Not answering

[JNSW]

Hi. More often than not my PT doesn´t answer to commands like Save and No insert, it goes into "nothing at all" mode and i consequensly have to choose to shut the program down and by that risking any unsaved changes. I seems to be worsening with every time i open and give a command. Does anyone know what causes this and what i can do to avoid this? Thx. / Jonas

[Darryl Ramm]

If this was happening to lots of other people folks would be screaming about it here.... and we are not seeing that,

Not much info here...

What computer and OS? What exact version of Pro Tools?

You mean the UI menus activated with a mouse? Are you using a funky mouse or trackball, try a regular mouse, try a different mouse anyhow.

Or are you using keyboard shortcuts? Or you using a control surface?... got one connected?

If you are using a mouse try keyboard shortcuts and visa versa.

When did this start happening? What changed?

What troubleshooting have you tried? Starting with trashing prefs? Rebooting. Swapping keyboard and mice, making sure there are no mouse or keyboard customization utilities messing with stuff, etc. Do you use enough other software on the computer you would notice similar issues with that?

[JNSW]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

If this was happening to lots of other people folks would be screaming about it here.... and we are not seeing that,

Not much info here...

What computer and OS? What exact version of Pro Tools?

You mean the UI menus activated with a mouse? Are you using a funky mouse or trackball, try a regular mouse, try a different mouse anyhow.

Or are you using keyboard shortcuts? Or you using a control surface?... got one connected?

If you are using a mouse try keyboard shortcuts and visa versa.

When did this start happening? What changed?

What troubleshooting have you tried? Starting with trashing prefs? Rebooting. Swapping keyboard and mice, making sure there are no mouse or keyboard customization utilities messing with stuff, etc. Do you use enough other software on the computer you would notice similar issues with that?

So many possible causes. Maybe i can sum some things up.

My computer is a HP Z420 Xeon E5-2680 128GB RAM and 512GB+256GB SSD W10P Quadro NVS 310 Water cooler.

My version of pro tools is 12 (2018.10).

The freeze up, not answering, mode occurs in different situations. It can be when trying to open a plug-in on a track, when loading a preset or changing a value in a open plug-in or when restoring tracks while loading session (this one session always stays on a perticular track, see attachment. In the upper left corner it says Pro Tools (svarar inte), meaning not answering). If i then force it to shut down (right clicking on the logo in the start menu and choosing close window) and open it again without plug-ins (shift+open session) it opens up just fine. I feel there are many different random ways for the program to go into error mode.

I have no control surface connected and i i´m only using a small amount of keyboard shortcuts, like shift+mouse click open session or center pan knob by pressing alt and click with the mouse. I´m using a ordinary mouse, possibly the same since the beginning. I´ve tried a wireless one, but no difference. I am using a wireless keyboard. I´ll try with a wire connected one.

I have trashed both Prefs and InstalledAAX in C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Pro Tools
and rebooted. No luck there.

I have not noticed any similar issues in other software. I have programs like google chrome and some picture editiors and, of course, iLok producy manager, melodyne, PA producy manager, ezdrums, ezKeys and some other music production related programs installed.

Unfortunatly i can not tell when it all started. I feel it´s degrading and getting worse all the time.

What more info can i provide? / Jonas

[Darryl Ramm]

Ah a slightly different symptom description “freeze up” vs just not responding to commands... that changes things, likely solves this for you....A very common cause of intermittent freezes is having media in your CD/DVD-ROM drive... remove any media. Or having a Floppy drive present in Windows/BIOS (even if you don’t actually have a physical floppy drive). Go into the bios and disable them, reboot, if windows device manager still shows them disable them there.

This has been discussed on DUC over the last several years and is mentioned in the Pro Tools release notes if you want to look for more info. But try what I suggested to start with.

[JNSW]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Ah a slightly different symptom description “freeze up” vs just not responding to commands... that changes things, likely solves this for you....A very common cause of intermittent freezes is having media in your CD/DVD-ROM drive... remove any media. Or having a Floppy drive present in Windows/BIOS (even if you don’t actually have a physical floppy drive). Go into the bios and disable them, reboot, if windows device manager still shows them disable them there.

