Pro Tools 10 Not Responding - Slow Launch

[macdonaldr93]

Hey there,

Computer: Mac Pro (i7, 32 GB of RAM, 500GB drive for OSX and a 1 TB work drive)

Pro Tools version: 10.3.8 Native

Hardware: M-Audio ProFire 2626

When I start the application, it takes a minimum of 5-8 minutes to open the first Pro Tools loading screen. During that time, the application becomes unresponsive and then randomly loads. Once the initial load screen is up, it becomes unresponsive again for several minutes, and then the load time for the plugins is extremely slow. And this continues slowness continues until I have a session open. Once I have a session open Pro Tools works fine... it's just waiting 10-15 minutes to open a session is a little crazy.

I've tried a clean uninstall and reinstall of Pro Tools and it didn't seem to change anything. I have other DAWs on my Mac Pro and they all run fine.

What can I do to give more information? Or, if someone just straight up knows how to fix this, that would be great too :)

[gravol]

Seems like you have kinda the same problem as me but even worse.
Is it launching ok if you go through the whole process, quit PT and relaunch?
My thread is just below yours. Some tips in there that I've tried already, maybe something can help you.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by macdonaldr93

Hey there,

Computer: Mac Pro (i7, 32 GB of RAM, 500GB drive for OSX and a 1 TB work drive)

Pro Tools version: 10.3.8 Native

Hardware: M-Audio ProFire 2626

When I start the application, it takes a minimum of 5-8 minutes to open the first Pro Tools loading screen. During that time, the application becomes unresponsive and then randomly loads. Once the initial load screen is up, it becomes unresponsive again for several minutes, and then the load time for the plugins is extremely slow. And this continues slowness continues until I have a session open. Once I have a session open Pro Tools works fine... it's just waiting 10-15 minutes to open a session is a little crazy.

I've tried a clean uninstall and reinstall of Pro Tools and it didn't seem to change anything. I have other DAWs on my Mac Pro and they all run fine.

What can I do to give more information? Or, if someone just straight up knows how to fix this, that would be great too :)

Need more specifics of your system. Like:
What specific Mac do you have?
You mentioned you have an i7 cpu but not speed and number of cores.
What version of OSX? If it's Mavericks then that's part of the problem as PT10 any version is not approved for Mavericks.
What are the rpm speeds of your drives?
Is your system drive a Fusion drive? Those have proven problematical with PT.
Are any of your drives 'green' drives? Not good for working in PT.
Have you optimized your system by doing such things as turning off Spotlight, unnecessary networking particularly anything wireless, disabled sleep on your system and drives? What other programs do you have running when trying to work in PT?

Just because other daw software works okay on your computer doesn't mean PT will work because it has some very stringent system requirements.

[macdonaldr93]

Sorry about the super long delay to me answering.

I have a Mac Pro early 2008. It's has 3 Ghz processor, 8 core.

I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.5.

My drives are enterprise class with 32 MB of cache. I believe they're 7200 rpm. They are just normal drives. Not fusion or SSD. The label is green on my drive... If that's what you mean by "Green" drives. That's the colour for Western Digital's enterprise drives.

I've optimized my system and I don't running anything other than my ProFire 2626 DSP software.

Thanks for your time!

Also, I looked at the other thread and it didn't really help me.

[clutch]

Having a quick poke about google images, it seems that Western Digital's drives with green labels are actually "green" drives. Does it say "green" on the bottom of the label?
If it's only your work drive it shouldn't have a huge impact on the application startup time though...

Maybe open up the Console and Activity Monitor applications in Utilities and take a look to see if anything else is happening during startup, and whether any errors are being dumped to the logs.

Have you repaired your disk permissions after installing PT10.3.8?
Tried a clean uninstall/re-install of Protools? Trashed prefs and DBs etc?

[macdonaldr93]

So do you think it's my drive causing the slowness? Now that I think about it, this came up around when I switched my drives.

I'll take a look at the console and activity monitor and let you know.

I've tried repair, clean uninstall reinstall (with removing all plugins and everything). And I haven't tried trashing prefs and DBs. I'm not sure how to do that. Do you think that would cause a slow startup?

I also noticed plugins are slow to initialize. It's basically the first time anything runs

[clutch]

The clean install should get rid of the prefs, but the quickest and easiest way to trash your prefs and DBs is with the helper app linked here: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=340741.

The green drives spin down during quiet times to the save the environment, so they're not great for PT.

Definitely worth watching logs while it's loading up to see if you can get an idea of what's causing the slowdown.

[macdonaldr93]

Okay thanks. I'll check that out. I

just watched Activity Monitor on open and nothing spikes or like clips or anything. My cpu sat around 90% idle the whole time.

And I've attached a screenshot of the logs. I viewed all messages and inserted a marker so that I'd know what came after opening it.

[clutch]

That's pretty unreadable unfortunately. Also, you should be watching the "All messages" list at the top.

[macdonaldr93]

I was on all messaged I just saved the log and only copied what was after the mark I made before starting pro tools.

I also managed to grab the report from when the Application is Not Responding. Maybe this would help... I'm not sure. Would you like me to attach it?