PT novice with usual stupid problems..

[Patch Morrison]

just bought PT M-Powered 7.4 and come up with the following alerts:

when i click apple N for new session I get:



when i click apple O for open session I get:



when i try to designate the local drive as a location for a session folder I get:



eh????

most likely an obvious solution but remains one that currently escapes me. any knowledge/tips would be gratefully appreciated.

cheers,

patch

[leeg1970]

In PT/Workspace your hard drive should be set to r

I'm presuming you know where the workspace window is?

Lee.

LEE G

[Patch Morrison]

heck no. sorry.

hence the admitting to being a PT novice in thread title.

Logic never demands this sorta thing of me so i have never had to look for it.

[Patch Morrison]

since purchasing PT i have in app support/digidesign/databases a folder called "volumes" but it is empty..

should something be in there for me to access?

[leeg1970]

Originally Posted by Patch Morrison

heck no. sorry.

hence the admitting to being a PT novice in thread title.

Logic never demands this sorta thing of me so i have never had to look for it.

In PT go to the "window" tab on top of page. You'll see "workspace" Click on it. You should see all hard drives connected to your computer - You will see either T - R or P - Change which drive you're working on to R - enabling you to record T is for transfer only P for playback - For many many in depth answers go to the DUC forums.

Lee.

[Kuba_Pietrzak]

This is post-production forum.

For technical problems I recommend this:
Pro Tools M-Powered & M-Audio on Mac OS X - Digi User Conference

best,
Kuba

[Patch Morrison]

ah cheers mate,

having changed my local HD to R i get this:



it also says this for any of my external drives as well...

[soundguydave]

Its probably a formatting or permissions problem, but you should really check out the DUC and ask around there.

[philper]

If "Mac HD" means your local hard disk, the one with your apps etc on it, you should not be using it to record to in any case. Go get a cheap external drive and make that your audio file volume. Your computer, PT and you will be much happier, trust me.

Philip Perkins

[Patch Morrison]

quoted from an email i just sent to a mate:

"I was originally trying to use the internal drive, but then also tried a couple of externals (Lacies) and got the same alerts.
How do i reset the internal drive using the peripherals dialog? Is that to do with allocating it as an R drive in the workspace within PT? Coz i have tried that and get similar errors about not being an audio volume.

but now i have a nice new shiney problem.

Having spent most of last night on the digidesign forums looking through threads with similar problems, I followed some of the advice given. this mainly consisted of:

repairing disc permissions,
checking format of drives (supposed to be mac OS extended which mine were anyway)
trashing any PT prefs
uninstall and reinstall PT

I got as far as trashing PT prefs when i got lots of nice new errors about my iLok (only just acquired yesterday) not existing anymore.
Having opted for a restart (thinking this would help) my G5 now seems to be in a coma.
I get the grey screen of doom (apple logo and tiny "clock filling up" icon forever) upon start up but it never gets any further. I can only imagine something vital got trashed when i trashed PT prefs (despite only having just got PT a week ago and not been able to even run it yet).

I remember a mac doctor once telling me of a way to open a mac (when it is in trouble) by holding certain keys upon startup to disable extensions and various other tricks, but they escape me now. but now i cannot even go and try and fix pro tools as i am somewhat locked out of the comp."

Apologies if this is blatantly sitting in the wrong forum, am slightly panicked and my first instinct was to ask you guys..

[pkautzsch]

Originally Posted by Patch Morrison

just bought PT M-Powered 7.4 and come up with the following alerts:

when i click apple N for new session I get:



when i click apple O for open session I get:



when i try to designate the local drive as a location for a session folder I get:



eh????

most likely an obvious solution but remains one that currently escapes me. any knowledge/tips would be gratefully appreciated.

cheers,

patch

Originally Posted by Patch Morrison

ah cheers mate,

having changed my local HD to R i get this:



it also says this for any of my external drives as well...

Had this on our PT 8 HD rig too. Restarted the computer, everything fine again.
Seems like Mac OS is becoming more and more like pre-XP windows.

[Patch Morrison]

i have been advised to approach it from SUM and try some disc checks from there. bit daunting to be honest...

