Desperate for ideas

[albee1952]

Okay, HP Z820 12 core with Windows 10 Pro and HD/Native. Rig was working dandy but my UPS started beeping like crazy. I had time to save/close Pro Tools. System was copying a bunch of session files from 1 recording drive(not drive C:) to an external backup drive and the UPS killed the rig before I could cancel the file transfer. Why this has become an issue is beyond me, BUT, ever since I re-powered the rig(bypassing the faulty UPS), Pro Tools never opens(it starts but hangs in any of a few places including Initializing DataBases and 2 different 3rd party plugins.

What I have tried:
Trasher-trash Prefs and Database files(empty recycle bin and restart)
Remove all 3rd party plugins from plugins folder
Installed a fresh download of 2018.10 Ultimate(installed over 2018.7 as Windows Add/Remove program would not run the Remove function)
Put on my tinfoil hat, faced north with my right foot off the floor
Prayed to the PT gods and offered up a live chicken

Still cannot get Pro Tools to open. Must I recover the entire system drive???

[The Weed]

Make an image of your current OS drive. Then bring back the last OS image you have. If it's working...you can go from there or, if not, either wipe and start fresh or bring back the "damaged" image and see if you can recover from the issue.

Not being able to uninstall PT probably means something is amiss.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by The Weed

Make an image of your current OS drive. Then bring back the last OS image you have. If it's working...you can go from there or, if not, either wipe and start fresh or bring back the "damaged" image and see if you can recover from the issue.

Not being able to uninstall PT probably means something is amiss.

I kinda figured that, but not sure there's a point to saving an image of a non-working drive

[AlexLakis]

Any reason you can't reformat the system drive and reinstall the OS from the ground up (aside from it being kind of a pain in the ass?)

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by AlexLakis

Any reason you can't reformat the system drive and reinstall the OS from the ground up (aside from it being kind of a pain in the ass?)

Just trying to avoid a huge process and don't understand why the entire PT install got hosed when it was completely closed at the time of the system death(by removal of power). I have a drive image from a couple of weeks ago, so I guess what tomorrow will have me doing........... While I'm confused, my system drive is a Samsung 850 EVO and the latest version of Samsung Magician software will not see ANY of 4 internal drives(including the 850 EVO). The software only recognizes the external drives(and of course will do nothing with them as they are all other brands). Got a support request in to Samsung, but no reply so far(BTW, don't bother with they online chat as it only relates to phones and computers, no drives)

[tonepad]

Dave, I'm truly sorry that a veteran Guru like you is having this issue...it's just not right with all the backup/cloning goodwill that you've provided to the forum over the years. I'm thinking you have a Mobo problem if you can't get one of your clones to fix the issue. Other than that it may be time for a new clean reinstall. It seems I have to do that every 5 years or so on my PC rig, esp with MS and their W10 upgrade philosophy...God knows they've hosed some people with the failed Fall update, and I'm glad they didn't push it out to too many of us. Please do report any answers and results that you find.

[albee1952]

Well....things are going south in a hurry. I popped in the cloned SSD I did from 6 weeks ago. It booted right up, BUT.....PT still loaded veeeeeeeeeeery slow and would not open a session(got the old Program is not Responding message at the top. Digging in to deeper troubleshooting now, but fear that either an interface, or the HDN card may be the cause...................somebody shoot me

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Okay, HP Z820 12 core with Windows 10 Pro and HD/Native. Rig was working dandy but my UPS started beeping like crazy. I had time to save/close Pro Tools. System was copying a bunch of session files from 1 recording drive(not drive C:) to an external backup drive and the UPS killed the rig before I could cancel the file transfer. Why this has become an issue is beyond me, BUT, ever since I re-powered the rig(bypassing the faulty UPS), Pro Tools never opens(it starts but hangs in any of a few places including Initializing DataBases and 2 different 3rd party plugins.

What I have tried:
Trasher-trash Prefs and Database files(empty recycle bin and restart)
Remove all 3rd party plugins from plugins folder
Installed a fresh download of 2018.10 Ultimate(installed over 2018.7 as Windows Add/Remove program would not run the Remove function)
Put on my tinfoil hat, faced north with my right foot off the floor
Prayed to the PT gods and offered up a live chicken

Still cannot get Pro Tools to open. Must I recover the entire system drive???

Mmm I would hope trash prefs would do it.
I would run file system check on the computer and give up pretty quick and do a restore.
Anything interesting getting logged in windows events?


Lots of questions

What make/model system drive?
Were you coping to the system drive?
Why was the UPS beeping?
Do you have Windows set up to auto-shutdown on UPS failure?
Was Windows able to shutdown fully before the PC lost power?

File operations go through main memory (a big unified cache in Windows) and are naturally non-synchronous to disk, just exiting or closing a file does not actually commit data to disk. A developer can force this to happen but I expect Pro Tools cannot do this for performance reasons, and not to all files. So in situations like this that it can be important to know the system shutdown cleanly (which does guarantee everything is flushed to disk) not just that an Application closed. And losing power at just the right time might lead to filesystem corruption, possibly stuff that gets repaired but you lose stuff and it’s not noticed.

And registry changes are similar, not necessarily committed to disk until the system cleanly shuts down... so I would suspect a possible corrupted registry as well here. The failure to uninstall cleanly points to either a registry or file system problem. You might try just restoring the registry from your last backup if not much other stuff was changed. Usual warnings apply. I would just do a full restore.

If don’t use a UPS on my Pro Tools system (because it’s a laptop) but I would get automatic shutdown working with UPSs and practice the shutdown works with your apps that may be running and your UPS is healthy enough to handle the time it takes to do a shutdown with lots of margin.

If you were copying files to the system drive when this happened then there may be lots of outstanding writes to that drice that slow down any file system flush.

SSDs can help by making the file system flush relatively quick compared to a HDD. But amusingly at least part of that write IO in modern SSDs goes to volatile memory in the SSD (backed by a capacitor), that SSD then ensures any writes are made to slow NAND flash begin its capacitor “UPS” runs out of juice.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Well....things are going south in a hurry. I popped in the cloned SSD I did from 6 weeks ago. It booted right up, BUT.....PT still loaded veeeeeeeeeeery slow and would not open a session(got the old Program is not Responding message at the top. Digging in to deeper troubleshooting now, but fear that either an interface, or the HDN card may be the cause...................somebody shoot me

Which part was slow? App initial open? Plugin scan? Session open? Slow reading into disk cache? Start Pro Tools then open the session, look at the disk cache meter while doing that.

What is Windows event viewer telling you?

Is your system booted with all its memory?

Is your UPS sick?, get that fully out of the picture if suspect.

Can you test with motherboard or sound card audio?

[AlexLakis]

For some reason, the term "Prefetch" is ringing in my brain...