MP 7,1 Warning: Promise Utility completely destroyed my mac

[chfilm]

Please tell us your entire current configuration of your Mac and include all connected hardware devices .

This could be something as simple as a failing cable causing electrical feedback or an USB hub sending an electrical signal that causes the instability .

Ok:

Mac Pro 2019
16core
Vega II, 192 GB Ram, 1TB

Connected are: Two Promise Pegasus Raids via TB3->TB2 Adapter
Lacie Little Big Disk2 daisy chained to one of the Raids, and a AVR receiver also daisy chained through TB2-> HDMI Adapter to one of the raids.

USB 3 Hub via USB A cable

Two Dell 5k Displays via TB3->Dual DP Adapter.

A Printer via USB A.

That's all..
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You should get macOS Catalina installed clean and working flawlessly before proceeding with anything. Do NOT import settings or use data migration if you're running into issues.
Run CCC to Clone #1.

Install one app OR migrate data. Check system drive.

If everything works, run CCC to Clone #2.
If data migrate caused issue, restore clone #1 and install apps one at a time.

Install another app or update. Check all apps.

If all works, run CCC to Clone #3.

Cycle between clone #2 and #3 over the next few weeks.

ONLY ONCE EVERYTHING IS CONFIRMED WORKING for 7+ days, then update Clone #1 as your MASTER. Put it away and don't touch it unless there is an issue.

Cycle clones between #2 and #3 on whatever interval you choose. The system drive on workstations rarely changes that much in a crucial manner and for many a bi-weekly update between multiple sources if sufficient.

Backup your media data in another manner.

Ok I can try to do this at a later point when these projects are over, right now I cant clean install AGAIN.
I did that last night and didn't migrate any user settings...

 

[Snow Tiger]

Please tell us your entire current configuration of your Mac and include all connected hardware devices .

This could be something as simple as a failing cable causing electrical feedback or an USB hub sending an electrical signal that causes the instability .

I'm in the waiting line with Adobe Support...
After effects stopped displaying anything again and Premiere won't launch with this video driver issue.
I restarted, now it's displaying stuff again, but in my comp, the video footage is displayed like this:
View attachment 893477

If I double click on the source video I can see something but it looks like this:
View attachment 893478

This is supposed to be a guy in front of a greenscreen, and now, it was not shot like this It looked normal this morning.

Can this really be a corrupted file system? This footage resides on an external drive. I purged all caches a thousand times already.

Maybe my Vega II is broken?

I have to say , your failing Mac is certainly displaying attractive images .

Just on a whim , restart your Mac while pressing the D key on your keyboard . This will run a brief Apple Diagnostics program . Assuming your display is working well enough .

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

 

[bsbeamer]

Can this really be a corrupted file system?

Maybe my Vega II is broken?

Yes to both. Driver issues present themselves in various ways within Catalina. If it's JUST your video window (not the entire screen) that shows issues, it very well could be corrupted file system and/or permission issues (even at the root level) that are not allowing applications to properly access the system.

If you've moved your GPUs and/or swapped PCIe cards, reseat EVERYTHING.

Step one of troubleshoonintg anything like this, limit the system to bare essentials ONLY. One GPU, one monitor, USB keyboard. Remove everything else. Confirm that setup works without issues. Then proceed to add one device back in at a time.

Also turn METAL GPU ACCELERATION OFF so setting should be SOFTWARE ONLY for troubleshooting. If there are the same video artifact issues, that is a METAL issue and very likely related to the MP7,1 not being supported by ANY Adobe app as of right now. Your GPU is not on the approved list and Catalina just sucks with GPU performance (and issues) across software vendors. This is the ONLY method of determining if it's a GPU issue vs. not within Adobe.

And as just posted, run Apple diagnostics and post those results.

 

[dwig]

How do you CCC guys do it, as in how often are you creating a backup?

Actually, I use SuperDuper! instead of CCC to produce bootable clones of various macOS drives. It's functionality is basically the same. I clone my production iMac's internal SSD once a month and keep several older clones on the external drive set aside for the purpose. The external drive has 4 partitions and I overwrite the oldest when doing a new clone. That way I have 3 older clones to use should something "evil" happen during a clone that trashes the iMac and the new clone.

I NEVER ran into a situation like this before in my 15 years of mac usage, I would also suspect a foul play between Catalina and one of the Adobe apps it concerned only them. Sure, maybe not directly Adobe's fault, but still, super weird and scary. And especially also that the TM backup seemed to be corrupted somehow..

TM is a great utility, but it the wrong tool for the job discussed in this thread. TM continually copies individual files and is perfect for times when a file, or modest set of files, become damaged or lost or you need to revert to an older version of a file. The problem with it in situations like whats being discussed here is that after a working file becomes corrupted TM blissfully copies that corrupted file into its storage set. Sometimes you can dig down into TM's archive to recover an "ancient" version from before the corruption and sometimes the last clean version has been lost. Also, it is often difficult to know all of the files that need to be recovered to heal a particular problem.

