[Bill Denton]

Phatbeat...

I know I've dogged you a bit in the past, but I'm going to try to be helpful here.

Have you considered that perhaps you don't have the temperament to work with Pro Tools?

Temperament is not a matter of smart/not smart, it is a matter of how one's brain works.

People of one temperament, if they plug it in and throw the switch and it doesn't work, are willing to spend the time to read the manuals and do the troubleshooting required to get things to work. These type of people will come on a forum like the DUC and post very detailed messages, "The manual said if I do this, that will happen. I did this and that did not happen. I checked my connections; outputs plugged into inputs, I reread the manual, I even tried something else, but I still could not get it to work". When someone does this, most of us here on the DUC will spend quite a bit of our own time trying to help. And given enough detail, some of us will be able to say, "Oh, that happened to me last week" and give an immediate answer.

People of a different temperament, if they plug it in and throw the switch and it doesn't work, they are helpless. Even if they know how to do proper troubleshooting and documentation of a problem, their brain won't let them do it. So, they come on a forum like this one with no details of their problem, and no ability to gather those details, and consequently, none of us are able to help.

Keep in mind that there is no "value judgment" attached to these types of temperaments; it's not a case of one being bad and the other being good. They are simply different.

As an example, I don't fish. I simply don't have the temperament to just throw a hook in the water and wait for something to happen. But I will sit down and work for hours on end getting a computer program to do what I want/need for it to do.

But suppose I did decide to go fishing, and went out and spent $100 US on the "latest and greatest" fishing lure. I would probably then go to the fishing hole, drop the lure in the water for 10 seconds, and if I didn't catch a fish in those ten seconds, some aspects of my temperament would kick in and I'd go home. And I'd probably want to get my $100 back for the "defective" fishing lure.

But the problem wasn't with the lure...the problem was my temperament.

Phatbeat...if I may make a suggestion...spend a little time in front of a mirror doing a little self-analysis. It's possible you don't have the temperament required to use a product like Pro Tools, or even any DAW. It's possible you might have some undiagnosed form of ADHD or some other condition that makes it difficult for you to do the tasks necessary to get Pro Tools up and running properly, and to keep it running properly.

But however it all comes out, I do sincerely wish you "good luck"...