Pro Tools not allowing me to open or create a new session

[japhy_rider]

Hey friends, I am completely stumped.

Just upgraded all my software, which I know is a dice roll. Currently:

Pro Tools 2023.12.1
Apple Sonoma 14.3.1
3 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5
72 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Every time I open Pro Tools it loads and gets me to the loading page, and when I try and open a session or load a new one it literally just closes. No crash report, no not responding or anything. Does anyone have an idea of what is happening here?

Thanks

[basslik]

Your ilok plugged in and updated, sync'ed etc.

[japhy_rider]

Yeah, nothing has changed there, both my physical ilok and all cloud licenses are showing active.

[Darryl Ramm]

"Just upgraded all my software"

Is not telling anybody much. What *exactly* have you done? And in what order? What did you upgrade from?

Did you do a full clean install of Sonoma? Did you test Pro Tools worked before reinstalling third party plugins, etc.

Why did you upgrade all this software? Was something not working before you were trying to fix?

You should explain what you did and start by working though the standard troubleshooting steps under "help us help you" up the top of every DUC web page.

What is the Pro Tools log file saying? ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools_* especially compare previous good runs from these that fail.

Make sure you do not have the home directory/documents using iCloud.

If stuck do you have a backup to roll back to? If not then *now* is the time to start doing backups.

[japhy_rider]

Everything worked fine on an old version of PT 2020 with Catalina. I upgraded PT in order to use the new melodyne features instead of having to capture everything like it used to require us to. Once I updated PT is when the issue started, but it was just freezing on boot up and I'd have to force it to quit. Thats when I thought maybe the old IOS was having trouble with the upgraded PT so I upgraded the IOS to Sonoma.

TBH I don't know what a "full clean install" means. I went to my system settings, upgraded and restarted the computer.

Did some digging through the logs and I dont really know what I'm doing in there, but there's no crash log for Pro Tools, seems like it just quits.

I dont have home directory -> icloud

I have session backups of everything if thats what you mean, but my pro tools doesn't work or open in any way at the moment, so I can't really roll back to anything, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

[Darryl Ramm]

Ah some details and it becomes clearer, unfortunately this is a self inflicted cluster****. And I am saying that to try to wake you up you need to pull your head out of the place it is and stop making messes like this. Maybe starting with in future when you are lost just ask here if you need help *before* making changes.

Originally Posted by japhy_rider

Everything worked fine on an old version of PT 2020 with Catalina.


I upgraded PT in order to use the new melodyne features instead of having to capture everything like it used to require us to. Once I updated PT is when the issue started, but it was just freezing on boot up and I'd have to force it to quit.

Before you decide to upgrade Pro Tools you need to check if the version you want to use is compatible with the macOS version your Mac is running. The single place to check is here: https://avidtech.my.salesforce-sites...tibility-Chart

And surprise surprise 2023.12.x is *NOT* compatible with Catalina, and the issue that is the cause of why it's not compatible is the exact problem you saw and, and a work around is listed there. And there are many posts on DUC about this issue I would have hoped you could have Google searched for it and found the cause. It has a simple work around (I think I was one of the first folks to document that). But instead of that fairly simple work around you decided to do an in-situ macOS update going from Catalina to Sonoma, which is not a good idea, and that did not go well.

Thats when I thought maybe the old IOS was having trouble with the upgraded PT so I upgraded the IOS to Sonoma.

***macOS***. The operating system on Mac computers is called macOS, has been for years, before that it was called OS X. iOS is what iPhones run, distantly related not at all the same thing.

Had you checked the compatibility information before upgrading to Sonoma you would have seen that Pro Tools is not supported yet on Sonoma. Which would mean that Avid support will tell you to go pound sand if you try to get help from them. But many of us are running OK with Sonoma with the known issue. Which you can search for and read about.

TBH I don't know what a "full clean install" means. I went to my system settings, upgraded and restarted the computer.

You did an in-situ upgrade, you ran an installer that updated you dirty disgusting abused unwashed fondled installation of macOS and all the apps and plugins and config files and other crap that was on it and that installer updated that system to Sonoma as best as it could leaving all the crap there.

On any significant upgrade like this you should be checking all your plugins are up to date and ideally claimed compatible with the macOS and Pro Tools version…whatever info the vendors give. Many of us will have a spreadsheet of plugin version info to track/update (PT Prefs helps create that). This stuff takes planning to do well/most safely.

A full clean install is when you run an installer and point it to a clean new disk or disk volume and you get a pristine clean install of macOS, you then install latest versions of apps and plugins on that and move over any user documents, sessions etc. you had on the previous install. You then don't have a mess, and you have a config that is actually close to what Avid and other software vendors actually tested their software on.

Did some digging through the logs and I dont really know what I'm doing in there, but there's no crash log for Pro Tools, seems like it just quits.

