Pro Tools 2021.3 Crashed, Hasn't Started Since

[HalfPastMidnight]

Just registered (although a PT user since at least 2017)....so I hope I'm doing this right with all necessary info in the signature.

Bounced a mix and left the room. Came back, "Application Has Quit Unexpectedly." Re-launched, but ever since then, it's been a broken record. Was on 2021.3 since upgrading computers in Spring of '21. Had not updated the OS or PT since everything was rock solid stable. Now this.

Searched all a bunch of threads (here), Sweetwater, Avid and tried trashing preferences, removing the plugins folder, moving the Pro Tools folder out of home directory/documents/Pro Tools, creating a new user-account and running as Admin, removing all connected devices and hardware, updating the iLok manager, and finally tried updating to the latest PT version (2022). I can't even get past the startup page and it stops on "Launching Pro Tools." A few hours ago at least it was scanning for plug-ins, and a couple of times was able to create a new project, upon which "The application PT has quit unexpectedly" came instantaneously. But now it won't even let me past "Launching Pro Tools." I have tried trashing and re-installing several times since then. To no avail.

Did a Carbon Copy Clone of the drive and then a Mac system update (still for 10.15.7)

Still can't get in.

Not sure what else to say. I'm at a loss.

Had a PreSonus FaderPort connected and OWC drives through an OWC Thunderbolt dock all connected through TB3, but with everything disconnected it still won't launch

[Darryl Ramm]

Welcome to DUC.

I expect Pro Tools is not starting up for you when opening it, (e.g. you are just double clicking on the Pro Tools icon) without trying to open a session but please confirm that.

Great that you have looked around and tried stuff. But be careful what you try/spend time on e.g. there is no reason to remove anything in your documents.

I assume you tried starting Pro Tools while holding down 'N' and selecting "Build-In Output" or whatever the Mac's own audio output is and just seeing if that works. How far did that get? Did you see the playback engine dialog appear?

As you try all these things don't undo stuff, like pile them on, new admin user, all plugins moved out of the plugin folder (and don't put them back), etc. etc. And keep trashing prefs between trying other stuff.

And one last long shot check is are there any clues in the Pro Tools logs: ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools_*

Find logs from sessions that failed and just looking through them you might see interesting looking warnings or errors. Ideally compare logs that fail to old logs that ran OK.

And also look in ~/Library/Logs/Avid/CrashLog and maybe share those online somewhere.

And you can look in some of the systems logs in Console.App. Especially system.log. Look for anything interesting there around the time Pro Tools has problems.
If you've done that stuff well (e.g. use Pete Gates PT Prefs to trash prefs) then you should be close to giving up and rolling back to a systems backup.

Do you have a clone backup from before when the system was running OK? If so you can recover that, or possibly try booting off that backup clone.

And if you don't have a backup and/or just want to take the opportunity to do a clean install then go ahead and do that. Don't faff around reinstalling stuff on top of suspected crap. Do a full clean macOS install (not an in-situ reinstall/update), just get that system back to factory clean, then do a clean install of Pro Tools and ILM and just test it works, no other apps, nothing else. If that works well then you can start reinstalling third party plugins, using the latest compatible new installers. Do not use the system mangler (aka migration) tool to move apps or drivers to the new macOS install, it is there to ruin your day. If you are not sure how to setup unix style user and group ids then use the migration assistant to move the users account but that is all (but still better not to if you know how to do by hand... and don't copy over all the garbage in ~/Library). And ideally you can do all this on a nice fast external SSD or on a spare APFS container on the internal drive so you don't destroy your current environment too early. If you have no other backups at least backup all your user content elsewhere before starting so you don't accidently clobber that.

[HalfPastMidnight]

Thank you for getting back to me (I really do appreciate it, and just finished dinner at 1:15 am --- this derailed the entire day/evening). Answers to each of your questions are below:

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I expect Pro Tools is not starting up for you when opening it, (e.g. you are just double clicking on the Pro Tools icon) without trying to open a session but please confirm that.

