Pro Tools 2019 hanging on my new PC

[Suddenly Clear]

I'm depressed having to write this.

I finally bought a new PC with music production in mind. I had been struggling for years on my old PC. Unfortunately, on my new computer, Pro Tools either hangs or starts crawling when I open a project from my previous PC - that is the strange part about it. I'm not a very technical person, but I had a look at the Event Viewer and found two separate error logs, which I've reproduced below:

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Hang
Date: 09/06/2019 20:15:17
Event ID: 1002
Task Category: (101)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: DESKTOP-01GRDJ5
Description:
The program ProTools.exe version 19.5.0.322 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
Process ID: 2020
Start Time: 01d51ef696ec8f72
Termination Time: 26
Application Path: C:\Program Files\Avid\Pro Tools\ProTools.exe
Report Id: 9dc30fa7-32bc-48e0-bc59-015c2e5f7052
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Application Hang" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1002</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>101</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2019-06-09T19:15:17.378284800Z" />
<EventRecordID>6515</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>DESKTOP-01GRDJ5</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>ProTools.exe</Data>
<Data>19.5.0.322</Data>
<Data>2020</Data>
<Data>01d51ef696ec8f72</Data>
<Data>26</Data>
<Data>C:\Program Files\Avid\Pro Tools\ProTools.exe</Data>
<Data>9dc30fa7-32bc-48e0-bc59-015c2e5f7052</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Binary>55006E006B006E006F0077006E0000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

--

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Date: 09/06/2019 18:31:10
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: DESKTOP-01GRDJ5
Description:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: AppHangTransient
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: ProTools.exe
P2: 19.5.0.322
P3: 5cce2c7a
P4: unknown
P5: unknown
P6: unknown
P7: unknown
P8:
P9:
P10:

Attached files:
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8B6.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8C7.tmp.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8C6.tmp.csv
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8D7.tmp.txt

These files may be available here:


Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: dad2b9dc-9f3e-4bbb-93e9-8f8f943bebbf
Report Status: 2049
Hashed bucket:
Cab Guid: 0
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Windows Error Reporting" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1001</EventID>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2019-06-09T17:31:10.585909800Z" />
<EventRecordID>6485</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>DESKTOP-01GRDJ5</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>0</Data>
<Data>AppHangTransient</Data>
<Data>Not available</Data>
<Data>0</Data>
<Data>ProTools.exe</Data>
<Data>19.5.0.322</Data>
<Data>5cce2c7a</Data>
<Data>unknown</Data>
<Data>unknown</Data>
<Data>unknown</Data>
<Data>unknown</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8B6.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8C7.tmp.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8C6.tmp.csv
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERB 8D7.tmp.txt</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>0</Data>
<Data>dad2b9dc-9f3e-4bbb-93e9-8f8f943bebbf</Data>
<Data>2049</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

--

As well as these, I do wonder about Esent 916, which is often what I find reported when Pro Tools has gone slow rather than crashed. It can say "not responding", or crawls, such as when saving the project.

Here is my new spec:

System Details:

- ROG STRIX Z390-F GAMING LGA1151 ATX Motherboard
- 9th Gen Core i7 9700K 3.6GHz 8C/8T 95W 12MB Coffee Lake CPU
- Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) Memory Kit
- Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti KalmX 4GB Fanless Graphics Card
- Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/3200)
- Seagate BarraCuda 1TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive HDD
- Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Audio Interfaces: 1. Presonus 1824 (primary) 2. Eleven Rack (via 1824 S/PDIF) 3. Fast Track C400 (connected to the PC for USB powered use).

Thanks

[Darryl Ramm]

Thanks for the event info.

Something is not making sense here. When does Pro Tools hang? When you start the app, or only once you open a session... all your existing sessions? Or only with specific ones.

If it hangs how do you get to it crawling at other times?

The easy ways to get awful and erratic periodic hanging type performance is to have an optical disc in the CD or DVD-ROM drive. Or to have floppy drives in Windows... even if you don’t have any actual floppy drives. Eject any media from optical drives, and go into Device Manager and delete any floppy drives. ... I think this is still an issue in 2019.5.

Post a SiSoft Sandra report. Described in troubleshooting under “help us help you” up the top of each DUC web page. Look at other Sandra posts here to see what we expect.

What exactly do you see on the screen? Do you see the Pro Tools splash screen? See the plugins start to load? Finish?

Did you install any third part plugins? If so move all the .aaxplugin files out of the plugin folder, trash prefs, and restart Pro Tools.

Try holding down the ‘N’ key and keep it held down while Pro Tools is starting.. until you get the playback engine dialog appearing. Then select the correct playback engine. Do you ever see that dialog panel?

Have you tried trashing prefs?

What happens if you create a new empty session and work from there?

What sample rate are you working at? Set your IO buffer size as large as possible. Uncheck ignore errors. Set disk cache to several GB, and make sure by watching the disk cache meter, that sessions fully load/meter goes green and once that happens then test.

What file systems are on all the drives you are using? They need to all be NTFS, not FAT32 or exFAT. Disconnect any removable HDD/SSD you don't need.

[Suddenly Clear]

Hi Darryl,

Thank you for your reply. I'll try and answer your questions in due course. In the meantime, I think I've found the crux of the problem. System usage is reporting CPU at 100% in Pro Tools. While Task Manager has it at only 6%. I managed to capture this in the pic:



This is from an existing project created on my previous PC; new ones seem to be fine in the limited testing I've done.

[Suddenly Clear]

I'm pleased to report this is no longer a big issue - it's confined to a template I made. After reading Darryl's questions, I thought I'd start by opening old projects and, to my surprise, they were fine. I then went back to a recent project with the issue and that was fine! I then opened the aforementioned template which was saved as a project and the issue was back. After a reboot, I opened the recent project again and that was good. Opened the template project and the problem was there once more. I don't know if it's just corrupt or I've done something, but I'm now just going to delete it out of existence...

If I'm being premature and the problem returns, I'll let you know, but fingers crossed, it's something to do with this template.

Thank you to Darryl for taking the time to reply and help.