FCP5 crashes on Startup
 

PowerMac G5
FCP 5.1 Studio Universal

It was working fine. Then after sleep mode FCP crashed on starup.

So I rebooted - same thing.
I disconnected external drives and turned off airport - same thing.
Trashed FCP and FCP library receipts, emptied trash, restart, re-install FCP - same thing.

Any ideas what could cause this? Since when does a complete re-install fail?

What's it doing when it bails? Just loading the program, or trying to load a project?

If the latter, move the project file so it can't auto-load it.

By that do you mean the preferences? They are normally responsible for this type of thing.

It begins launching, harddrive hitting normally, then I see the stratup window, several components are loaded, After Effects support gets loaded, then about 2 seconds after that... startup window disappears, no crash dialog box, nothing.

I reinstalled FCP & Compressor ...same thing.

It happens either when I launch from a project file or when I just click on the FCP Icon.

I'm not completely clear on that. I'm a windows guy that switched to Apple 2 years ago and I'm still learning the nuiances of OSX. Apples website has a support section for quicktime which tells you to delete [drive]\Library\Receipts\Quicktime.xxx I applied the same thought process to deleting FCP before re-install. I trashed the receipt for FCP. Seems to not make a difference. I get that file back after re-install. I guess I'm ignorant when it comes to Apples operating system and how it works. A bit frustrated too.

Ahhh... good point I negleted to think of. It will auto-load the last project! Luckily my last project file was nothing but a series of tests that I don't care about. Possibly that project file is Junk. I will move it to the trash. Thanks.

Craig, you may wish to take a look at the stiky at the top of this forum page. You should probably delete some preference files in ~/Library/Preferences (that's your user's library, as symbolized by the ~).

Edit: here's the thread - http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=26728

Thanks Ron- I'm out of the office now but will try both of these things later today.

Wtf?
 

This is frustrating.

Reinstall FCP. No luck.
Reinstall Compressor. No luck.
Trashed the project file. No luck.
Trashed FC preferences. No luck.
Trashed FC Studio Preferences. No luck.
I reinstalled QT once again. No luck.

It's like FC refuses to launch now on my G5.

Craig, do you have any capture hardware installed (i.e. DeckLink/Kona card)? If so, are your drivers up-to-date? You may also want to temporarily remove such a card from the G5 to see if that helps (do follow guidelines for handling of ESDs when doing so!).

If all else fails, you may have to re-install your machine. But that seems drastic, unless you have upgraded your OS from Panther to Tiger without a clean-install. You may also want to check other on-line resources (e.g. lafcpug.org) for further advice.

I have just upgraded from FCS 5.0.4 to 5.1 - so far without issues. But I have learned the hard way to not let desktop machines sleep. Ever since I've turned them all into insomniacs years ago, they run much more stably and often for weeks on end (number-crunching for good purposes when not used).

HTH,

Ron

I don't have any capture cards.

This really SUCKS. The list grows. I am probably 16-20 hours into trouble shooting now and I'm nearly at my breaking point. I'm real close to throwing this G5 out a window.

Reinstall FCP. No luck.
Reinstall Compressor. No luck.
Trashed the project file. No luck.
Trashed FC preferences. No luck.
Trashed FC Studio Preferences. No luck.
I reinstalled QT once again. No luck.

NEW:
Repaired disk permissions. No luck.
Reinstalled OS Tiger(and all updates)! No luck!

For the first time as a Mac user I'm wishing I had a PC in front of me.

Reinstall FCP. No luck.
Reinstall Compressor. No luck.
Trashed the project file. No luck.
Trashed FC preferences. No luck.
Trashed FC Studio Preferences. No luck.
I reinstalled QT once again. No luck.
Repaired disk permissions. No luck.
Reinstalled OS Tiger(and all updates)! No luck!

NEW:
Reinstalled ENTIRE Finalcut Studio. No luck.

If I watch carefully the startup window... the last thing I see before crash is "Profiling for RT Extreme" My graphics card is a 64MB ATI Radeon 9600Pro. I'm wondering if anyone else is having success with this video card?

Do you have a firewire drive as large as your internal startup disk? If so then use a utility program to clone the internal drive to the firewire drive as a backup. Then reformat the internal drive and reinstall Tiger, applying all the updates. You can then use the migration assistant to move all your files and reinstall FCP. That should put your system in a known state.

But before going to all that trouble, you might try booting from the cloned external drive for the hell of it and see if FCP works on that drive for some odd reason?

Thinking a little about what you said... "Reinstalled OS Tiger(and all updates)", I wonder if one of the updates is the source of your problem?

Craig, this is starting to sound very suspicious...

Question: When you re-installed OS X, did you...

- do a clean install (i.e. on a freshly formatted partition)?
- use the migration assistant to migrate settings from your previous install (hint: don't, as this can be migrating corrupt preference files, which is exactly what you want to avoid)?
- use the 10.4.6 combo updater (strongly recommended)?

Here's what I'd do next (in this order): reset PMU/SMU (depending on your G5 model, you either have one or the other), reset P-RAM, reset Open Firmware (nvram). See these articles for details:

http://www.felipecruz.com/reset-pmu-...ile-ram-g5.php
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300341

Re-boot, make sure your computer's clock is set correctly (in System Prefs), and try launching FCP again.

If you're still having problems, I'd suggest running the Apple Hardware Test (AHT). It's a CD/DVD included as part of the original software kit (may actually be on the same DVD as the system restore). Put the CD/DVD in your optical drive and restart. Then hold down the alt-key on boot-up until the boot selection screen shows up. Then choose the AHT, and it will boot into the test environment. Selecte extended test and let it run. It will take a good while (up to an hour), and the fans will be going full-speed the whole time. Note any problems that are displayed (you may want to take a shot of the screen at the end of the test with a digicam).

Even if AHT finds no faults, it is still possible that there are hardware problems. If you have third-party RAM installed, you may want to remove it to see if that makes a difference (if not, remove the original RAM, and just run with third-party - Apple's RAM can fail just as likely as other supplier's).

Finally - if you have the possibility - I'd suggest replacing the GPU with another one you may have handy.

Edit: I can't help but stress the importance of avoiding ESD when dealing with semiconductors! ESD-induced damage is a major source of intermittent hardware problems. See this page for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_discharge

Good luck and let us know what you find!

HTH,

Ron

Ron,

Thanks for the response. The only thing that has saved me so far is that I have a fully functional Powerbook G4 that's running FCP5 no problems. Anyway...

When I did a reinstall of OSX it gave me the option to save previous OS files to a seperate folder and that's what I chose. I didn't re-format. I was trying the quick and easy method before the "rebuild my entire system" method. So yes it's "a bit suspicious" like I probably migrated the problem.

No third party RAM - hell NO - only Apple. I learned my lesson on that a long time ago.

Don't have another GPU handy. Motion runs ok and so that leads me to believe the GPU is functioning ok? I just question if FC5 is looking for more than 64MB vRam?

I always avoid ESD. I have a wrist strap and no one else has been inside the machine. So I think I'm ok on that.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this but I guess an entire rebuild is in order. This time installing Tiger with a clean reformat of the drive. But I will run the AHT first. Maybe I've got a bad sector or something?

I can already feel the hours slipping away...

Thanks for the info on the PMU reset - that will be my last resort option.