Is my OS installation screwed up??

[Gravity Jim]

This morning I began to suspect that I might have a bad RAM stick, which would be causing all the troubles I've been seeing in DP10.

But booting the Mac with the "D" key held down is NOT bringing up Apple Hardware Test, and I can't find a third-party RAM test that will run under 10.14.4.

DId Apple get rid of Hardware Test? Hide it under another key? Or is my OS demonstrating a lack of cooperation?

Any help will be wildly appreciated.

[mikehalloran]

Hardware test still works. I'm running the same OS you are. Hold the d key without any modifier.

Allow me to speculate.

a) You have another Mac OS anywhere on your system or

b) You did not install from a complete installer (clone or disk copy instead).

a) does not allow you to access the Repair partition in High Sierra or Mojave. You must remove any drives with an OS installed. If the boot drive, partitions must be cleared of any copies of the Mac OS (except Installer files). It's ok to have drives with other OS on them but you learn to make them external only (eSATA is what I would do on a 5.1 MP) so that they can removed before holding d or Command r

b) does not create a Repair partition in any Mac OS unless you rerun the complete OS installer. Yea, I know that CCC claims to copy over the Repair partition but there have been problems.

[Gravity Jim]

Thanks, Mike. I installed from the Combo Updater for 10.14.4. The only place I have a second OS on on the Time Machine drive. I'll do some more digging.

[mikehalloran]

If that TM drive has a bootable OS, there’s your culprit. If internal, disconnect the power or data cable.

[Gravity Jim]

I'll give that a whirl.

Or I'll just do a clean install on everything and see if I can get a real OS on there.

[Gravity Jim]

I ended up doing a clean install of the OS, DP and all my plugins. It worked: DP10 stopped crashing all the time, stopped taking 30 seconds to open an instance of Kontakt, stopping freezing because I clicked on something. Hooray!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I love a happy ending! I've also been there, but with Finale. In 2012 I had to do a complete OS install from scratch and my Mac never ran so smoothly. Hope that's what you're experiencing. overall.

[Gravity Jim]

MLC, that's exactly how it's running. It's a real PITA, but apparently it's something that is good to do every so often. I've done two clean installs, including this one, and it runs great after.

[mikehalloran]

I did a clean install in 2013 because of a Mavericks bug—took three days. I hated the process but my system drive was 30% lighter when done so I was glad I went through the process.

Since El Cap, I would not be able to do a clean install even if I wanted. Some of my legacy apps still work great but their installers haven’t worked in years. Office 2008 comes to mind but there are others including my current version of FileMaker and a few Adobe apps.

When the next Mac OS comes around, I will hold off as long as possible but, when it’s time, I will do a clean install again. Since only 64 bit apps will work (or so Apple promises), that will be the time to clear out all the 32 bit refuse. FileMaker and Office won’t be so bad but Adobe... I hate their subscription model but Acrobat Pro does has functionality that no imitator has and I use it every day. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

In the mean time, Mojave is running great for me.