Pro Tools regularly freezing + 'Not Responding'!!

[Lana Banana]

Pro Tools is absolutely killing me at the moment.

Am running PT Ultimate, up-to-date (2019.6.0), on Windows 10 (again, fully up-to-date), and the past 7-10 days or so have been running into very frequent problems of PT freezing, completely at random, but on average perhaps every 15 minutes or so.

It could just be as simple as muting a track in the mix window, tweaking a dial in a plugin, clicking on a clip in the edit window, or selecting an option from the main menu - PT will just randomly freeze.
If a track is playing, the audio will keep playing, however PT will just lock up & completely freeze, & then 'Not Respond', leaving me with no other choice but to force close the entire program, & then I have to reboot my PC every time.

Just wondered if anyone else has been experiencing this recently??

I have paying clients both in person & connecting remotely for both audio & film work, and this is killing sessions & professionalism.

Our PC is incredibly hi-spec, so there's absolutely no risk of running out of memory etc.

I guess I could try trashing PT preferences yet again, but the past week or so have been an absolute joke.

[feliponk]

Hi: Windows 10 is a PIA and sadly, Windows 7 is out of support in January, so please check any background services that may be running and remove as much as you can of the embbeded trash this OS carries on.


Can you reproduce the error? I mean, every time you do x+y=z fails, or it's a random thing?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Lana Banana

Our PC is incredibly hi-spec, so there's absolutely no risk of running out of memory etc.

There is *always* a risk of running out of memory. It's not an unheard of problem with leaking plugins that will consume any amount of physical memory. While it's probably not the most likely cause here, you can try excluding that that by having Activity Monitor watching memory stats up on the screen while you work and watching what happens there when the system appears to hang.

Does this happen on multiple sessions?

If it happens on more than one unrelated sessions I would start by trashing prefs and trying to exclude plugins (for any variety of issues, not just possible memory leaks). Start by removing all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder.

Try testing from a new Admin user account.

[Lana Banana]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Does this happen on multiple sessions?

If it happens on more than one unrelated sessions I would start by trashing prefs and trying to exclude plugins (for any variety of issues, not just possible memory leaks). Start by removing all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder.

Thanks Darryl.

The crashing is completely random. Multiple, non-related sessions, some with lots of plugins & tracks, some with no plugins and only one or two audio tracks.

Please forgive my lack of knowledge re removing the .aaxplugin files, but I have found what I believe are the three folders that house my plugins:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins
C:\\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Digidesign\DAE\Plug-Ins

Do I simply delete all of the files & folders within these three folders above??
If so, what happens then? Next time I fire up Pro Tools, should PT just re-scan & automatically create new plugin files & folders? How does this work?
A Google search hasn't helped answer this question.

Many thanks.

[Darryl Ramm]

Pro Tools 11 and later only uses AAX-64 .aaxplugin files in

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins

If you delete the plugins there you will need to reinstall them again from the vendor’s installers. It is usually easier to test stuff by just moving all the .aaxplugin files elsewhere. There is normally an “(Unused)“ plugin directory specifically for this. So with Pro Tools not running, then in a command shell type

> cd “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio“
> move “Plug-Ins\*“ “Plug-Ins (Unused)“

That might overwrite any older plugins in “Plug-Ins (Unused)”

Then trash prefs, You can use the Trasher utility by Guitardom to make that easier.

Then restart Pro Tools

Pro Tools will Magically put back it’s basic default plugins.

If Pro Tools now runs OK that points to one of the (likely third party) plugins you moved to the “(Unused)” folder being suspect. If it still has a problem then it’s a more serious core issue. If plugins are now suspect you can work through the plugins in the “(Unused)” folder. If it is a standard Pro Tools plugin it will now be in both folders and you can delete it from the “(Unused)” folder. You can then try moving back to the plugin folder other plugins in batches and starting Pro Tools until it shows the same problem as before... then one or more of those plugins you just moved is faulty, you can keep playing removing/adding back plugins until you find the bad one/ones. Start by moving large numbers of plugins around doing a binary search. I normally group plugins by manufacturer and move them all at once to start with, writing a batch file to do that.

At some point you need to check if all your plugins are up to date/compatible with the exact version of Pro Tools you are running. It may just be easier to download new installers for the plugins and run those In batches rather than moving the old ones back by hand. Stuff then might just all work, without you ever finding out the old problem plugin(s).

—-

These two directories are used by AAX-32 and RTAS or TDM plugins

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins
C:\\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Digidesign\DAE\Plug-Ins

You can just delete them if running Pro Tools 12, they may be left there from previous installs or created by plugin installers.

[jgsmith]

Not nearly as disruptive as what you're experiencing, but I do have the same symptoms (Windows 10.0.18362).

Have you found a way to eliminate it? If not:

In the Windows Task Manager, "avidappmanhelper.exe" executes and stops every few seconds, and often reports trillions of page faults.

I haven't found a way to stop or disable it though -- and it does not appear to be required by the ProTools exec.

Something to check out if you / future searchers are stuck.

J

[EGS]

disable it:
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/hom...ac-and-windows

[jgsmith]

Thanks very much for replying.

Yeah i hoped that would work, but the only Avid exec's in startup are "Avid Link" and "Avid Audio MME Binder" -- no "Avid Application Manager Helper" nor Flexera sw of any kind (per instructions).

I had hoped that _this_ circumstance indicated a fundamental installation problem, but I removed and reinstalled everything per KB, and it still keeps starting / stopping, along with the goofy page fault totals...
Thanks again for your reply.

[The Weed]

Run LatencyMon. It may find what is causing your issues. There was a Windows update that caused CPU spikes in PT, but the update after July 26 fixed that.

[jgsmith]

Thanks _very_ much -- great utility.
It isn't update-related, but LatencyMon has revealed some fundamental problems that need to be straightened out before running PT.