The bottom line is to use TM to archive and recover individual user files and use a drive cloner (SD!, CCC, ...) to maintain bootable drives to allow recovery from major failures.

 

[chfilm]

Yes to both. Driver issues present themselves in various ways within Catalina. If it's JUST your video window (not the entire screen) that shows issues, it very well could be corrupted file system and/or permission issues (even at the root level) that are not allowing applications to properly access the system.

If you've moved your GPUs and/or swapped PCIe cards, reseat EVERYTHING.

Step one of troubleshoonintg anything like this, limit the system to bare essentials ONLY. One GPU, one monitor, USB keyboard. Remove everything else. Confirm that setup works without issues. Then proceed to add one device back in at a time.

Also turn METAL GPU ACCELERATION OFF so setting should be SOFTWARE ONLY for troubleshooting. If there are the same video artifact issues, that is a METAL issue and very likely related to the MP7,1 not being supported by ANY Adobe app as of right now. Your GPU is not on the approved list and Catalina just sucks with GPU performance (and issues) across software vendors. This is the ONLY method of determining if it's a GPU issue vs. not within Adobe.

And as just posted, run Apple diagnostics and post those results.

I didnt swap any slots inside the machine, only installed ram, that's all.
I can't even turn off metal acceleration, after effects turned it off by itself when it doesnt display anything in the viewport, and I have no way of turning it back on. Adobe support was rude and unhelpful and sent me over to Apple because she blamed the graphics driver... now waiting for apple to pick up the phone.
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I have to say , your failing Mac is certainly displaying attractive images .

Just on a whim , restart your Mac while pressing the D key on your keyboard . This will run a brief Apple Diagnostics program . Assuming your display is working well enough .

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

Hm, I performed diagnostics and it said that there are no problems, code ADP000

 

[daveedjackson]

Well here we go with another fun story from the Adobe Experience!

Up until today my new mac pro was running absolutely fabulous, no problems whatsoever. Even this morning everything was fine, but at about 1pm, after I had exported a video from Premiere (deadline nearing tonight) I switched over to After Effects, when AFX was strangely reporting "not enough memory for the disk cache". Strange I thought, there are still 600 gb free on the allocated volume... when I wanted to launch Premiere the next time it wouldnt. It just said that it couldnt find any video drivers and I should install some. WTF I thought? I remembered a thread that was here on the forum about just that problem, but sadly it was never resolved.

I uninstalled Premiere and re-installed it, to no effect. I rebooted and then it worked again for once. A second attempt already failed again. Meanwhile I noticed that After Effects stopped displaying ANYTHING in the viewer. I wanted to switch render engines to software and back to metal, only to notice that it was ALREADY set to software (opposed to my usual settings) and greyed out, so I could do nothing. This was becoming strange fast.

Next I thought, hm maybe something messed up with permissions or so, so I checked the user folder and library, but all seemed good, diskutil first aid also didn't help. I then noticed when I wanted to uninstall after effects, that the Adobe CC app told me that it wasnt even installed. WTF.

I went to my time machine and tried to restore some Adobe folders deep in the library that have helped me in the past, but strangely suddenly time machine tells me that "the root folder doesn't exist" and asks me if it should create one. Now this was super weird, as the root folder wouldve been the library or my user folder.
I tried to manually copy over the files from the time machine disk, but it failed every time.

I finally resorted to use the Adobe CC cleaner utility and try to do a fresh install of the entire Adobe suite. Didnt change anything. I created a new user account and tried it there, but it also didnt work.

I was losing time quickly and my deadline came closer and I just couldnt work AT ALL because Premiere wouldnt launch and AFX wouldnt display anything. Note that ALL other apps worked fine at that point.

I tried something from the Adobe website, to boot with only one display attached and wow, suddenly Premiere launches again. I re-attached the 2nd display and it works still... launch AFX - no picture again. DAMN.
Rebooted a couple of times until suddenly, I am logged out of EVERY piece of software on my computer. Even the calibrated display profiles were reset suddenly. My adressbook was empty, all imessage conversations suddenly only showed numbers.

WHaaaaaat is going on? I tried a couple more things, then suddenly I couldn't "right click" anymore. only left click, no matter what I did, reconnected the mouse etc, no effect.

That was the point when I decided I had to wipe the entire machine if I hope to get any work done tomorrow at least. Clients were already upset, but what could I do, Adobe and Apple also have off on Sunday so I couldnt call them

I decided to restore the mac from time machine, and let it do its thing for 3 hours. Close to the end, An error tells me that restore failed. WTF!!!!

