If running Antares on Mac, Mojave or later, read this

[mikehalloran]

As I've mentioned in a few posts, I'm in the middle of Apple Support Hell. Long story short, after updating to Monterey 12.2, something has been hanging up my system, I can't get Apple to run a start-up trace to find the culprit and they're talking about replacing hardware…

While going through every plug, license, app etc. making sure I was up to date, I found the culprit. Antares is using a run time from WIBU Systems called CodeMeter. The version I had loaded a kext that was causing too many problems to count. I saw the following and wondered.

CodeMeter Runtime no longer contains a Kernel Extension (kext).

Huh? Anyway, I downloaded and installed version 7.40 21-12-2021 and rebooted.

https://www.wibu.com/us/support/user/do ... tware.html

My Mac now boots in seconds again, Option Boot works again, I can get back into the Recovery partition, boot from an external… yea, my Mac was having major problems.

I don't know if any company is using this other than Antares. Since I've not used Autotune in a few years, thinking of yanking it out of my system altogether.

Now to have another talk with Apple Support…

[HCMarkus]

Sounds like you found the culprit. Does Autotune now function properly for you?

Thanks for sharing the info Mike.

[mikehalloran]

Sounds like you found the culprit. Does Autotune now function properly for you?

Thanks for sharing the info Mike.

Thanks — I forgot to mention that. I went to the Antares Central app in Applications/Antares and it reactivated my licenses. I haven't tried it on any of my current projects so I'm assuming it will work but it'll be a few days before I check it out.

Antares is not claiming Monterey compatibility but they don't say it won't work. The current CmRuntimeUser_7.40 is M1 compatible per the WiBu web site.

Update: Now that I have access to the Recovery partition and APFS Snapshots again, after moving my current projects onto another drive, I was able to restore to an earlier Snapshot from yesterday morning where the problems came back. I then reran CmRuntimeUser_7.40 and it re-activated my Antares licenses again and the big problems disappeared again.

The APFS Restore wiped my later Snapshots, of course, but it's a simple task to move my current projects back in place so I've not lost any work.

I'm having other crashing issues with certain apps so I'm gonna let Apple Support make their housecall ("waiting on parts" that I probably don't need) since I would like to fix other issues if possible. If, however, they don't run diagnostics first and just guess like everyone else I've spoken to… oh that wouldn't be good but I'm not expecting that.

I did plop a 4TB SSD into my TB2 dock and added it to Time Machine where a complete backup of my 4TB storage took only four hours. If Apple does find a hardware problem (could happen, right?) and I do have to run another complete TM Restore, it won't take 40 hours again, at least.

BTW, had I taken it to the Genius Bar, my iMac Pro would have been wiped as part of the process. AppleCare+ still has a provision for house calls on covered desktop Macs even though Apple no longer advertises this — first level support is unaware of that fact but Business Level knows. Even though I have six Apple stores within 13 miles of me including the old and new HQs in Cupertino, no way was I going to pack up and lug this thing with my handicap.

[HCMarkus]

Again, Thank You!

Good luck getting everything in ship shape

[monkey man]

Antares is not claiming Monterey compatibility but they don't say it won't work.

... and therein lies their out, Mike.