What The F#$@!

Tool Thursday with Jed Hackett.

Come on, you know that’s the exact phrase that comes out of your mouth when your session is running smoothly all day long and at the most inopportune time you get a DAE error, or worse, the Chinese screen of death. Many of you know the drill on dealing with DAE errors and crashes, but for those of you who just reboot and hope it goes away, here are some tips on figuring out exactly what is going on and how to get rid of it for good.
First of all when it happens, either write down the error code or if you can, take a screen shot of your desktop by pressing shift/apple/3. You may also want to keep a log of error events. Write down what you were doing at the time the error occurred. By keeping a log, you may start to see a pattern. Maybe it happens every time you pull up a particular plug-in, or try to play through a certain spot of your session.
The next thing you should do is go to the Digidesign website and do a search for the error. Here is a link to the Digidesign support page. They can usually tell you what the error means and sometimes guide you as to how to fix it. If you strike out with the search on the Digidesign support page, you can do a search on their Digi Users Conference. The DUC is an online community of Pro Tools users who post lots of useful info.
Once you find out what the error means then what? Sometimes the solution is easy. For example, it may say that you are having trouble recording to your drive because the volume’s name is too long. So you shorten the name of your drive and no more error. Or maybe it says that your drive is too slow or too fragmented, so you copy your files to another drive and you are back up and running again.
Sometimes however, the solution is not quite so obvious. If that is the case I recommend you read my column “Trashing Those Preferences” and follow the instructions. Many times that will fix the problem. If after trashing your preferences and repairing your disk permissions, you are still experiencing the error, go to the Digidesign site and make sure your computer, operating system, and Pro Tools version are all compatible. I wrote more on that subject in “To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?”. Next you can try posting your problem on the DUC and see if you get some help as to how to fix it. Also, try running the problem past some of your friends to see if they have had a similar experience. We all learn from each other, so don’t be afraid to ask. Have you noticed that the really great engineers always ask?
There are so many types of errors out there that it would be silly to go into much more detail here, but maybe this will get you headed in the right direction. And if none of this helps, I recommend going immediately to your local brew pub. If you’re in Nashville, try Yazoo.
Let me know if you have discovered any other good ways of trouble shooting, or good sources of information, I’d like to know. Talk to you soon... and for those of you headed to the brew pub, here is a great toast I got from my dad. “Here’s to you and here’s to me and may we never disagree. But if we do, to hell with you and here’s to me.”

Take care,
Jed