Yes, it's upon initial startup. I can't even get far enough to load a session.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I assume you tried starting Pro Tools while holding down 'N' and selecting "Build-In Output" or whatever the Mac's own audio output is and just seeing if that works. How far did that get? Did you see the playback engine dialog appear?

Yes, I tried and tried and tried, but here's what happens: While holding down "N," the application just completely fails to load. At all. If I double-click and start, see the Pro Tools logo and am holding down the 'N' key, literally, it just closes back down. I can't even get to the playback engine dialog.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

As you try all these things don't undo stuff, like pile them on, new admin user, all plugins moved out of the plugin folder (and don't put them back), etc. etc. And keep trashing prefs between trying other stuff.

Thanks, anything I've deleted is backed up, on the RAID 1 clone (I confirmed this) or a copy of a plugins folder on the desktop, etc.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

And one last long shot check is are there any clues in the Pro Tools logs: ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools_*

Find logs from sessions that failed and just looking through them you might see interesting looking warnings or errors. Ideally compare logs that fail to old logs that ran OK.

And also look in ~/Library/Logs/Avid/CrashLog and maybe share those online somewhere.

Just found these thanks to you. Honestly though, it's rocket science to me. I have absolutely no idea how to begin reading or deciphering these....

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

And you can look in some of the systems logs in Console.App. Especially system.log. Look for anything interesting there around the time Pro Tools has problems.
If you've done that stuff well (e.g. use Pete Gates PT Prefs to trash prefs) then you should be close to giving up and rolling back to a systems backup.

I probably should have mentioned I didn't use Pete Gates to trash prefs. I just followed the advice on this link: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare...s-preferences/

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Do you have a clone backup from before when the system was running OK?

Unfortunately, I do not. I have an OWC bunch of drives enclosure for my video computer upstairs, but the downstairs recording/PT computer is manually/drag and drop to another RAID 1 drive enclosure. I can make an improvement moving forward but as of right now, I don't have old clones of the Pro Tools computer.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

And if you don't have a backup and/or just want to take the opportunity to do a clean install then go ahead and do that. Don't faff around reinstalling stuff on top of suspected crap. Do a full clean macOS install (not an in-situ reinstall/update), just get that system back to factory clean, then do a clean install of Pro Tools and ILM and just test it works, no other apps, nothing else.

This is roughly the headspace I am in for the light of day tomorrow after some sleep. I have a clone of the system drive from after the SHTF, and all of the data is backed up, so I'm not concerned about data loss but I do wish I had an earlier clone. I was going to try updating the OS but now I am thinking I should not try that at all. Until someone tells me this is a terrible idea, my headspace is becoming to hit this with focus and clarity in daylight (not at 2 am) and perform a clean reinstall of the current OS (Catalina 10.15.7) along with a system drive clean/wipe, and....should I go nuclear....a disk certification of the internal SSD along with the OS reinstall. At least that way I'll have scientific validation there's no drive problems. If this is sounding like a very bad idea, SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS! ;-))) --- I may give it a practice run on my ancient, old, unused MacBook just as a harmless practice run.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

If that works well then you can start reinstalling third party plugins, using the latest compatible new installers. Do not use the system mangler (aka migration) tool to move apps or drivers to the new macOS install, it is there to ruin your day.

Thanks, I never use migration assistant and won't.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

If you are not sure how to setup unix style user and group ids then use the migration assistant to move the users account but that is all (but still better not to if you know how to do by hand... and don't copy over all the garbage in ~/Library). And ideally you can do all this on a nice fast external SSD or on a spare APFS container on the internal drive so you don't destroy your current environment too early. If you have no other backups at least backup all your user content elsewhere before starting so you don't accidently clobber that.

I don't know how to setup unix style user and group ids but now I am getting confused. Won't I just setup the computer anew as when I got it last year, give it the same name, and restore the data from my RAID backup onto the fresh install?

[HalfPastMidnight]

Just tried replying to this but it said it needed mod approval (so I tried again and if I screwed up any rules, I sincerely apologize to the mods and will make sure it doesn't happen again). Anyhow, if my detailed reply doesn't show up by light of day, I'll repost it again tomorrow.

