Pro Tools doesn't launch. Nothing helps

[Kinst]

Hi all!

I have upgraded to Sonoma recently and everything was ok at first. Pro Tools was working fine but suddenly it stopped. Now it doesn’t want to launch. It shows the splash screen and it disappears after the while and that's it.

I have tried to trash preferences, to press N, uninstall PT, reinstall it (different versions). Nothing helped. Only If I create a new mac user account it launches and works fine.

MPB 14, M1. Sonoma. Pro Tools 2023.12.1. I use Pro Tools in Rosetta mode but it doesn’t matter, It doesn’t want to work in ARM mode too.

Here is the log file. Can anyone figure out what's going on?

[its2loud]

Why did you update to Sonoma? Pro Tools is not supported on Sonoma. I suggested reverting back to Ventura or wherever you were before updating.

[Kinst]

Originally Posted by its2loud

Why did you update to Sonoma? Pro Tools is not supported on Sonoma. I suggested reverting back to Ventura or wherever you were before updating.

Thank you for replying. it will be difficult to do. But it works on Sonoma. If I create a new account it works. I think it's something else. I had installed SonoBus app before it. But Pro tools worked that evening.

[Darryl Ramm]

So you can work though the differences in the accounts.

Make sure you trash prefs in the old account properly (use Pete Gate's PT Prefs utility). One of the reasons to get folks to test stuff in a new account is to see if the prefs were really trashed prefs OK... but there are other reasons as well.

Try Disabling uneeded start up/background apps. Easier on Sonoma with Systems Settings> General>Login Items.

Checking file/user ID etc. permissions.

Anything else different going on, different external drives/NAS mounting etc.

Make sure the account is not using iCloud for home directory/Documents. Just don't ever do that.

(and as you have helped show, uninstalling and reinstalling Pro Tools rarely helps, so one of the very last things to try.)

[Kinst]

Thanks for the answer!

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Make sure you trash prefs in the old account properly (use Pete Gate's PT Prefs utility). One of the reasons to get folks to test stuff in a new account is to see if the prefs were really trashed prefs OK... but there are other reasons as well.

I used this utility. I also did it manually.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Try Disabling uneeded start up/background apps. Easier on Sonoma with Systems Settings> General>Login Items.

I booted into the safe mode where only the essentials are loaded.

[Kinst]

Originally Posted by its2loud

Why did you update to Sonoma? Pro Tools is not supported on Sonoma. I suggested reverting back to Ventura or wherever you were before updating.

Does anyone know if I can downgrade to Ventura and keep all the data?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Kinst

I booted into the safe mode where only the essentials are loaded.

....And? What happened?

If you created an new account and stuff worked from there as you said before then worse case you keep working here while moving other stuff to that account.

I suggested a bunch of things to try what happened for all those? You need to try to explain in longer clear descriptions exactly what you have tried/done and what exactly is going on.

Why do you want to roll back to Ventura?

No you can't just "downgrade" like rollback an installation. You can do a clean install of Ventura or you can recover to a backup if you have one.

If you don't have backups... after you finish slapping yourself in the head... you can do a clean new install of Ventura on a spare volume or drive. Do that instead of messing with your current install and potentially deleting/destroying anything there. Leave that alone, get a clean new install, ideally manually install all the apps and plugins you need there, use migration assistant to only move over user accounts (not apps and plugins) from the old volume. Test things as you go.

Of course if you have backups just recover from those, but I'm guessing you don't have backups, so don't do anything destructive now to the internal drive volume you have your stuff on.

You do need to sort out your backups, so maybe do that right now. At a minimum use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your boot drive. So you'll need to buy a few external SSD to backup to and one as the new boot drive. Samsung T7 or T9 might be a good choice. And once you are stable on the external boot drive you can clone that over your internal SSD. If you have a large internal SSD you can create a new container/volume on that and install Ventura there. M1 Macs do have known issues with USB SSD performance, you could go with more expensive/complex Thunderbolt external SSD is you want (M.2 SSD cards in a chassis/dock).

You download the installer to your current running system and run it, when asked you select where to install to you select the other volume to install on. And for a Apple Silicon Mac you need to do some magic to enable external boot. All this stuff is well described on the Interwebs, nothing specific to Pro Tools here.

[Darryl Ramm]

It's great you already trashed prefs, but make sure in doing that you did delete the plugin cache file.

It's often a good clue if you look at what the difference you see in the log file with Pro Tools when it works... which would tell you a lot here.

