Pro Tools Scanning All Plugs Upon Load-up - Takes forever to open

[anackman]

I trashed preferences yesterday due to another issue and now every single time I open Pro Tools, it goes through the entire scan of every single plugin I have, even prompting me to activate/quit plugins that I don't have access to anymore, so I have to sit there and click "quit" on 7-8 plugins manually. It can a full 2-3 minutes to finally open up Pro Tools.

This usually only happens right after a new install, but after the first time PT is opened, it goes to a shorter version of the scan and opens in about 10-15 seconds.

It never did this prior to trashing prefs, so that clearly did something.

How do I get PT to act normal again on loading?

[Darryl Ramm]

clearly something is broken. The database of plugins is not getting completed, if it was Pro Tools would not be doing this. Sometimes Pro Tools is buggy and takes a couple of goes to complete a full scan.... sometimes it craps out entirely. All these issues you are having, which you have now scattered across multiple threads here, point to you need to clean up your system and troubleshoot You likely have an incompatible/broken plugin or set of plugins. Remove all plugins, get your system working properly then reinstall (ideally from the latest compatible installers) the plugins you really need again. Starting Pro Tools and testing as you go. Don’t have time to do that now, rollback to your last working backup and deal with this later.

[Tweakhead]

Your AAX plugins are stored here:
Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins

When Pro Tools launches, make a textfile note of the name of each of the plugins that fail.

Quit.

Drag each of those failed plugins from the location above to:
Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins (Unused)

Relaunch. Let it scan. Once launched, Quit again.
Relaunch. It should be much faster from now on.

[Darryl Ramm]

^^^ good advice. May save you time. Try it and see. But this does not always work. Infrequently a preceding plugin loading causes an error on a later/next plugin to fail. I would also try removing any plugins you are getting invalid AAX errors for. If all that fails then remove all plugins and start over.