Pro Tools 2021.3 Crashed, Hasn't Started Since

[Darryl Ramm]

I don't know what the problem was so have no idea what to guess the logs would say. But occasionally the logs give a clue what is happening, you'll know it when you see it.

The standard macOS installers can either do an in-situ upgrade (how most people do it) it will default to showing the current boot drive or you click "show all drives" and pick another volume. If that volume has an existing install on it it will do an in situ upgrade of that as well. And if it's an empty or new volume you'll get a full clean install. How I normally do stuff is to have my working bootable volume on the internal MBP SSD, and I'll add a new APFS volume and run the installer and select that volume to do a new macOS install to.

Then it's reinstall apps and moving files across from the old boot volume, but importantly everything is left on the old volume as long as possible, and if you need to you can just reboot back and run that.

It's just a nice safe way to do major macOS upgrades vs. doing in-situ upgrades, these system collect so much crap on them, especially all the per-user preferences and application support crap stuff in ~/Library and old drivers etc. A full clean install of macOS and apps and drivers, and moving across old sessions/documents etc. if they are on the old boot volume.

[HalfPastMidnight]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I don't know what the problem was so have no idea what to guess the logs would say. But occasionally the logs give a clue what is happening, you'll know it when you see it.

The standard macOS installers can either do an in-situ upgrade (how most people do it) it will default to showing the current boot drive or you click "show all drives" and pick another volume. If that volume has an existing install on it it will do an in situ upgrade of that as well. And if it's an empty or new volume you'll get a full clean install. How I normally do stuff is to have my working bootable volume on the internal MBP SSD, and I'll add a new APFS volume and run the installer and select that volume to do a new macOS install to.

Then it's reinstall apps and moving files across from the old boot volume, but importantly everything is left on the old volume as long as possible, and if you need to you can just reboot back and run that.

It's just a nice safe way to do major macOS upgrades vs. doing in-situ upgrades, these system collect so much crap on them, especially all the per-user preferences and application support crap stuff in ~/Library and old drivers etc. A full clean install of macOS and apps and drivers, and moving across old sessions/documents etc. if they are on the old boot volume.

I'm reviving this old thread specifically with a question for Darryl (thank you for all of your help here the past few months on this and the other posts).

To keep this note short, I'm in-between projects at the moment and if I am going to update, now is the time. Obviously the Pro Tools issue got resolved a couple of months ago so the reason a possible OS X update is on the table again is for other reasons. I looked this up on the Apple page and assume this is exactly what you are suggesting: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891

My question is short, simple and to the point. If there's going to be an issue with Pro Tools on Big Sur or Monterey, it'd be revealed on the second disk volume before deleting the volume containing my current OS (Catalina 10.15.7), right? I was reading about UI/Graphics problems on here last night and then there's the Avid statement about possible Playback lags/problems. It's not like the OS X behaves any differently on a disk volume than if it had been a fresh install to the existing volume, correct?

I'm looking for a way to audition a newer OS X. I've read several reports on Pro Tools problems with Big Sur and Monterey which has spooked me but if I could audition an OS first and retain the option of easily sticking with what I have, that would be ideal.

Thanks for any follow-up you might have about this.

Best,

Sean

[Darryl Ramm]

In the text of mine you are quoting I describe how to do a clean new macOS install. Yes you can use that for testing. Start testing there while it is as clean as possible before trying to move other stuff over to that new install.
-do you have a chance of seeing what change breaks stuff working.