PT Studio license nowhere to be found

[TCLguy1]

Hi,

PT user since Digidesign days. Then HDX then HD native but I took a 6 year break now from PT used live and Logic exclusively.
I need PT right now just to prep a damn session so I bought PT studio 1 year subscription on a new computer where I have never had any PT installed.

After letting the Avid App do its thing, I go to Protools and my old perpetual license shows for old PT (which is expired of course) and the new Studio is there but no license. I also can't find a license on my ilok account.

When I open protools anyways - it asks me for every plug in to find ilok authorization. Even though they work in logic and live. But also some are super old plug ins that I do not even have installed. Not sure how its finding those. It's a brand new computer and I didn't clone my drives but started over fresh.

At the end of all this Protools crashes - and that's it.

Avid makes sure I remember how much I hated them I guess. But I need it for this one project right now. And I am on a deadline.

How the hell do you get this to work?? It's beyond complicated. Any other Daw, you download and work.

Thanks in advance for any clues - oh my specs

Computer 7.1 16- core, 96GB Ram
Mac OS 10.11.17 Big Sur
Protools 2022.10

[Darryl Ramm]

OK so you could not Activate your Pro Tools Studio and Compete Plugin Bundle etc. licenses using Ilok License Manager? Try updating ILM to the latest from iLok.com, reinstall it anyhow even if you have the latest, try logging out and in again from iLok. If the license does not show up in your account you may have had a typo in your account info on the Avid side, it's very easy/common. Or do you have multiple accounts and possibly used the wrong one?

Give up on using Avid Link. It's sadly buggy and a PITA. The behavior with plugin licenses and only pushing people to purchase stuff is just brain dead, seemingly nobody thought through what many typical user experiences will be like. There is an uninstaller installed under /Applications Run that, and the cloud collaboration uninstaller as well.

Install Pro Tools and the plugins (many separate installers) from the My Products section plugins from your Avid.com account. You can do a better job managing these than Avid Link. But seemingly so could a rock.

[TCLguy1]

Thank you

How do you explain that ilok manager comes during PT launch asking for plug ins that I don't have installed? It's a mystery to me. It must be reading old stuff from my ilok. But why?

[TCLguy1]

It looks like the license is on my ilok account. I can launch PT now...

But it goes thru this cycle of ilok nonsense and I hit quit on each one and in the end it crashes.

[Darryl Ramm]

I'm not following exactly what you are seeing. What is the exact text of the error messages? I'm also not spending time reverse engineering why Link etc. gets stuff so bad, I just uninstall it. It had problems from literally the day it was released, has had some improvements, is still broken. (but your problems here may just be corrupt/down reve plugins left over from other stuff you have done).

Did you uninstall Avid Link and Cloud Collaboration?

Where does Pro Tools get to on the splash/startup screen when it crashes? What if any exact error messages do you get?

Is it getting past plugin load? If so try holding down 'N' and selecting the mac Built-In Output (or whatever it's called) as the playback engine and seeing if that works.

Then look in the plugin folders (/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins and see what is there the quickest standard troubleshooting thing to do is remove all the plugins.... move every .aaxplugin bundle to the Unused folder, then trash prefs, (use the new v2 version of Pete Gates PT Prefs Utility), and restart Pro Tools. It will automagically put back the small number of core plugins. See if that runs reliably before you install any more plugins or do anything else. You can then decide which plugins you want to manually download and install. I have some suspicion you have old legacy Avid plugins or third party AAX plugins left lying around from say when you installed plugins for other DAWs... and there were some changes in plugin code signing that can throw up "invalid plugin" type errors. You have to remove those plugins and replace with later versions.

Still not starting up, next step in standard troubleshooting is create a new macOS admin user and try testing from that account.

Still stuck ask for more help.