Im at a complete loss!!

[sphereman]

Some of you may have noticed some of my post lately relating to some serious issues with my PT rig. It all started on my G5 with 7.2. The whole disappearing region thing. Several other bugs started to crop up after that, so I wiped the drive and went back to 7.1 cs9. Within a day I started having kernal panics and the "unexpectedly quit" issue when quitting PT. At that point I had the G5 hotbenched at the local Mac store only to find it had 2 gigs of bad ram. Replaced the ram and still had the exact same problems. The tech guy at the Mac store told me that the ram could have corrupted the apps so a full wipe of the drive may not be a bad idea. Didnt do it. So after about a week of living hell trying finish overdubs on a record I ditched the G5 and setup my older dual 1.25ghz G4 with 10.4.6 and 7.1cs9. This one has run like a charm for about a week. Then during mixing it just "unexpectedly quits" while PT was open!! Then the sticking menus. Then more "unexpectedly quits" while PT is open. I even reinstalled PT and still no fix. The only thing I have installed in the last couple of days was my version of Channelstrip and a demo of Sony transient modulator. I know Channelstrip is buggy but thats an entire different bugginess that im very aware of. My last option is to go back to the G5 with the new system drive and all new reinstalls. Something tells me thats not gonna work either. Im starting to just give up here. Im sure all of the plug ins are updated for 7 although the Anthology bundle version 1 seems ify.

OS 10.4.6
PT 7.1cs9
Mac G4 dual 1.25 ghz with 1.5 gigs ram
Mac G5 dual 2ghz with 3.5 gigs ram
Lots of plug ins including Waves platinum 5.0/5.2, Waves Tune 1.1, Waves SSL 1.1, McDsp Channel G 2.1, Compressor bank 4.0, Filter bank 4.0, Eventide anthology bundle 1.0, Cransong phoenix 2.1, Autotune 5.06, All of the HD3 promo pack plugins from Digi and several more.

[chroma17]

Are you working with the same sessions across these 2 computers? It is possible some session is corrupted and is messing with something in the PT prefs or setup. If not that, I would guess the problem must be related to some plug-in (or combo of plugs) that you have...if the problems are similar on 2 different computers, it must be something that is travelling between them (the sessions, plug-ins,....?) Good luck!

[Jeremy Mix3000]

It sounds to me like there is something going on with the Plug Ins an not PT itself. Since you said it worked fine until you got to the mixing stage and I asume when you started putting more plug Ins on the mix.

I know it's been said before but go through all the troubleshooting stuff, and Repair disc permissions. Also try 7.1cs10 It's the latest version for PT 7.1

And as always keep your Operating System Lean and Mean... No third Party stuff.

[sphereman]

Yea all of the sessions are back and forth on the 2 computers. Who knows. Im trying the "take a few plug ins out" and work for a while and see what happens. Although sometimes I go a couple of days without any problems. This could take weeks to if its indeed a plug in. Gonna work on overdubs for a couple of weeks without all of the Waves plug ins. Man does PT launch a million times faster without those in there.

[ZEUSS]

I would go and buy a brand new never used hardrive. Reinstall the OS and PT. Thats what I did and it cured alot of crap. Still a few issuses that I know are PT related though.

[Jeff Ulmer]

I would try creating a fresh session and importing the tracks into it and see what happens. If the sessions themselves are corrupt, this should fix at least some of it. If it is a plugin, you may have to try disabling or pulling plugs to see which is the culprit.

[sphereman]

Yes ive bought 2 new hard drives in the last 6 months. That worked for about a day. Im really hoping its a plug in problem as right now I only have the essentials in there for overdubbing. Mixing is generally less problematic. Its the long days of recording that seem to really show the problems. Going to work all week without any Waves stuff and with the Digi Rewire out. As well as a few of the Eventide plug ins that i dont use very often. Ill keep the forum posted. Keep the ideas coming as Ill try about anything at this point.

FYI. In the past 12 years or heavy pro tools work. I can count on 1 hand how many bad crashes ive had in front of clients while recording and or mixing. Some crashes in the past have been while im by myself an taxing the system unusually hard. Those I understand. In the past 4 weeks ive had about 6. Yikes!!

Thanks for the ideas.

[sleadley]

My procedure in these situations is to have a backup system on a drive (clean install) with a very stripped back version of Pro Tools with the latest version of only the Pro Tools basic Plugs. Boot from that drive and see what happens. Often I have found that RAM is to blame and it does not show until you run RAM test from the emergency boot CD. This is also a great safety net if your main drive dies, you can be up and running within a reboot. This is also a good way of "soak testing" a new version of any software. Install on your backup drive before you blow away your older version test it for a few days until you feel that it is working OK then install on the main drive.
My 2c
Simon L.

[Bentley Ferrari]

Yes, sphereman, I would agree with Sleadley on this. Your first post mentioned that you put in new RAM and still had problems. Was it Apple certified, i.e., on their approved list (check out the Apple website for the list of acceptable RAM). I bought some RAM that was "okayed" by a local Apple dealer, but not by Apple. This dealer said it didn't matter, it was good RAM, he had sold scores of the sticks with no complaints from customers, blah, blah, blah... You guessed it: bad RAM for our purposes. It might let someone run Safari and Quickbooks on a G5, but not Pro Tools.

I note that you are having problems with the G4 now, too, but they are not the same problems you had on the G5 are they? This is the conclusion I draw from what you have written so far. Your G5 issues when running 7.2 don't seem to appear uniformly among the host of other G5/7.2 users. Sounds like a hardware problem. These upgrades add so much, but they push our systems harder as well. System weaknesses (e.g., bad RAM, unapproved RAM, poor quality components, etc.) when we used an earlier version of a given program become triggers for kernel panics and other system failures when we upgrade to a more poerful version that wants to put more of our computer's resources to its use.

So the G4 problems don't surprise me so much. But I would give the G5 a thorough going over hardware-wise. This is, of course, in addition to--not instead of--the other good advice posted above.

Best of luck!

[sphereman]

I just booted the G5 from my safety drive I made back a few months ago before the 7.2 update. Ill reinstall my PT cards in the G5 with the safety drive and see what happens. Hoping the system will run OK on a FW 400 system drive. Will see at the end of the week. Ill keep you informed.