MOTUnation.com

Following a serious problem with my Mac (not related to DP as far as I can tell), I have had to create a completely new user in the system. DP will now not let me open anything. I double-click a project I've been working on and DP launches but goes no further: the project doesn't open, neither does DP's welcome page. If I then try to open a file from the menu, DP crashes. If I start DP without double-clicking a project, I do see the welcome page (though without any of my recent projects), and if I click the Open button, crash.

Maybe I should add that I've also had to rearrange the way I handle my files, so all my DP work is on an external drive, while the app itself is on the internal. But then, previously I had my whole User folder on an external drive. I guess thew main difference is that my music work is now separate from my User folder.

Look at "Sharing & Permissions" on the drive(s) DP is trying to access by accessing "Get Info", see at bottom of Get Info window.

The app is on the boot drive—this is best. Create a new project—give it a unique name (it can be Test), drag some sound bites into it and save it on the external drive. You should be able to reopen this test project even after a reboot.

Assuming you can, you can now deal with why the others won't open. There are a number of ways to fix this. The easiest I know is to grant the proper Read & Write permissions in Get Info—run it on the project folder. Grant yourself as Administrator Read & Write permissions. Then highlight the Admin and check the box Apply to enclosed... and click Yes when the system asks.

If that doesn't fix it, let us know.

OK, a small development. I dragged a fresh copy of all the motu preferences from the old preferences folder into the new one - entering passwords where necessary - then launched DP from the Dock again. This time, curiously, I didn’t see the usual fancy splash screen. It started showing the welcome page but immediately interrupted it with an alert:

Digital Performer has encountered an error.
Script error:
Error: Error occurred during command
GetRecentDocumentList: OS error:
File permissions error (-54)

When I dismissed this with the OK button, the welcome page completed, albeit with 'undefined' under the Recent heading. But again, when I click either Open... or New, I get the now familiar crash.

I've looked at all the folders I've just dragged over from the old prefs, and they all have the correct permissions: I can Read and Write, as I can with the enclosed items. The odd thing though is that in the little list of names under Sharing & Permissions (me, staff and everyone), I'm listed twice, and in both cases the '-' button is greyed out so I can't remove one of them (the only one I could remove is staff).

So I can't work out to what that permissions error applies. It's clearly the list of recent documents, but I don't know where to look for that.

Any clues here?

Hmm. Somehow my previous reply to Mike Halloran has gone missing - this was before the 'small development' post. All I said was that I get the same result whether I try to open an existing project or create a new one, and that I'd already done the permissions stuff.

Just canvassing opinion: would it be worth my while to use something like AppZapper to remove all traces of DP (except maybe the MAS plug-ins) then start from scratch with a fresh installation? Or would that be too dangerous in some way?

I've just had this rather interesting reply from a MOTU tech person:

"I am very certain that the issue you are running into is related to your iCloud account. Apple made a change in iCloud that causes this exact problem on 10.10.

The solution is to upgrade to OS to 10.11, 10.12 or 10.13 or to create a new user account without logging in with your Apple ID."

...to which I've responded:

"I've been putting off upgrading to High Sierra, so maybe now's the time to do it. Maybe tomorrow..."

So that's what I'll do and hope for the best. This afternoon I have a plumber to cope with, then off to a concert, but tomorrow I'll steel myself! I'll report back.

Ok, reporting back as promised, and I'm delighted to say the news is good. Not everything went 100% smoothly about the OS upgrade, but as far as this DP issue is concerned: definitely cured! ...and let's hope it stays that way!

Glad you got it working. I'm straining to understand how iCloud could affect DP. Just goes to show the laws of unintended consequences seem to always be in place.

Oh, I'm straining too about that! Utterly mystifying...

This is an old post but I thought I'd confirm: This behavior and crash happens on my OSX 10.10 Yosemite system in DP 8 any time DP tries to access a finder window. That could be File > Open, export soundbyte, whatever. I have another user account which does not use iCloud and DP works fine on that user.

I believe upgrades to the OS and to DP both fix the problem, so this is an old esoteric bug that's Apple's fault but long gone for most.