I then went to format the whole damn thing and installed Catalina fresh. Unbelievable.

Right now I'm installing everything from scratch and trying to figure out where Resolve stores it's keyboard shortcuts so that I maybe can recover those manually from the Time Machine backup.


What the hell was this? Did the Adobe suite kill my entire mac? Was I hacked? Did OSX coincidentally mess up some permissions all of a sudden? It came absolutely out of the blue, I installed nothing nor did I perform any updates or so. Really scary experience actually and thank god the clients could push the deadline one day. Now everything is back up and running...

If anyone has any ideas on what I experienced, it would be much appreciated.

Have you tried unplugging everything, apart from the display. And seeing you have any of these issues?

 

[Snow Tiger]

I didnt swap any slots inside the machine, only installed ram, that's all.
I can't even turn off metal acceleration, after effects turned it off by itself when it doesnt display anything in the viewport, and I have no way of turning it back on. Adobe support was rude and unhelpful and sent me over to Apple because she blamed the graphics driver... now waiting for apple to pick up the phone.
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Hm, I performed diagnostics and it said that there are no problems, code ADP000

I know its a little too late to do much about this , but there is a reason why a lot of pros wait for a mature OS to use in a production environment .

The Mac Pro 7,1 is a nice machine , but it runs on an unproven OS ( Catalina ) . Normally , a conservative user would use the last version of the previous OS to avoid certain issues like you are experiencing . Assuming it is OS related .

And , of course , you cannot install any previous macOS version on your Mac since it would predate the manufacturing date of your machine .

 

[bsbeamer]

Adobe support was rude and unhelpful and sent me over to Apple because she blamed the graphics driver

Are you sure you're not interpreting their attempt at helping incorrectly? This entirely sounds and looks like a GPU driver issue within macOS Catalina, which 100% would be an Apple (and AMD) issue and NOT an Adobe issue or anything they can do to fix. (And at that point, fix your thread title - it's more than misleading.)

Worth asking AGAIN:
JUST your video output window (not the entire screen) that shows issues?
Have you tuned Mercury Transmit off everywhere?
What exact version of macOS Catalina is installed?
What were the results of the Apple Diagnostic test?
What does your RAM report as in about this mac?
Have you tried only ONE MONITOR connected directly the GPU without TB adapter/converter involved?

Will say it again - MP7,1 is NOT certified for AE usage yet. Neither is MBP16,1. There are known issues and reported issues. This is why people do not rush to adopt new machines into service for client-facing work immediately.

macOS Catalina is horrible for video production at this time. METAL issues with almost everything, including RX580's. It's not ready for primetime and likely will not be until 10.15.4 or 10.15.5 is released.

 

[Spudlicious]

According to this statement in the long post, your gripe should primarily be with Apple.

Standard practice: NEVER run install/uninstall or system level changes (even software and system updates) without having a current updated bootable clone at the ready. Can not recommend Carbon Copy Cloner enough.

I share your enthusiasm for CCC, a tested clone is one's lifejacket, lifeboat, and rescue ship. In my view, Time Machine is great for recovering that file you deleted days, weeks, or months ago, but for system recovery it's strictly a last resort.

 

[vinegarshots]

macOS Catalina is horrible for video production at this time. METAL issues with almost everything, including RX580's. It's not ready for primetime and likely will not be until 10.15.4 or 10.15.5 is released.

Well, that’s not really true. I’ve had no video issues at all on my iMac Pro with Catalina. Premiere and AE work totally fine.

 

[bsbeamer]

Well, that’s not really true. I’ve had no video issues at all on my iMac Pro with Catalina. Premiere and AE work totally fine.

iMac Pro is also an established product that has the "kinks" worked out for a longer period of time. I'd expect it to work a LOT better than an unsupported MP7,1 at this time.

 

[jasonmvp]

iMac Pro is also an established product that has the "kinks" worked out for a longer period of time. I'd expect it to work a LOT better than an unsupported MP7,1 at this time.

Editorial first: Your fairly constant stream if "It's not approved by Adobe!" posts aren't helping. It's pretty consistent across several threads that pop up here about the 7,1 and Adobe software, and you're pretty much:

Wrong.

Their "approved" list means nothing other than: they tried it, and yes it runs. That's IT.

I also have no problems running the Adobe suite, AND I'm doing so on my Mac Pro 7,1. So it has nothing AT ALL do to with "unapproved hardware". The "Can't find capable video" drivers issue pops up constantly on the Adobe forums, for all generations of Macs running several different versions of their OS. Whether you get it or not seems more a function of what else you may have installed on the Mac.

With that out of the way, @chfilm do you have the Promise Pegasus drivers installed to go with your RAID stack? If so and they're updated, nuke 'em from orbit.

