Bugged sessions - System crash on startup

[oliarnalds]

Hi,

I only got my HD2 system a few months ago, but since then this problem has happened twice. It's hard to describe exactly, as it seems to be pretty random, but here goes:

In both cases i was working in a session, and everything is fine. I can close go to another session and back to this one and all works. But then i turn off my computer and come back the next day to open it - Pro tools opens fine but while opening the session the whole system freezes (as in: the mouse doesn't even move and i have to hold the powerbutton to restart). It always freezes at the same spot: "Restoring tracks - activating inserts: *trackname*" - and it's always the same track.
If i don't restart just yet, and leave this for a while - after ca 1 minute the computer's cooling system will start going crazy. Fans go up to speeds i didn't know were even possible and the noise coming from them sounds like the computer is about to explode any minute! At that point always just panic and pull the plug.

Ok, so it always stops on the same track so i try making a new session and importing session data. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't - but it doesn't seem to depend on whether i include that track or not. As i could import that track sometimes and it would be fine...
But here is the weird thing - after importing everything into a new session saving it and everything works fine - i close it and try to open it again, and then the same error happens. And this ALSO happens if i don't include the track it originally froze on, it just stops on a different track now!

Thankfully for some reason, one of the automatic backups works - so I also tried saving that session as a copy, making a copy of all audio files (in case a file was in a corrupt fragment of the disk or something), plugin settings and everything. Can't open that session either.. same error...

I also tried copying to a different hard drive..
Also of course trashed prefs, etc...


But then somehow, by doing the exact same thing again (opening an old backup, saving a copy and importing newer session data into it), the session is suddenly fine.

This is the weirdest error i've come across in Pro Tools, i can't seem to find any tendencies for it to happen when i do this or that. Just happens randomly. And other sessions using the same exact plugins, channel types, etc are fine.

Does anyone else have an experience with this?

System specs:

HD2 - 96i/o
Pro Tools 8.0.1cs1

Power Mac G5
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 2
Memory: 2.5 GB