PT 23.12 won’t boot all the way

[anassau]

Pro tools starts to load. It gets about 75% done then the start up screen disappears and doesn’t load PT. Any ideas? Do I need to reinstall PT Studio? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[Darryl Ramm]

What changed?

Did Windows auto-update? Is your system fully optimized?

I have no idea how to interpret what 75% means. What *exactly* do you see on the screen? If Pro Tools is loading plugins what was the current plugin displayed in the splash screen... and the previous one... make sure you try moving those plugins out of the plugin folder.

If Pro Tools appears to load all plugins then the next likely cause is a problematic audio interface/playback engine. You should be using your Apollo Twin as the playback engine and that should be dedicated to Pro Tools with Windows systems sound and all other apps using the Windows PC sound card/device. Hold down the 'N' key whole Pro Tools starts up and if gets to the Playback Engine dialog panel then make sure the UAD Apollo is selected as the playback engine. Don't assume, check, Pro Tools can go and change this on you.

Standard troubleshooting directions are under "help us help you" up the top of each DUC web page. You should be just working though that before even asking here. Make sure you start with trashing prefs and make sure you test by moving *all* plugin files out of the plugin folder and test from a newly created admin account. Do all those thing cumulatively, simplifying your setup as you go, don't say put back plugin files, keep them removed.

Reinstalling Pro Tools is frequently a waste of time and one of the last things to try.

[midnightrambler]

Take all your plug-ins out of your plug-ins folder and put them back a few at a time. I've had this problem every time I've installed a new version and/or trashed prefs for as long as I can remember. Maybe I've got too any plug-ins, I dunno.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Maybe I've got too any plug-ins, I dunno.

Is that possible

[sw rec]

If memory serves, earlier incarnations of PT indeed had a “too many plugins” limit (agreed, Albee!!), so if you were allowed “x” plugins, the boot would hang on x+1.
Thankfully, you only had to do this once….move all the plugins PAST where it was hanging to the unused plugins folder, boot Pro Tools, close Pro Tools, put plugins back, boot Pro Tools. Can’t recall which exact version had this odd little problem, but this might be exactly what you’re experiencing.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

What changed?

Great question, and any other speculation is just popcorn until OP gives system specs.

[anassau]

@midnightrambler & DR Your solution worked to move all the plugins and reload them a few at a time. What a pain. It turns out that Melodyne 5 was causing the startup to crash. I reloaded it fresh and everything seems to be ok for right now.

Is there any key or something that you can hold down while PT is loading to see what is going on? All I have is the status bar at the bottom that goes from L to R while it is booting up. The little Waves logo spins while those plugins load but it doesn't show anything else.

Something must have gotten corrupted when I upgraded from windows 10 to 11 yesterday. Its been a hellish week upgrading my box but I am now in the 2020's and PT shows I have 24 available cores! i7-13700K 64 GB Ram x790 MB. I was using a gen 2 i5 chip before with 4 cores. It was 12 years old.

Thanks for the help!

[Darryl Ramm]

I never said move one plugin at a time, that is an inefficient way to do this.

If this problem was a typical plugin load issue you where Pro Tools hangs while loading plugins it will typically be the plugin name you see loading in the splash screen, or the one just prior to that, or sometimes the next one. You can work out what they are and remove them as a test.

Sometimes plugins have a delayed response and will cause problems later in the startup, especially say if their problem is a memory leak.

If you have to treat all plugins as suspect them move them in large batches doing a binary walk. Put ~half back, if the problem is there, remove ~half of them and so on. Much more efficient (O(Log n) vs O(n)), but you need a spreadsheet or similar, maybe work by manufacturer as first test.

Who knows what happened, many common "corruption" problems are solved by trashing prefs. Make sure you have the latest Celeomony version installed/with latest bug fixes etc.

[take77]

Originally Posted by anassau

Is there any key or something that you can hold down while PT is loading to see what is going on? All I have is the status bar at the bottom that goes from L to R while it is booting up. The little Waves logo spins while those plugins load but it doesn't show anything else.

Thanks for the help!

Dark mode shows the list of items being scanned and stage of the startup process.
Classic mode only shows the white progress bar.