Problem: Final Cut Pro will not start
 

I'm suppose to work with a client today and I have come across an error I cannot get passed.

My system:

PowerMacG5 Dual 2.0 Ghz
Memory: 2.5 GB
Hard Drive on the main Drive: 60GB+ Free Space
2 250 External Hard Drives

Final Cut Pro 5.0 HD 5.1.4 The latest software.

When I click on any project file or the main Final Cut icon, it clicks and then immediately following "The application Final Cut Pro quit unexpectedly." And the program will not open.

I've gone through and deleted the preference files and the other files the main post says to do.

I've ran disk repair multiple times. I've done pram restore, holding down command, option, p and r keys before booting the computer.

I've downloaded DiskWarrior, but I cannot run a repair on the drive because it's the master drive.

The software will work in the 4.5 Version, but as soon as update into the 5.0 and up, this problem occurs. My machine was working fine a week ago.

Has anyone else been having this problem?

ANY HELP or information would be so great, thanks for your time in reading this thread.

Josh Woll

P.S. Here is some of the information from the crash report...

Date/Time: 2007-03-29 13:38:55.745 -0400
OS Version: 10.4.9 (Build 8P135)
Report Version: 4

Command: Final Cut Pro
Path: /Applications/Final Cut Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Final Cut Pro
Parent: WindowServer [65]

Version: 5.1.4 (5.1.4)
Build Version: 2
Project Name: FCPApp
Source Version: 702211411

PID: 618
Thread: 0

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00ad0f60

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0xffff8f90 __compare_and_swap32b + 16 (cpu_capabilities.h:191)
1 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x90b96620 AddAtomic + 44
2 KGCore 0x00ad0f7c KGMemoryPtrRelease + 56
3 com.apple.FinalCutPro 0x001b6d58 fileDictCompare(void const*, void const*, void*) + 148
4 com.apple.FinalCutPro 0x0018d56c arrayCompareFunction(void const*, void const*) + 36

Solved
 

Went ahead and did a search in find and deleted anything to do with Final Cut and reinstalled. Seems to be working fine now.

Sounds very similar to a problem I had with Toast which did exactly the same thing.

The advice I got to get round it was to click on the program icon in the Apllications foler while holding down shift, then go to file/open.

Another way I found around it was to take the plist onto the desktop and double click it and it would open. However no method would work consistently every time, it took a bit of jigging.

may help in the future...

Absolutely worth the money a thousand-times-over to buy Disk Warrior on the disk (not the download), so you can start-up with it and repair your boot drive. You lucked out this time... If I were you I would get that Disk Warrior disk and run it right away.

Note: The new Intel-compatible version of Disk Warrior takes an incredible forever to boot the box -- i think it had to be 15 minutes before the startup was done and it was ready to go to work. Incredible. But worth the wait, believe me...Disk Warrior has saved us from disaster so many times...

Thanks for the information guys, I will definitely hold on it and use it in the future.

Disk Warrior does seem to be an amazing program, worth the money.

Take care,

Josh

Sometimes just erasing the Final Cut Pro User Data folder in /Library/Preferences will make FCP launch... Lots of times the Prefs file get munged when using FCP for extended periods of time. Hopefully Apple will fix it in FCP 6...