Thank you for getting back to me!!

Sean

[Darryl Ramm]

Mod approval errors are because you are a new member here and it's an anti-spam measure, we had so many spammers in the past.

For now work though what I suggested, and maybe recheck some stuff, my general advice is don't beat your head against the wall for too long and just give up and do a clean macOS reinstall. Making sure you have your work/content well backed up before doing any brain surgery.

I'm never a fan of changing stuff in the middle of a project, which I don't have any idea where you are at. But you might want to think about taking the opportunity to move forward to a more recent Pro Tools and macOS release. For example 2022.5 seems a pretty nice release so far.

[HalfPastMidnight]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Mod approval errors are because you are a new member here and it's an anti-spam measure, we had so many spammers in the past.

For now work though what I suggested, and maybe recheck some stuff, my general advice is don't beat your head against the wall for too long and just give up and do a clean macOS reinstall. Making sure you have your work/content well backed up before doing any brain surgery.

I'm never a fan of changing stuff in the middle of a project, which I don't have any idea where you are at. But you might want to think about taking the opportunity to move forward to a more recent Pro Tools and macOS release. For example 2022.5 seems a pretty nice release so far.

Thanks again for the quick reply. I'm going to bed now but here's my short response instead of the detailed reply that is currently lost in mod-land!

Yes, I'm in the middle of a project. Having said that, I have backups of (most, and I'll confirm all, before going brain surgery) on 3 drives in-house and 1 drive out of state. It's a project over 3 years in the making and this PT disaster happened in the middle of filming dialogue for the video that stands between me and launching a guitar platform. Instead of this sounding more alarming, it is actually less, because I got data security in place long ago. I'm not too concerned at 2:30 AM and would have absolutely no concern in the light of a focused day. I may not have been up to date on bootable clone backups (I wasn't) but data itself is backed up with such redundancy it's ridiculous.

I downloaded BigSur but did not install it yet, and tried to install 2022.5 (which says it's compatible with Catalina but of course at this point nothing will launch whether it's the current installer or the 2021.3 installer I kept).

I'm sort of thinking a clean OS install and even wiping the system drive fresh for a complete reinstall may be where I'm headed with this....but if this is a very bad idea (maybe the caps lock on the words "Very Bad Idea" is what made the last message suspected of spam), don't be shy to tell me. I'm pretty OCD about data and security so my concerns are not really about data loss. More that I obviously don't want to brick my system otherwise or cause a larger problem on any computer level. I was getting OCD worried if this could be a bad drive sector but since everything else on my computer is operating just fine, I really don't think that's very likely in the least. I do have an old retired 2015 MBP that I could do a trial run OS reinstall on, before conducting any brain surgery with the actual Pro Tools/studio computer.....maybe it makes sense to go to Big Sur and PT 2022 if it comes to that.

[HalfPastMidnight]

Today's update: saw the dawn last night, gave up and purchased an ASC for phone support today.

When I got up at noon I began transferring the contents of an old hub-powered drive to a known reliable certified/tested disk in an OWC enclosure. Upon completion in about 6 or 7 more hours, I will wipe/format the portable USB drive, create a bootable Carbon Copy Clone from my retired, archaic 2015 MBP, and practice the nuclear option on an old unneeded computer. At least that way I'll have a safe trial run. The nuclear option I envision is as follows:

Boot from the external volume, use SoftRaid to certify the internal SSD which will erase all data....scientifically validating there is no drive failure on the internal drive....perform a fresh install of the MacOS, and reinstall everything from the ground up (no Migration Assistant).

My current state of mind is likely compounded by lack of sleep and too few Carolina Reapers in my diet, currently. The 2 million Scoville heat units won't be in until later in the summer, so the endorphin rush of the world's hottest pepper is not even available to stop the frustration, elicit a natural high/almost drunk-like burst of spontaneous laughter, and cease the mind from racing as the heat builds steadily into stupid euphoria (the endorphin rush is incredible) over the course of at least a half an hour. In lieu of the hot peppers, the DAW "Reaper" would be no substitute in my room all alone with my Pro Tools on the floor as I scream helplessly at the screen and say "Did I Do That?" Of course this is why I am being meticulous with backups, clones, and trial runs of everything.

