Pro Tools hangs after tabbing from other applications

[chaosmonkey]

My Mac and Pro Tools system has just developed an interesting new quirk.

It was all running fine until yesterday, then out of the blue, every time I tab from any other application to Pro Tools, I get the spinning beach ball of doom and Pro Tools hangs for around a minute. After that it works fine and as long as I don't tab away and back, Pro Tools continues to run smoothly. Tabbing between other applications causes no problems at all.

Yesterday I was running 10.3.4 HDX. Firstly I trashed all the preferences, no luck, then I did an uninstall/re-install and suddenly PT wouldn't even launch... So I downloaded and installed the update to 10.3.7 and thankfully that would at least open. However it now seems to take longer to boot up and still has the above problem.

I've repaired permissions on every disk I can, tried without network cables attached. Still the same issue.

Any advice and help would be gratefully received.

Mac OSX 10.7.5
Processor: 2 x 2.4Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory: 16GB 1066 MHz DDR3
Pro Tools HDX 10.3.7

[Stig Eliassen]

Here is a thread that might help you, starting at post #5

[Bill Denton]

Pro Tools, and a good many other professional-level programs, are designed to run alone, i.e., with no other software running.

Consequently, the best advice you will receive is to not try to run other programs when Pro Tools is running.

That might not be what you want to hear, but that is what Pro Tools gives you. When you're using pro stuff you have to use it the way it was intended to be used...

[chaosmonkey]

OK, it appears to have righted itself... We were having a problem with our server at the time and I'd at first attributed it to that, because I'd had a similar problem at another facility where it would take a very long time to open sessions and I narrowed that down to a network issue; unplugging the network cable solved it.

That's what threw me this time because I went straight for the network cable, knowing we were having issues, but even disconnected from the network, the problem persisted.

However, on arriving this morning I was informed the network issues had been solved and lo and behold, no issues with Pro Tools at all.

PT Lover, thanks for the suggestions.

Bill, in a utopian world perhaps we'd have a separate machine for every task but unfortunately my bosses insist on me using my expensive and powerful mac for running multiple applications. The fools...

I need to have my email client and web browser open as well as being connected to the network to facilitate my daily work, and have done for several years across many different incarnations of PT and different configurations of macs.

What about running VIs in rewire? What about having software such as Source Connect running for a session? What about needing to keep an eye out for an important email or ftp transfer?

Maybe 10 years ago, with slower machines, such things were an issue, but in the real world I know of no one and no facility that I've worked with or in that doesn't use their PT computers for multi tasking.

This might not be what you want to hear, but a modern computer should be, and is capable of doing more than one thing.

All that being said, could maybe one of the Avid tech guys please answer why a blip in someone's network could cause such issues?