Pro Tools crashing every time I open a new session

[Ryan Butler]

So, I started a session this morning and we've been working on this album for 8 days. All of a sudden, it started freezing every time a new song starts loading. I have to force quit pro tools and then I have to shut my computer down by the power button or else it just freezes in the shutoff screen. As far as I know, you don't have to trash preferences in 9? I've unhooked everything hooked up to the computer and plugged it back in after sitting off for an hour. It worked toggling session to session one time after this and then back to freezing. I verified disk permissions on the three drives that are always active during pro tools usage and they all were good to go. The only thing I can think of that I've done differently in the last twenty four hours is shut off my Time Machine Backup early yesterday afternoon.. I turned it back on and same thing. Turned it back off and same thing. I'm running PT HD 9.0.3 with OSX 10.6.3. I'd be grateful for any help.

[Mixgeneral]

You can still try to trash the preferences despite what you've heard. But here is another work-around. Create a new session and start importing tracks from old session into new session but importing I mean not audio but session tracks. Something got corrupted. Usually, its a pluggin of sort. You have to isolate the tracks that crashing your system. So may have to do one track a time. I know its tedious but this may be your option at this point. Maybe someone else have another suggestion.

[Ryan Butler]

Where would I find the preferences folder? It's crashing with sessions from other albums, too.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ryan Butler

Where would I find the preferences folder? It's crashing with sessions from other albums, too.

Follow all the standard troubleshooting steps under the "Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!" link above on this page, all the steps are described there for the different operating systems.

Darryl

[Ryan Butler]

Thank you. I will give that a shot at the end of the session.

[Mixgeneral]

On a windows system:
Quote:
Start Menu > My Computer > Local Disk(C:) or correct hard drive (click "show the contents of this drive" if the files aren't displayed) > Program Files > Common Files > Digidesign > DAE > Right-click on the DAE Prefs folder and delete.
Start Menu > My Computer > Local Disk(C:) > Documents and Settings > "Your user folder" > Application Data > Right-click on the Digidesign folder and delete. (If the Application Data folder is not showing: Tools Menu > Folder Options > View Tab > Select "Show Hidden Files and Folders" > Click Apply and OK.)
On MAC:
Quote:
-Go to Users > “your user name” > Library > Preferences
-Delete 'com.digidesign.protoolsLE.plist', 'DAE Prefs' (folder), 'DigiSetup.OSX' and 'Pro Tools preferences'.
-Empty trash, then restart the computer.

[Ryan Butler]

Well, this worked briefly, but now it's crashing again. Deleted everything. I don't have the LE .plist as it's HD. Any other ideas before a reinstall?

[Ryan Butler]

Only other thing I can think would be a bad plugin, but all the plugins are ones I'm using regularly, and I barely have any in the sessions as we're just tracking.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ryan Butler

Only other thing I can think would be a bad plugin, but all the plugins are ones I'm using regularly, and I barely have any in the sessions as we're just tracking.

If you don't tell folks here exactly what you've tried so far we really can't help.

Does this absolutely only happens from this one session? Sometimes people think that but its just because that is the session they are using most.

If it does look like a single session causing this then you likely should try creating a new session and importing the media from your old session into that.

If it not in the session then try doing all the standard troubleshooting steps, and including physically removing all plugins from the plugin folder and seeing if the problem goes away (if so you need to put them back in batches until you find the culprit). What happens when you try the standard test of using a new admin user account?

When this hanging occurs you want to use the console utility to look in the system log for any interesting error messages.

Double check you have applied all systems optimizations, especially things like disabling spotlight indexing on *all* disk drives. (in bad cases this can cause some intermittent hang problems). Make sure no unneeded background programs or other apps are running.

If you want more help here start by describing exactly what trouble shooting steps you have done.

Darryl

[Ryan Butler]

With all due respect, Darryl, I definitely talked about everything I've tried within thread, right down to which files I ended up deleting. I also explained that it's crashing in every session I have from other albums as well. I can't even open a session, close it, shut down pro tools and get my computer to shut down without forcing it off a the power source. The only plugs I have in the current session are PT ones, mcdsp ones with a license ilok, and Universal Audio ones that go along with the card. I will have to go through the plug in list and error logs when I have some time. I'm in the middle of producing an album for an out of state band for about 20 days straight. So, I'm just kind of limping along with this while we work and was hoping for a quick fix. This is a computer that I've used professionally for some years. So, nothing's running in the background and all drives should have been optimized for several years, but I will double check it. I appreciate the help, and I will give these steps a shot when I have some time and report back.