Pro Tools 2020.5 GUI FREAK OUT on Windows 10

[blinches]

Wow is this still happening to you guys? Seems like a long time issue, I just had my GUI freak out on my Windows machine. It happens randomly. This machine is a beast i9 9900k. Disabled hyperthreading bla bla bla in BIOS, all the the recommendations from Avid. My support is going to end in the end of September. Is this the reason to get the subscription? So you can get bugs fixed? lol. I’m sad.

[mkosacek]

bugs fixed? I'm still waiting...

[ejinbc]

mkosacek

Looking quickly through the posts here...

A suggestion (I did not see this covered) is you might be hitting a thermal limit on the Dell motherboard during the bounce. The Dell system you are using is not that powerful and was likey designed to be a 'home office' computer.

So a quick test could be to remove the case and point the best fan(s) you have at the motherboard and any heat sinks you can see. This will temporarily improve the cooling so you can run a test.

I run an 8700K overclocked to 4.8 GHz and it runs 2020.5 like a dream - most stable version yet - but I never run scaling on the 4K video as per some earlier posts in the thread as I have found that to unreliably switch back after exiting ProTools - dunno why.

BTW, the Affinity Switch might be helping here by simply shutting down a core or two so the system runs cooler. I think Processor Affinity should only solve low latency performance not the problems you are suggesting.

On these older Dell systems you could be cooking the RAM, video card or some other component on the motherboard. Does the problem occur if you try to run a set of benchmarks ?

I would look at cooling, not necessarily cooling of the processor, could be almost any component on the MB.

Hope that helps.

ejinbc

[mkosacek]

it's definitely not a thermal issue and the system is not that old (2 years). I can run 2019.12 every day with no video corruption issues like I saw with 2020.3 and 2020.5. Avid support did mention there is a new version coming soon that may have some fixes so I am again hopeful but not holding my breath either.

[ejinbc]

"it's definitely not a thermal issue and the system is not that old (2 years)"...

M

OK, couple more questions in the spirit of trying to help...

Does your BIOS allow you to set an AVX offset ? This can be very important for Pro Tools and could push the system to crash or act 'funny'.

> Try an AVX offset of -2

If you can't set AVX offset, you could try a 10% under-clock to see if stability improves.

Does your system pass stress testing ? I use this methodology:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...uide,5461.html

Watch temperatures, and look for weirdness as you might observe with PT.

Only trying to help. But, with 1000s of PT installs out there, and your system is a very standard vanilla configuration, your problem is very likely something to do with your hardware. Only trying to help. YMMV.



ejinbc

[mkosacek]

so I loaded up 2020.9 and it does the exact same thing. I sent the pro tools log to support. it clearly shows I started the bounce, then some time later it logs "assertion" (in dfw_imagerenderer.cpp) which means something went wrong... the bounce completes but then I cannot always read the screen (it's scrambled) so I have to save and exit by hot keys.

and no, the Dell XPS 8920 BIOS does not give me an option for AVX settings.

I'm going to look to see if my system can support 2 monitors without the Nvidia GT730 card (and if so I will try that). Or I may try a new graphics card just to see if the results are different.

[mkosacek]

tonight I reduced to one monitor and still saw the same issue. then I moved that one monitor to the built-in Intel 630 graphics port (instead of the Nvidia GeForce GT 730 card) and I still saw the problem. that surprised me a bit.

So for me that rules out the Nvidia card/drivers, but seems like I have some other possible software incompatibility. So I will probably take a different SSD and reload Windows and Pro Tools 2020.9 (and required software like the UAD drivers for my Apollo interface) from scratch to see if I see the same thing. If not, then I'll start loading other programs/plugins and hope for the best... but if the brand new install still fails, then I go back to 2019.12 again. :-(

[mkosacek]

unfortunately for me, even after installing a brand new copy of windows 10 (build 2004) and then only installing the UAD drivers and plugins (9.12.2), Quicktime 7.7.9 (because PT complains if you don't) Pro Tools 2020.9, the most recent "FirstAir instruments" and 7zip (so I could unzip some packages) I still saw the same problem.

Ugghh. back to 2019.12 again.

[domilik]

so, I am also on board with that...

Built a new machine with a i9-9900K and a GTX 1650 card. Windows 10 Pro and 64GB Ram. Pro Tools 2020.9

Once or twice a day, Pro Tools GUI gets messed up (like in screenshots of other users) und usually quits after a very few seconds. Most times at least enough time so that I can fire up a save-session via shortcut...

Never had issues like that on my other/previous systems and also already did a full new re-install of everything (incl Win) after facing this problems for the last weeks. But obviously that didn't help.

Puh.

[Drywsef]

I posted a thread on this too. Several of us are having this issue and I reproduced it for an Avid rep during a remote session a few months back. I don't know if the issue has been "officially" recognized yet.