Very fragile, many crashes on 2009 iMac/Yosemite

[steve.rawley]

ProTools | First 12.1, late 2009 iMac running Yosemite, built-in audo (for now).

About 50% of the time, startup crashes from splash screen. About 25% of the time, start up hangs. The other 25% of the time, it successfully logs in and proceeds to project window. Once I create a project, I get random crashes, and can't make any real progress recording. (This Mac isn't packed with RAM, but these crashes don't appear to be out-of-memory issues.)

After all the wait, ProTools | First seems basically unusable on my machine.

I will likely upgrade the Mac eventually, and I'd like to step up to a paid version of PT, but this doesn't bode well.

Is this a Mac issue, a hardware issue, or is ProTools | First just this flaky? Are the paid versions any better? (FWIW, I used ProTools 8 on Windows way back when, and it was much more stable.)

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by steve.rawley

ProTools | First 12.1, late 2009 iMac running Yosemite, built-in audo (for now).

About 50% of the time, startup crashes from splash screen. About 25% of the time, start up hangs. The other 25% of the time, it successfully logs in and proceeds to project window. Once I create a project, I get random crashes, and can't make any real progress recording. (This Mac isn't packed with RAM, but these crashes don't appear to be out-of-memory issues.)

After all the wait, ProTools | First seems basically unusable on my machine.

I will likely upgrade the Mac eventually, and I'd like to step up to a paid version of PT, but this doesn't bode well.

Is this a Mac issue, a hardware issue, or is ProTools | First just this flaky? Are the paid versions any better? (FWIW, I used ProTools 8 on Windows way back when, and it was much more stable.)

Hi steve.rawley,
Can I ask what version of Yosemite, you're running PT First on? it might be a compatibility issue, here are the lists of OS compatible with PT First. http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/c...m-Requirements
Hope this helps.

Best Regards!
Tope

[steve.rawley]

OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz, 4 GB RAM.

So within spec, yes?

[jgdeschamps]

How old is your iMac's HD? PT First will surely stress your internal HD.
Could it be that the HD is starting to show signs of failure? Have you run Disk Utility, fixed permissions and checked your HD's S.M.A.R.T. status?
Have you noticed any sort of weird, slow or erratic behavior when using the Finder?

[steve.rawley]

Originally Posted by jgdeschamps

How old is your iMac's HD? PT First will surely stress your internal HD.
Could it be that the HD is starting to show signs of failure? Have you run Disk Utility, fixed permissions and checked your HD's S.M.A.R.T. status?
Have you noticed any sort of weird, slow or erratic behavior when using the Finder?

Thanks; I'll run a SMART diagnostic tonight. I'm actually thinking of putting in an SSD anyway, so that would be a good excuse. Also, I was having issues with my external TimeMachine disk, which seems to have smoothed out. This probably had the machine in high I/O wait, which would have affected everything.

Still, seems like PT should throw an error instead of crashing if it has a disk IO issue.

thanks again

[jgdeschamps]

No problem, Steve.
I have a 2008 iMac and it's running PT First quite well, though I changed the HD last year due to symptoms similar to yours that happened when using basically any piece of software in my machine. I hope it's not your HD failing 'cause losing info and/or restoring you system is no stroll in the park. Good luck!

[steve.rawley]

Originally Posted by jgdeschamps

No problem, Steve.
I have a 2008 iMac and it's running PT First quite well, though I changed the HD last year due to symptoms similar to yours that happened when using basically any piece of software in my machine. I hope it's not your HD failing 'cause losing info and/or restoring you system is no stroll in the park. Good luck!

Main HD checks out clean. I still got 1 crash at startup last night, then was able to start and run for an hour or two and record several tracks without crashing. At this point, I'm assuming a combo of my TimeMachine HD causing I/O waits and PT being especially flaky when I/O is flaky.

Not a great re-intro to PT, but I'm hopeful things go more smoothly from here (esp. once I get any and all hardware issues straight).