MachFive 2 is stuck at "Saving Preset"

[doctormelodious]

When I try to save a preset I've modified in MachFive 2, it gets stuck at "Saving Preset." The graphic spins and spins forever. Finally I get a "Connection failed" dialog saying:

The server "192.168.1.16" may not exist or it is unavailable at this time...

This was, no doubt, an IP address of a different Mac on my home network years ago. But why is MachFive trying to connect to another IP address? The preset I'm trying to update and save lives, and has always lived, on a local volume that is in the "Volumes" list in the left pane of the "Load Preset" dialog in MachFive 2. The samples themselves live there as well. I load this preset into a Part directly from that local disk. When I click the (i) button to get info on a particular sample, it confirms that the sample lives where it's supposed to.

I've also tried saving the preset and the samples, as well as saving the performance, but I get the same "spinning in infinity" (if I may quote Paul Simon).

So, why is it that M5 is perfectly happy to load the preset and samples from a local disk, but has it in its head that it's supposed to be saving them (or for some other reason connecting) to another computer?

Elsewhere online I see references to "Rescan MachFive Folder" and "Reselect MachFive Folder" menu options, but I cannot find them anywhere.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
DM

[mikehalloran]

But why is MachFive trying to connect to another IP address?

That's easy: You told it to.

I'm guessing you had your libraries (or worse, the application) on a remote drive at one time — anyway, it's trying to save a preset to that node on your network and it can't because it doesn't exist.

This can also be a symptom of a hardware failure if you're trying to point to a partition. Likewise, if your ~/Library/Application Support folder location changed because you had to create a new Users Account on your Mac, this could pop up. So many possibilities…

You might be able to sort everything out in Preferences. If not, the first step is to trash them. You may have to do a reinstall of the application and libraries.

Because this can be a hardware failure, I would check the hard drive by running Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Do not waste your time checking it in anything else. OS 10.6.x needs to do this from a remote volume with a boot partition. If anything in DU shows up red, plan to replace that drive. You might get it to repair if you keep running Repair Disk over and over (I've done it up to 50x) but if you eventually get it green, that fix is temporary—anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of weeks. Get your data off ASAP and replace that drive.

[doctormelodious]

Thanks for the very thorough reply, mikehalloran. I've gone down the list of possibilities you listed, and I am able to rule some of them out. Neither libraries nor app have ever lived on a remote drive. Presets/samples are not stored on a partition. No changes to ~/Library/Application Support folder's location, and no new user accounts.

One potential culprit: I had just recently run Disk Utility (while booted from another local drive) and there were no errors on the drive where the presets/samples live, but there were a couple file count discrepancies on the boot drive. One pass and those were fixed—but—something weird could very well happened as a result of that process.

The next move will be, as you suggest, to reinstall MachFive 2. Might not hurt to reinstall DP while I'm at it, as it's been a while since I did that, and the occasional quirky thing shows up there as well.

Thanks again!
DM

But why is MachFive trying to connect to another IP address?

That's easy: You told it to.

I'm guessing you had your libraries (or worse, the application) on a remote drive at one time — anyway, it's trying to save a preset to that node on your network and it can't because it doesn't exist.

This can also be a symptom of a hardware failure if you're trying to point to a partition. Likewise, if your ~/Library/Application Support folder location changed because you had to create a new Users Account on your Mac, this could pop up. So many possibilities…

You might be able to sort everything out in Preferences. If not, the first step is to trash them. You may have to do a reinstall of the application and libraries.

Because this can be a hardware failure, I would check the hard drive by running Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Do not waste your time checking it in anything else. OS 10.6.x needs to do this from a remote volume with a boot partition. If anything in DU shows up red, plan to replace that drive. You might get it to repair if you keep running Repair Disk over and over (I've done it up to 50x) but if you eventually get it green, that fix is temporary—anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of weeks. Get your data off ASAP and replace that drive.

[mikehalloran]

and there were no errors on the drive where the presets/samples live,

You may have screwed up Permissions on that drive. The System drive is normally where User presets are stored.


As I indicated, hardware failure is still the likely culprit.

Run Disk Utility again. Any errors, replace the drive.