This has been discussed on DUC over the last several years and is mentioned in the Pro Tools release notes if you want to look for more info. But try what I suggested to start with.

Oh, sorry. In some way it freezes, but the blue "thinking wheel" remains in motion as long as i let it. Does that clear things up?

I have no media in my CD/DVD-drive. I´ll try and enter the BIOS. Is there any way to separate the drives i need from those that are not needed, i mean is there a risk that i go about this all wrong and brake things? As swedish is my native toungue i try to translate all your advice to swedish and it makes it a little bit shaky, i feel. Pls bare with me.

Can i see inside the device manager what drivers might be inside the BIOS and by that letting me know what´s what? / Jonas

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by JNSW

Oh, sorry. In some way it freezes, but the blue "thinking wheel" remains in motion as long as i let it. Does that clear things up?

I have no media in my CD/DVD-drive. I´ll try and enter the BIOS. Is there any way to separate the drives i need from those that are not needed, i mean is there a risk that i go about this all wrong and brake things? As swedish is my native toungue i try to translate all your advice to swedish and it makes it a little bit shaky, i feel. Pls bare with me.

Can i see inside the device manager what drivers might be inside the BIOS and by that letting me know what´s what? / Jonas

I am talking about *floppy drives* only, not hard drives. Just disable floppy drives. I doubt you actually have any, it will not cause any problems.

[JNSW]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I am talking about *floppy drives* only, not hard drives. Just disable floppy drives. I doubt you actually have any, it will not cause any problems.

I´ll give it a go. Do you know about the folders that´s created when the program crashes (i think then) that are named this way (always different letters, though): vypgZTBPxhyfHBBB? It is also a pretty new feature.

[JNSW]

So, i disabled these: sata2 hp CDDVDW SH-216DB and Atapi CD/DVD. They had the word floppy in their description, so i went for that. I also took the time to disable hyper threading and i think i´m going back in to disable both turbo boost and C-state, as the optimization advice reads. Then i will try pro tools again. / Jonas

[Darryl Ramm]

Uh, they sound like CD/DVD ROM drives, not sure exactly what they said about floppy. I would look for floppy drives and change one thing at a time. I have no idea what BIOS you have, if you are lost there you can say what BIOS you have and other folks here may be able to describe exactly were the settings are (all I have are older Phoenix BIOS). If nothing else you can disable/remove the floppy drive drivers in the windows device manager and that should fix the problem as well. If nothing ever showed up as enabled floppy drives in the device manager then you likely don’t have this problem... but the symptoms seem very close to what you are saying.

The problems you are seeing are not likely to be caused by hyperthreading or c-state.

If you are not seeing AAE-6106 or similar AAE CPU errors then leave hyperthreading on. Especially with 2019.5 I would hope that mostly stays enabled. Yes I know Avid optimization says otherwise, but it’s the last thing on the list, maybe more to try if you are troubleshooting. The popular consensus of experts here seems to be disable it only if having problems, and it’s behavior is highly dependent on plugins and workloads.

[JNSW]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Uh, they sound like CD/DVD ROM drives. I would look for floppy drives and change one thing at a time. I have no idea what BIOS you have, if you are lost there you can say and other folks here may be able to describe exactly were the settings are. If nothing else you can disable/remove the floppy drive drivers in the windows device manager.

The problems you are seeing are not likely to be caused by hyperthreading or c-state.

If you are not seeing AAE-6106 or similar AAE CPU errors then leave hyperthreading on. Especially with 2019.5 I would hope that mostly stays enabled. Yes I know Avid optimization says otherwise, but it’s the last thing on the list, maybe more to try if you are troubleshooting. The popular consensus of experts here seems to be disable it only if having problems, and it’s behavior is highly dependent on plugins and workloads.

What would a floppy drive be named as in the device manager?

I just tried to open a plug-in on a track and as soon as i try and change a value in the GUI it shuts the whole program down.