Posted this on Logic User Group but no help so far. Woe is me.

I am running Logic 9.17 in 64-bit mode on a Macbook Pro 2.3Ghz i7 w/8Gb under OSX 10.6.8, running only 64-bit plug-ins. It has been relatively stable in this configuration, and I have not recently changed anything significant, other than installing some new plug-ins. But I find now the AU scan process just stalls consistently on the window that says something like "scanning 34 new AU plugins" or words to that effect. It won't allow me to cancel, but there is no progress - ie it consistently shows that 0 plugins have been scanned. What's odd is that it is definitely not a hang - I still have access to the menus while the non-progressing progress message sits there, and I can even quit from the menu or via keyboard, I just can't get past the scan process. There is no "hidden" dialog box awaiting confirmation (checked this possibility about 1000X). If I remove all the new plugins Logic boots fine, but if I put ANY of them back in (they're from a number of different developers) it goes back to stalling on the AU scan. I have trashed prefs and the caches for both Logic and the auvaltool, but so far it's annoyingly unchanging. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

 

If you open "Force Quit Applications", does it say that Logic is not responding or does it say auvtools is not responding? If it's the auvltool, try force quitting it because it may be a bad plugin causing the entire scan to stall. Also, you should skip the initial plugin scan, open the Au Manager, then try validating the new plugins one by one. This way you can will find the plugins causing the problems and validate the working ones.

 

Well, while i haven't been a mac person in awhile I recognize your problem and the key words of "installed a few new plug-ins". Like said above there is a good chance of a bad plugin that is causing the scan to crash.

My advice would be to move all of your plugin's you installed after that and add them back one at a time until you figure out which one is crashing the scan. It may seem like a drawn out process [depending how many plugins you added after that] but it should help you figure out what plugin is the culprit.

I've had it happen before because of old[poorly programmed] vst's and vst's installed by Video editing software and other things.

Good luck

 

Logic has definitely not crashed or hung - I can still operate the menus and manually quit, even through the persistently useless progress window (whose Abort button does nothing). It's possible that auvaltool is quitting, as I never seem to catch it in the app rotation - at one point I grabbed it while it was booting and put it in my dock, but attempts to reboot it from the dock just bring up a Terminal window in which it appears to boot, but with no apparent effect on Logic. Having no serious scripting skills, I run away like a frightened puppy. I had hoped that clearing its cache and prefs file would make it behave, but it seems to do nothing. Since I can't abort the scan process I haven't been able to enter the AU scan process manually.

I did attempt to force quit auvaltool as soon as it was active, but it refuses to quit, until it eventually quits on its own a few minutes later.

I've already done quite a bit of that, including attempting to load the various plug-ins one at a time - same result every time. As they are from various different developers, as opposed to, say, a bundle, it seems unlikely that they're all whack at the same time.

Thanks for the suggestions in any case.

 

Remenbering that logic 9 64 bits sometimes locks until you reescan the plugins in 32 bit mode.

 

I hadn't thought of that - good call. But unfortunately the problem persists, even after rebooting in 32-bit and the again in 64-bit. I even went so far as using a terminal hack to make all the files visible, then replace both the auvaltool and another file called auval (in the same invisible folder) with copies from an earlier (presumably healthier) backup of my system. But still this thing haunts me like a toothache....I have work to do....arrrgh.

I am loathe to reinstall Logic, since the last time that was necessary it ended up being a week of tweaking before I could get anything else done.