unless I want to spank my whole C drive. No, thanks.

I tried using freeware speech recognition, but it crashes too. I also uninstalled Norton to see if there were any conflicts since it is a memory hog, but still it crashes. Microsoft and Sony have not responded to my requests for help.

I only have 955 mb free space on my C drive, so I am going to move some things to my D drive and see if that helps any.

Thanks again!!

 

[RicoDirenzo]

Bingo.....that is the problem......I will bet that your swap file is running on that hard drive and there is insufficient space and that caused a "traffic jam". Your CPU is maxed attempting to run virtual memory and at the same time a speech recognition program that grabs a whole bunch of bandwidth. Once you free up some space on that drive you might find that your problem will go away. Additonally, you should temporarily disable Norton when doing any intensive audio processing as long as you are not connected to the web at the same time.

 

[Lizbet214]

Well, it a perfect world, it would have worked. But alas, I live in Complicated City, State of Confusion. I got rid of 2+ more Gs of junk on my hard drive for a whopping 3 Gs of free space.

It worked for a few minutes, than crashed. Some of my options are greyed out on the speech recognition boxes in the control panel. I found the sapi5 engine online to download and did that. Still, it crashes. I just don't know what it could be. Running Word without any add-ins and using default settings does not do the trick.

Are there cache or virtual memory settings I could check? Thanks to you all, again. This is a strange problem.