Nobody mentioned crash logs, I said Pro Tools logs, these get created every time Pro Tools runs, I suggested you compare ones that fail to previous ones that don't. I described where to find the logs. Are there Pro_Tools log files or not? e.g. In Terminal type

$ ls ~/Library/Logs/Avid

($ is the shell command prompt, which will be different on your shell, you don't type that part). This is the under the private Library directory in your home directory (the ~ shorthand). This directory is normally hidden in the Finder. You can Google how to unhide it/get to it in the Finder if you want to.

Are the Log files there or not? Compare the old and new and maybe paste a few tens of lines around where its failing now.

I dont have home directory -> icloud

Good.

I have session backups of everything if thats what you mean, but my pro tools doesn't work or open in any way at the moment, so I can't really roll back to anything, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

If the computer is used for more than just Pro Tools I hope you at least have backups of everything personal on the computer, not just sessions. And you have multiple copies and have tested as best you can that these backups can be recovered from.

But I was not talking about session backups, I was talking about systems backups, so that when it all goes South, you can restore everything on the computer to what you had before. These are often made in addition to having separate backups/archives of sessions. You should probably have multiple copies of systems backups in multiple different place, typically made to removable SSD or HDD. Using something like Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). You should likely just buy CCC, and three or so external drives and work out how to use it. Samsung T7 or T9 are nice USB SSDs (solid state drives), HDD (hard disk drives) are better than SSD for archival backups (like you would do with sessions or masters, private photos etc.).

And before you attempt brain surgery on your computer, like every time you are about to update Pro Tools or macOS, you should probably make a bootable clone of you setup so worse case you can just reboot off the clone and be back running. Or even smarter, make the backup(s) but if you are doing a clean install, do that install to a new SSD or volume on an existing drive, you deliberately don't screw around with you current running system and if there are any problems you just reboot that existing system again. And for in-situ updates you can clone the running system to another volume or drive and update that clone, any problems then you just reboot from the original boot volume.

This is all fairly standard Mac Systems administration stuff, you need to go do some reading and work out how to do this stuff.

--- --- ---

So now you have a system that is a mess, an old system that has been in-situ upgraded from Catalina (or earlier) to Sonoma with all your old crap and plugins in place. Plugins are a frequent cause of problems, and a suspect, here so you are going to try to quickly exclude or include them as suspects using the standard troubleshooting tests.

But I sure would start by checking that all the documents and sessions are actually backed up and those backups are somewhere safe, not attached to the computer. You don't want any a screw up while you are doing other stuff here to harm them.

And then you can run the standard troubleshooting tests described under "help us help you" up the top of every DUC web page. Do everything described there. Start with trashing prefs (use Pete Gates free PT Prefs 2 program to make that easy), and I'd do the test of moving all the plugin files out as the second step. Just see if moving all those plugin files out of the plugin folder lets you get further, if not move onto the next test.

If you do all those standard troubleshooting steps and are still stuck you should just bite the bullet and do a clean macOS install. You run the installer from the current running system but when asked where to install to you select an empty volume or disk. Buy a new SSD and install on that if necessary. Lots and lots of instructions online on how to do a clean macOS install from a running system. Do *NOT* use migration assistant (aka assassin) to move apps, plugins or drivers. You need to manually install all those. Migration assistant can be used to move user accounts.

I have no idea what a "3 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5" mac is, what model name? date code? EMC number? is that. But you work it out, and if it has a T2 chip you will have to Google how to make external drives bootable on a T2 equipped Mac.

And when working with third party/non-Apple SSDs, the first thing you need to do is make sure their bloody firmware is up to date. https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=425632 Including check any drives you have now are up to date (I would never update the firmware on a single copy of anything, make sure you have multiple copies before doing that and test things go OK).

[japhy_rider]

Hahaha, thank you Darryl. I am hereby happy to have been told off in such curmudgeonly fashion. I promise to pull my head out of my ass from here on.

Thanks for the tips. I’ve got it opening now and a few potential plug-in culprits.

[Darryl Ramm]

Great you got going!

Please don't forget to think over the backup stuff so that you end up with at least your sessions and any other documents/photos etc. backup up in multiple locations and removed from the computer.... which you might be doing OK now. But I'd encourage you to also do system backups, especially make bootable clones before doing surgery on the computer software.

And when doing all backups try to find a way to test stuff. A not uncommon mess up with session backups is to end up with some of the audio content not in the session folder and not backed up with them. Careful importing of audio into sessions where the content is always copied into the session folder, and/or use of Save Session Copy In can help there. Copying sessions to cloud storage (I'd zip them up first) as well as to removable SSD/HDD can be a great plan.

The Apple File System (APFS) and its thorough security complicates making bootable backups, well prevents you making a bootable backup and also then incrementally updating that. Best explained by the folks at CCC: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everythi...loner-and-apfs. I would still be using CCC to make new bootable clones prior to doing surgery on a system (I typically just run them the overnight before a major change).

Because of the upgrade history here it might be a good idea to plan your next upgrade to be a full clean install.

[basslik]

Yes clean install is the way.

Yeah I'm surprised he hasn't yet provided the info you mentioned regarding what his specs are.


That's great you are up and running.


Never hurts to have back up SSD's with different combo's to just drop in and keep working.