What Pro Tools is doing at the point it fails in the log file is checking if the core plugin files are in the Pro Tools plugin folder (/Library/Application\ Support/Avid/audio/Plug-Ins). If not it copies any missing from there from the hidden stash inside the app bundle (/Applications/Pro Tools.app/Contents/PlugIns/Core Plug-Ins). And then it gets an access violation... but where is the rest of the stack trace? If there is not more in the log file was there an application crash file created. A stack trace is likely to give useful information here.

What are the core plugins?.. you can look in the app bundle with Terminal and see the core plugins at /Applications/Pro Tools.app/Contents/PlugIns/Core Plug-Ins).

So obvious troubleshooting question is are the core plugins actually in the Pro Tools plugin folder or not? /Library/Application\ Support/Avid/audio/Plug-Ins .. or if not is the problem cased by Pro Tools trying to copy them there?

Is the user account that is having problems able to read those plugin files? e.g. copy one to somewhere else? Able to delete them? If nothing else rename/move the entire Plug-Ins folder to another name and start Pro Tools, it should create the empty folder and copy in the Core and Systems plugins.

This is not stuff Pro Tools will typically just fail at, or is typically suspect for being caused by a Pro Tools bug, it's likely a sign you have something very messed up on your system or with that account that Pro Tools does not run from.

[Kinst]

Hello Darryl! Thank you a lot for the detailed answer!

I wouldn’t like to move to another account. There is a lot of stuff I’d need to move, to register. Some of my plugins have been bought in cooperation with other people and it would be undesirable to go this circle once again especially that I don’t know the reason why it has broken down.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Of course if you have backups just recover from those, but I'm guessing you don't have backups, so don't do anything destructive now to the internal drive volume you have your stuff on.

This time I bought a MacBook instead of a desktop computer and I’m very happy with it except for the impossibility of using the Time Machine If I had the backups I would recover from it of course. But I don’t . It’s inconvenient enough to connect an external disk every time I use the computer. And in fact I hadn’t had any big problems that I couldn’t solve before. The memory card I had bought is used by me to extend the drive space. So I have no possibility to back up my data.

[Kinst]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I suggested a bunch of things to try what happened for all those? You need to try to explain in longer clear descriptions exactly what you have tried/done and what exactly is going on.

I booted into the Safe mode and the result was the same. As I understand Safe mode provides booting the essential things only so I don’t need to remove or exclude all the stuff and utilities I have in my system from the auto load mode in order to see if something behaves incorrectly.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

It's great you already trashed prefs, but make sure in doing that you did delete the plugin cache file.

I trashed prefs manually from ~/Library/Preferences/Avid and I did it with Greg’s lovely utility. And I trashed prefs one by one in advanced mode of Greg’s utility. Nothing has helped. Maybe there is another location where I should remove something from?

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

What are the core plugins?.. you can look in the app bundle with Terminal and see the core plugins at /Applications/Pro Tools.app/Contents/PlugIns/Core Plug-Ins).

So obvious troubleshooting question is are the core plugins actually in the Pro Tools plugin folder or not? /Library/Application\ Support/Avid/audio/Plug-Ins .. or if not is the problem cased by Pro Tools trying to copy them there?

Is the user account that is having problems able to read those plugin files? e.g. copy one to somewhere else? Able to delete them? If nothing else rename/move the entire Plug-Ins folder to another name and start Pro Tools, it should create the empty folder and copy in the Core and Systems plugins.

I tried to move plugins to Plug-Ins (Unused) folder and this hasn’t helped. Pro tools installed the core plugins and also refused to boot. I have tried to copy and move these plugins and I haven’t faced some troubles.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

It's often a good clue if you look at what the difference you see in the log file with Pro Tools when it works... which would tell you a lot here.

What Pro Tools is doing at the point it fails in the log file is checking if the core plugin files are in the Pro Tools plugin folder (/Library/Application\ Support/Avid/audio/Plug-Ins). If not it copies any missing from there from the hidden stash inside the app bundle (/Applications/Pro Tools.app/Contents/PlugIns/Core Plug-Ins). And then it gets an access violation... but where is the rest of the stack trace? If there is not more in the log file was there an application crash file created. A stack trace is likely to give useful information here.

I discovered these words «access violation» and «stack trace» you had mentioned in the log file. I don’t know what to do with that.

I have attached a screenshot of the ending of unsucceeded boot in a log file. And I attach a screenshot of the same place in the successful booting of a log file too. (I highlighted this place with empty space). Do you have any ideas?