Software Resolution

No, this is not a New Year’s thing. 

I thought I’d better post a final chapter of my Pro-Tools saga for the 3.5 people who have been closely following the bouncing ball.

There’s no real bedrock, final, completion on this issue…but there is satisfaction.

Please see here, here, here, here, and here for background.  Or log onto the VO-BB under the "Gear" section, and look at "Pro-Tools vs. WinXP".

Skeptical at first, I give much credit in the end to DigiDesign tech support.  They hung with me, offering constant suggestions, links, and reading-between-the-lines perspective, all the while drawing on their considerable experience.  M-Audio I contacted only once….and they were thorough too.

We whittled it down to a conflict somewhere with the PACE TPkd.sys driver.  PACE is a DigiDesign must-install 3rd-party component of Pro-Tools that provides an anti-piracy protection through the I-Lok system.  (Wow, I sound like I actually understand this stuff!). Without it, Pro-Tools won’t run.

In my case, WITH it, Pro-Tools won’t run. 

DigiDesign followed me to the point where we focused on that, then urged me to contact the PACE tech support.  PACE was going to ask for a complete memory dump, and DigiDesign wanted me to delete all my user preferences as a next step.

This is where I call it quits.  The likely bottom-line culprit is a faulty WinXP OS install, or artifact in my registry that is conflicting with the PACE driver.

About half-way through this process, I found a great work-around in making a new Windows user profile that ran Pro-Tools like a champ.  I’m busy porting over and installing all the stuff from the other profile, in the eventuality that I’ll just delete that "bad" profile, and be on my merry way.

DigiDesign alluded to the fact that some defect in the User Profile CAN cause this kind of problem, too.

So…there you have it.  Resolution without resolving the true problem  However, I got a helluva lot closer than I ever thought I would, and learned a TON about WinXP, Pro-Tools, I-Lok, and PACE.

Got problems with Pro-Tools install?  Call me.

Courvo