Q Light Controller+

I have a DIY open DMX USB clone, as posted by Steven Breuls at . I have three fixtures in a DMX chain for testing; ADJ Mega Par Profile, Chauvet 4Bar, and a Chauvet 4Play. I installed QLC and QLC+ and everything works great. However, I opened FL Studio to begin mapping MIDI Channels, and the Mega Par and 4Bar turned off; but the 4Play still works perfectly. When I close FL Studio, the lights began to respond again.

This same behavior happens when I open Google Chrome, but not with Internet Explorer.
It happens when I open VLC Player, but not with Windows Media Player.
The Mega Par and the 4Bar also stops responding when I open the DMX Channel Monitor if QLC, and resumes when I close it.

I went through some troubleshooting with Steven B. but the two fixtures still shut off when I open certain programs.

I have tried everything I could think of; including different machines, different USB cables and wires, placing the lights on different channels, isolating the each light, with and without a DMX Terminator, drivers are updated, and I still have this issue.

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

And if you plug one fixture in at a time and then test each time what happens?

What is the event that occurs when things stop working? All I see in the post is that fixture A and B don't work together at times.

Do you have an ancient PC running Vista or, even worse, XP? Could it also be the mysterious lack of a terminator syndrome? My smoke machine had a knack of tripping out the USB-DMX controller when it turned off. I must confess I should have bought an opto-isolated controller.

Let us know.

There are 3 fixtures total. I have tried each fixture by themselves and every combination of the 3 and get the same behavior from the same 2.

What causes 2 of the 3 lights to stop responding is opening the DMX Output monitor, Google Chrome, VLC Media Player, or any DAW Software. Once I close "conflicting" software, the lights continue to work.

I will try to find an old computer, and put XP on it and see what happens. I am using a terminator.

Keep in mind, when the 2 of the 3 stop working, the third works fine.

Daft questions:

Is one fixture sending out rubbish/slave/master data on the DMX, even when it shouldn't be? Would need a scope to test that.
Is the PC working too hard (drive going all the time etc. Something extra running)?
I have an older laptop that has a knack of putting the graphics card into low power mode which makes the thing run like a pig.

Post after you've tried another PC.

Cheers

Sorry it's been so long, I've been on the road.

Anywho, I revived an old laptop that had Windows XP on it. I connected my interface and 2 ADJ Mega Par Profiles. Everything works the way it should even when I open the web browser and my DAW software. It does however lag, but I'm sure that is due to the performance of the laptop... It's old.

Unfortunately this doesn't solve my problem. The computer that this needs to work on has Windows 7 on it, and cannot be downgraded to Windows XP. Any suggestions as to what could be causing the problem with this new information?

Thanks in advance.