[Darryl Ramm]

Unfortunately something may be messed up with your system, you need an ASIO interface in a Windows anyhow so getting that was not a waste.

But first...

By "install driver" do you mean you download and manually installed the driver from the Focusrite website? (I assume so, but just want to be super clear). And install that before connecting the interface? If you let Windows plug and pray install drivers who knows what you will get. If not disconnect the hardware. Use Device Manager to uninstall whatever driver was installed and install a new copy of the driver downloaded from the Focusrite web site.

Testing with other apps or Windows likely only tests the WDM not ASIO drive/driver components so may not be a complete test. If another DAW opens it as an ASIO device, that is a much better test.

Be careful with testing the interface, make sure that you do not leave it enabled in Windows sound or other apps and that Pro Tools is the exclusive user of the device.

Now if you have done all that then you likely have a different problem you need to troubleshoot.

Confirm you installed Pro Tools on the C: drive and did not try to change it's install location.

Up the top of each DUC web page is a "Help us help you" link that includes standard optimization and troubleshooting steps. What I would focus on first is a subset of that. Follow the Windows 10 ones.

If you have not done all the optimization steps for now I would just make sure you do the "run as administrator step". Be careful this is different than just run from an account which is an administrator. All the other optimization steps can be important for other things but should not be relevant to the startup problem you are having.

From the troubleshooting steps, try the following, testing between each change:
- Delete databases and preferences
- Disable startup programs
- Create new admin account (and repeat all tests from that account)

Let us know what exactly you do and what happens. And include a Sisoft Sandra report if still having problems.

Windows can be fragile/fussy, and if this does not work it may be best to spin up a clean test Windows install on a drive partition, install the bare minimum drivers needed (e.g. graphics card and interface drivers) and Pro Tools and nothing else and test if that works. It can be faster to do that and switch to the new Windows install if it works than try to slowly troubleshoot an install that is not working for some unknown reason and where standard troubleshooting steps have not helped. And no other apps running OK does not prove the Windows install is OK, Pro Tools does different stuff than other apps and who knows what is broken here in Windows and/or Pro Tools but full clean installs often solve mystery problems.