[iluvcapra]

Originally Posted by Patch Morrison

i have been advised to approach it from SUM and try some disc checks from there. bit daunting to be honest...

They make SUM for Mac OS X? Wow. I strongly recommend Disk Warrior over anything else.


Tell me: you trashed Pro Tools prefs, but did you trash all the digidesign databases? Including the ones in Application Support?

[T_R_S]

Drive Requirements here for M Powered

Hard Drive Requirements - Pro Tools M-Powered for Mac OS X


Set Up And Troubleshooting help here

Pro Tools MP Setup and General Troubleshooting - Digi User Conference

Bothe of these Pages are very good reads with a lot of help on them.

[Patch Morrison]

Originally Posted by iluvcapra

They make SUM for Mac OS X? Wow. I strongly recommend Disk Warrior over anything else.


Tell me: you trashed Pro Tools prefs, but did you trash all the digidesign databases? Including the ones in Application Support?

I deleted 2 things that were titled DIALsomething and DIGIsomething. I also got alerts about these saying how they wouldnt run when i first downloaded PT, took screengrabs of the alert, which i now cannot show you coz i am in grey screen of doom land.

ugh. frustrations..

[JonesH]

What you probably should have trashed are the volume databases in /Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Databases and in the root folder of every volume.

What to do now is a bit trickier. Try restarting with shift pressed (you need a USB keyboard, no bluetooth or wl stuff), it might disable any corrupted stuff. If that doesn't work, try rebooting from the system install/restore disk. Run disk utility. If it still doesn't work... I don't know, maybe a system reinstall.

[Patch Morrison]

Originally Posted by JonesH

What you probably should have trashed are the volume databases in /Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Databases and in the root folder of every volume.

What to do now is a bit trickier. Try restarting with shift pressed (you need a USB keyboard, no bluetooth or wl stuff), it might disable any corrupted stuff. If that doesn't work, try rebooting from the system install/restore disk. Run disk utility. If it still doesn't work... I don't know, maybe a system reinstall.

Ah thanks for that mate. Im not very experienced in getting under the hood of a mac, for this is the 1st time in my poor lil G5's 6 year life that anything like this has happened.

I'm sure I must have deleted something important and now there is a severed link/missing vital file or something that prevents normal startup.

[recall]

Sometimes if you change the name of the drive, it will work again. Just select your macintosh hd in finder and click apple-i rename the drive something like macintosh hdd or something like that.

It fixed an issue for me with an external hd.

You should only use external HD's but Pro Tools LE does work with an internal hd, its just not recommended for large sessions and you may get more error messages.

If you are buying an external make sure you have one with one of the correct oxford chipsets mentioned in the link posted by someone above.

[Patch Morrison]

Originally Posted by recall

Sometimes if you change the name of the drive, it will work again. Just select your macintosh hd in finder and click apple-i rename the drive something like macintosh hdd or something like that.

It fixed an issue for me with an external hd.

You should only use external HD's but Pro Tools LE does work with an internal hd, its just not recommended for large sessions and you may get more error messages.

If you are buying an external make sure you have one with one of the correct oxford chipsets mentioned in the link posted by someone above.

I had already tried allocating my external drives as audio voulmes in the workspace and got the same error. The drives are 300G/1TB Lacie desktop drives. d2 i think..

[Patch Morrison]

well i managed to boot up using my original tiger install disc. i did a "preserve" (think it's called that, can't remember now) install so nothing was deleted and have managed to get back to where i was in terms of OS10.4.11 and the latest drivers for my interface (M Audio 410).

so now i have to tackle this PT again. I have some digidesign database folders on both externals (from previous use on other computers hooked up to PT rigs). Is it safe to trash these, to see if i can then allocate them as Audio volumes?

[Patch Morrison]

well, I have since uninstalled and reinstalled PT. now i get a msg saying "install failed please try again", but with no explanation as to how/why it failed.

I now get this alert.



The security one has stopped popping up as I clicked "fixed" after first seeing it.

Now I have no idea whether this alert (the top one) is a result of the incomplete PT install or is perhaps causing it?

I used the OS 10.4.11 combo update prior to reinstalling.

