8 Pro tools crashes in 1 day?!!?

[iamnightfall]

I'm ready to throw my computer out the window. So sick and tired of pro tools crashing on me. I can open a session...immediately crash.....turn polyphonic on...crash. Its always random when it does it. I almost make my edits slowly just waiting on that awful studder sound.....then restart, and pick up where I left off. Making my stomach turn in knots. I'm running 10.6.8 on a mac pro 8 core. Pro tools 10.3.7. Started seeing a "pro tools is critically low on memory" error message as well. I just upgraded a few days ago to 10.3.7....think this is causing it? Yesterday I was working off a different internal drive and no crashes, today I've had several. New drive is brand new Western Digital Caviar 1 tb. I'm at a loss for words. I did a clean uninstall and reinstall of Pro tools today. First time it launched, it just shut down immediately. great

[cwsand]

Originally Posted by iamnightfall

I'm ready to throw my computer out the window. So sick and tired of pro tools crashing on me. I can open a session...immediately crash.....turn polyphonic on...crash. Its always random when it does it. I almost make my edits slowly just waiting on that awful studder sound.....then restart, and pick up where I left off. Making my stomach turn in knots. I'm running 10.6.8 on a mac pro 8 core. Pro tools 10.3.7. Started seeing a "pro tools is critically low on memory" error message as well. I just upgraded a few days ago to 10.3.7....think this is causing it? Yesterday I was working off a different internal drive and no crashes, today I've had several. New drive is brand new Western Digital Caviar 1 tb. I'm at a loss for words. I did a clean uninstall and reinstall of Pro tools today. First time it launched, it just shut down immediately. great

Hi, Hard to say what's wrong with almost no info on your system. Start here:

Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!

Chris

[iamnightfall]

Mac pro nehalem 2 x 2.26 quad core
14gb ram
4 internal drives 1 OS drive, 1 pro tools drive, 1 junk drive, 1 samples drive. 2 of these are new 1 tb WD black caviar
10.6.8 snow leopard
PT 10.3.7

I have trashed prefs, used PT pref and database helper, repaired disk permissions, uninstalled and reinstalled pro tools. Tried to decipher system.logs. If someone can steer me in the right direction for crash logs or somewhere to look in the console I can post. I do see this message quite abit in the system.log. Not sure if it means anything.

Pro Tools(755,0xa0ba8540) malloc: *** error for object 0x17300000: pointer being freed was not allocated\n*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by iamnightfall

Pro Tools(755,0xa0ba8540) malloc: *** error for object 0x17300000: pointer being freed was not allocated\n*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

malloc = memory allocation

I suggest you run Apple Hardware Test's extended testing with looping enabled overnight. This is a memory issue. If it's a physical memory issue, hopefully Apple Hardware Test will catch it.

[iamnightfall]

Since I own 10.6.8, I'm not sure I have that suite built in. Do you think it could be bad memory? Thank you for your reply. I really really appreciate it. Also, I can run tech tool pro memory test tonight for sure.

[Craig F]

14GB is an odd memory size.
I'm thinking miss matched RAM sticks and maybe a bad one.

[iamnightfall]

I read some great reviews on Rember. Going to run a bunch of loops over night and will report back my findings. thank you.

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by iamnightfall

Since I own 10.6.8, I'm not sure I have that suite built in.

It's on the optical disc that shipped with your Mac Pro. Hold the D key while starting up from that optical disc.

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by iamnightfall

I read some great reviews on Rember. Going to run a bunch of loops over night and will report back my findings. thank you.

You would be better served running either Apple Hardware Test or memtest from the command line. TechTool Pro, while worthy, cannot test memory that was used to launch it. Rember can't test any memory that is in use. Since both TechTool Pro and Rember require a GUI environment with the OS loaded, that leaves a chunk of memory that will go untested.

[iamnightfall]

Hi Chief. Just wanted to let you know that I ran Apple Hardware Test for 1 and a half days on infinite loop. It went 16 passes before I hit stop testing. Before that I ran it only 4 and nothing was found to be problematic. I'm wondering if snow leopard isnt getting along nicely with the newest 10.3.7 update. Can I just roll it back and be ok? I was using PT 10.2 and that seemed to be the most stable for me with only 1 or 2 crashes per day. (mostly happens everytime I zoom into a waveform).

I know PT upgraded the pace drivers but I should be ok opening up the sessions if I roll back?? thanks again for your help man.