Nothing else is working. More and more I am seeing no way out other than brain surgery. I'd feel a lot better if only there was some line I could draw. If I'd updated something or changed anything recently on the computer, but the fact that it went from stable to unusable without any apparent provocation is perhaps what bothers me most of all. I don't get it. Nothing about this makes sense to me. If I'm looking for any clues at all, I guess it had started to crash just a tad over the past week upon closing the program but nothing that was not immediately solved by restarting the computer, or even just launching the program again. And even then, the last I installed anything at all was at least 3 weeks ago. Everything was perfect for a year and then this

[HalfPastMidnight]

Final update/resolution.....

Bought an ASC and was on the phone for 70 minutes with support this early evening.

Everything is working again as it should. I didn't need to clean-install the OS or go nuclear with a disk drive after all. Some takeaways....

The issue turned out to be in the HD/Users/Shared/Pro Tools folder. Somehow the Workspace and Wave Cache there had gone berserko. As soon as they were trashed, 2021.3 opened up again. Had to locate the backups of the plugins folder (which I had shuffled around last night trying to find any solution) and spent quite some time on the phone sorting everything out, but the issue itself were the files in that folder, so I suppose things must have become damaged somehow and it was preventing me from even getting past "Loading Pro Tools."

After all of this, I suppose it's time to run a CCC every night before bed. Like I said much earlier in this barrage of words, data was never my concern, but as for a bootable backup, I can now see how much simpler this would have been if I had kept regular bootable clones. I would have been able to just restore the clone and whatever got mangled in the shared folder would have been overwritten.

In the end, at least it got solved before I lost another day and stressed out over doing a clean install, which I've never done myself before, and didn't want to start trying in the middle of a project.

[Darryl Ramm]

Glad you got it solved with what sounds like good work by Avid support, and you did that without the full macOS reinstall that I suspect I would have given up and done. Were there clues in the log files about the problems?

I do think you were making a macOS reinstall too hard: You have a running macOS system, you download the macOS installer and just run it, when it asks if you want you want to do you select new install and point it at the drive or container you want to put that new install and it does all the rest. Lots of fairly detailed directions findable online. And if the mac ends up really hosed with no bootable volume partition then you either recover it from a recovery volume on the mac or on a seperate computer download an installer and build an bootable installer on something like a large USB memory stick,

You don't need to manually erase or mess with any drive. And doing so to test etc. a drive may not do what you likely think it does on a SSD, or on a container on a APFS volume on an SSD. If the drive itself has run into problems things will be *screaming* about them, which is why I suggested you look at system.log.

[HalfPastMidnight]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Were there clues in the log files about the problems?

Not really sure....I located the locations of the logs, but had absolutely no idea what to even start looking for. It was all complete Greek to me. Is there anywhere I can learn more about how to read/decipher logs?

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I do think you were making a macOS reinstall too hard:

Very likely. You're almost certainly spot-on. This is a bad habit of mine. I do tend to be exceedingly obsessive about doing things so right that I go completely overboard into the entirely unnecessary.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You have a running macOS system, you download the macOS installer and just run it, when it asks if you want you want to do you select new install and point it at the drive or container you want to put that new install and it does all the rest....you don't need to manually erase or mess with any drive.

Just to make sure I understand -- and I have absolutely no intention of changing anything at the moment until a break in the clouds sees some downtime between projects --- if I ever even update it at all, but.....

Are you saying to literally just run the downloaded installer in my Applications folder? I have certainly done that before on older computers and just understood it to be an OS upgrade. I started thinking you were suggesting a complete "clean install," sending everything back to factory-state and then restoring data from a backup. Did I misunderstand? If you were updating the OS are you saying you'd just upgrade it via the downloaded installer from the App Store?

Thanks as always for the help and advice.

Best,

Sean