[Dee$]

I'm running a very similar set up and I found that I wasn't able to use my external hard-drive because it didn't meet the requirements--if this the case for you, that's why it's not allowing you set the external drive to record (only transfer). You might have just record internally (on a different drive tham PT is installed if possible) until you can get a compatible drive.

An issue you haven't run into yet, but might, is that the Mbox doesn't like to be plugged into the wall. It's known to throw an error-- which says related to timecode oddly enough--just run it straight off the computer and you will avoid this.

Also, try to run the firewire on a seperate card from your other devices, sometimes the MBox is sucking so much power the keyboard and mouse will throw it off (had more trouble on an unapproved PC chipset than my macbook).

Also, it helps to make sure nothing is open when you start pro tools. Launch pro tools first directly from the application or the shortcut versus a previously created session file.

Trashing Digidesign databases as mention does help. Also check to make sure there isn't a free firmware update on the Pro Tools website. I seem to remember that I need to download one.

I know that's a lot of information in a very random order but hopefully it helps.

[Patch Morrison]

ah cheers for taking a minute mate, much appreciated.

It's weird that my external drives suddenly aren't usable now as I have used them as host drives for various PT sessions when I was at Uni on several HD rigs in a number of different studios.

And right now it doesn't like my local HD or any externals, so all drives are currently frowned upon.

I'm trying to run M-Powered 7.4 at home (just for editing, no heavy mixing or CPU hungry plug ins here) and using my M Audio 410 as the interface, so no M Box either.

I did the OS10.4.11 combo update to avoid potential glitches, as someone highlighted this could be an issue earlier in the thread.

I trashed databases. erm.. still abit confused by the install insisting it failed, because PT still opens, or at least opens enough for me to look at the workspace.

still, good to get these tips etc, will get there eventually I hope.

[Fajita]

Repair permissions

[Patch Morrison]

should I be doing that via the install disc? (Coz I have already done it the regular way).

If so, I hold C on startup right? I had to do that the other day just to bring my mac back to life but it only seemed to show me install options, nothing about running disc utilities.

[gmarinov]

Originally Posted by Patch Morrison

I had to do that the other day just to bring my mac back to life but it only seemed to show me install options, nothing about running disc utilities.

the osx installer is a windowed app running in a limited environment. there's a menu bar at the top from which you can choose Console, Disk Utility and some other things. you don't need to boot from the install disk to repair permissions. gdluck.

[Patch Morrison]

Originally Posted by gmarinov

the osx installer is a windowed app running in a limited environment. there's a menu bar at the top from which you can choose Console, Disk Utility and some other things. you don't need to boot from the install disk to repair permissions. gdluck.

I have already done that.

In the disc utility it also says

"To repair your startup disk, start up from your Mac OS X install disc (CD or DVD), then choose utilities>Disk Utility"

That was what I was referring to.

[georgia]

before you do all that. did you select the disk, then open INFO in finder. If you go to the bottom of the info window there are security settings. Resent EVERYTHING in the disk to worlds read / write access. this has solved a myriad of niggly issues for people in the past. ( also don't use your system drive for anything but the system... do all your recording/editing on a other disk(s) )

cheers
geo

[soundboy]

If you just got the system, you still qualify for phone support from Digi. Call them. They are very helpful, and have stayed on the line for an hour while trouble shooting my system. They don't always have the answer, but they go a long way towards narrowing down the causes.

[Patch Morrison]

Originally Posted by soundboy

If you just got the system, you still qualify for phone support from Digi. Call them. They are very helpful, and have stayed on the line for an hour while trouble shooting my system. They don't always have the answer, but they go a long way towards narrowing down the causes.

wow. the guy at Digi had no clue what I was talking about! Impressive. Do I phone back and hope I talk to someone else with more knowledge? Bit of a hit n miss system..

Oh and now half of my AU's I run with Logic (SampleTank, Native Instruments stuff) have all become invalid and do not pass validation tests anymore. Since yesterday. having not changed a thing.

totally confused now.

it seems that just trying to run M Powered Pro Tools has brought my mac to its knees. once again, impressive.