"Not valid 64 bit AAX plug-ins" - almost all 3rd party plugins suddenly corrupt

[noiseboyuk]

An evening from hell. What started as an issue in 2018.7 with Strip Silence failing to work - thread here http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=402509 - has descended to some whole other level.

I started just deleting the prefs folder, as per standard Avid instructions. On relaunch, it crashed on loading a VSL plugin. I decided to then just uninstall .7 and try .12. Exact same problem. I then did the full uninstall - everything - and tried again with .12. Exact same problem. I moved the offending plugin to Unused and tried again. Another one tripped. Then almost all iZotope plugins. Finally I got it to load, and I got presented with a dialogue telling me "The following plug-ins failed to load because they are not valid 64 bit AAX plug-ins" - with a list of pretty much everything I own. Of the few it left, mostly Waves, some load, some cause Exception errors.

Clearly something major is wrong.

I'm getting desperate, I'm mid important gig. I've totally wiped PT and started again with the same problem. And as a background, I'd not changed anything in PT for months, everything working great until this Strip Silence glitch. Even Strip Silence worked last week.

Tiny consolation - Strip Silence is about the only thing that DOES now work.

But any suggestions as to how to restore all my 3rd party plugs VERY gratefully received.

Win 10 Pro 64 bit. RME Babyface.

[noiseboyuk]

Poof - everything came back. Having finally loaded PT in its severely crippled state, I thought I'd start my next round of experiments by seeing how the plugins that previously loaded with exception errors behaved, loading them one at a time. Everything worked. I restored all the other problem ones - everything works.

I mean... what?! In 2018.7 something went screwy with the prefs that caused the Strip Silence bug. But as a knock on, it affected PT scanning / loading plugins correctly, causing crashes on loading the program, that somehow even affected a different version on a clean install. Once it loaded in its crippled state, it misbehaved until I ended up having to kill the process in Task Manager. And from then on, it's started behaving perfectly again.

if everything stays like this I'm clearly delighted, but what has caused all this madness and what has made it stop?

Terrifying...

[amagras]

That's normal after thrashing prefs, restart the computer a 2 or 3 times.

[The Weed]

If you have a lot - and I mean a lot - of plug-ins, it does sometimes take 2 or 3 starts of Pro Tools for it to initially scan all the plug-ins.

Might be time to get serious about making images or clones to get back to a working system when you run into trouble.

[noiseboyuk]

Thanks all - yes, my clone disk is now smaller than the space taken on my C drive, I need to sort that.

amagras - tell me more, so this kind of crazy drunken state on a fresh install is normal after trashing prefs? If so its the news I want to hear, reassures me that I shoudn't get a repeat of it. My new workflow after trashing prefs might be to move out ALL plugins on a first launch, and only then once its up and running put them back.

[amagras]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

amagras - tell me more, so this kind of crazy drunken state on a fresh install is normal after trashing prefs? If so its the news I want to hear, reassures me that I shoudn't get a repeat of it. My new workflow after trashing prefs might be to move out ALL plugins on a first launch, and only then once its up and running put them back.

The Weed above explained it. You need to give PT time to scan everything correctly. One way to avoid this is saving a copy of your uncorrupted preferences, etc with Thrasher or the app Peter made for Mac.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by amagras

The Weed above explained it. You need to give PT time to scan everything correctly. One way to avoid this is saving a copy of your uncorrupted preferences, etc with Thrasher or the app Peter made for Mac.

Would what happen is it would launch, scan normally until a certain point where it would hang for a while then poof crash to desktop. It would do so at the same point until that plugin was removed. After a while it moved to cascading errors on a particular plugin, where it would complain with an error dialog - clicking OK would tend to repeat the error half a dozen times and then crash to desktop. I then started removing great swathes of plugins until it actually loaded - might be a dozen or more attempts to get this far - then it presented me with a very long list of most of the other plugins that it appeared to have loaded ok but hadn't. Of the few that made it through, most seemed to cause exception errors.

I don't think I was unduly impatient - I think I'd still be there now had I not removed plugins.

So in terms of future-proofing, I guess its best to save a copy of preferences every time you change anything (?)

[Southsidemusic]

When you trash preferences you trash a file called .plist so if you dont want to re-read in all your plugins everytime you trash prefs then find the .plist file and put ot on the desktop for example when trashing prefs and after that just put it back. Thats what we do when we need to do a quick trashing.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

When you trash preferences you trash a file called .plist so if you dont want to re-read in all your plugins everytime you trash prefs then find the .plist file and put ot on the desktop for example when trashing prefs and after that just put it back. Thats what we do when we need to do a quick trashing.

Thanks for the tip - I guess putting back a file runs a theoretical risk of putting back the very thing that caused the problem in the first place? Or are the problems rarely related to the .plist file?

[ChuckS]

On the PC the file is named InstalledAAXPlugins and resides here: C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Pro Tools
It's named the same on a Mac and located in your user preferences folder for PT.
If you want to intentionally rescan your plugs just delete that file.