Premiere Pro could not find any capable video play modules. Please update your video display drivers

Yesterday, I was editing fine in Adobe 2020 without any issues. Now, when I try to launch the program, it says, "Premiere Pro could not find any capable video play modules. Please update your video display drivers and start again." If I restart my computer, sometimes, the program will launch...

community.adobe.com

 

[Bandaman]

Just so you know, you can install macOS without wiping anything and it will simply install the OS over the previous one without removing anything else, so all your files and everything will be exactly as before. There are 100 other things you could’ve done as well before wiping your entire OS. Perhaps you should have come here first before doing anything.

 

[vinegarshots]

iMac Pro is also an established product that has the "kinks" worked out for a longer period of time. I'd expect it to work a LOT better than an unsupported MP7,1 at this time.

There is nothing really "new" that needs to have kinks worked out. It's not like it's running purely proprietary hardware that needs special support from software. They are both using Xeon CPUs, they are both using AMD GPUs with very little difference in architecture, RAM is standard stuff.

 

[thomast0001]

Of course but it was sunday. I'm calling them now.
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I just use the Apple standard 1 TB drive.
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Well, not sure if that wouldve helped me much right now, as the problem occured again now less than 12 hours after I wiped the entire system and started from scratch. There wasn't even time to do this CCC backup really.
Could this be related to the T2 chip being messed up or something?

I’m thinking this is a hardware or firmware issue. The next thing to do is grab one of the many SMART utilities (some are free or have a free trial) and check your boot drive’s SMART info. Check the error and warning counts. Check the spare percentage.

Barring that, you’ve indicated you are using the stock Apple drive. That eliminates several variables. I’d seriously consider grabbing a 1tb Samsung EVO Plus drive and sticking it in a cheap x4 NVMe PCIe card. I know you’re on the clock, but it’s critical you get boot drive redundancy. Install Catalina on the second drive, turn off secure boot, and use that drive as your boot drive. That’ll give you much needed redundancy and also indicate if the other drive is problematic.

I know your time is critical, but I can’t imagine using a production machine without redundant boot drives, so I’d get that set up asap.

 

[jtara]

Sounds like a cascade of disasters.

first rule: STOP!

 

[chfilm]

News:

First of all I spoke with my man from Apple business and he suspected it might have something to do with the T2 chip, but wouldnt want to go into any details until he could speak with his colleague tomorrow morning.

In the meantime I'm on to another lead:
In the email from Adobe, the lady asked if I was using any Promise Pegasus Raid and had recently installed drivers from them. She said there are some known compatibility issues and I should downgrade those drivers/their utility.

IN FACT I have installed a new version of the Promise utility two days ago and had forgotten about it as it seemed so unrelated. Actually the promise support made me install this tool while we were trying to detect why one of my raids was kinda slow writing and the old tool couldnt generate a log file.

I have now deleted this tool and for now actually for the first time since yesterday could complete a full render.

That's so bizarre, if really this driver caused all this. I don't understand how it could have an influence on the graphics drivers, but well, here we are. It's too early to call this a solution yet, need to observe it for the next hours, but at least it's a trail.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

News:

First of all I spoke with my man from Apple business and he suspected it might have something to do with the T2 chip, but wouldnt want to go into any details until he could speak with his colleague tomorrow morning.

In the meantime I'm on to another lead:
In the email from Adobe, the lady asked if I was using any Promise Pegasus Raid and had recently installed drivers from them. She said there are some known compatibility issues and I should downgrade those drivers/their utility.

IN FACT I have installed a new version of the Promise utility two days ago and had forgotten about it as it seemed so unrelated. Actually the promise support made me install this tool while we were trying to detect why one of my raids was kinda slow writing and the old tool couldnt generate a log file.

I have now deleted this tool and for now actually for the first time since yesterday could complete a full render.

That's so bizarre, if really this driver caused all this. I don't understand how it could have an influence on the graphics drivers, but well, here we are. It's too early to call this a solution yet, need to observe it for the next hours, but at least it's a trail.

I hate using any 3rd party drivers for anything. They seem to always cause chaos. Glad you got your machine running again.

 

[chfilm]

I hate using any 3rd party drivers for anything. They seem to always cause chaos. Glad you got your machine running again.

It’s just a utility to change settings with these raids but apparently SOMEHOW this utility messes with adobe apps... HOW!??

 

[Snow Tiger]

News:

First of all I spoke with my man from Apple business and he suspected it might have something to do with the T2 chip, but wouldnt want to go into any details until he could speak with his colleague tomorrow morning.

In the meantime I'm on to another lead:
In the email from Adobe, the lady asked if I was using any Promise Pegasus Raid and had recently installed drivers from them. She said there are some known compatibility issues and I should downgrade those drivers/their utility.

IN FACT I have installed a new version of the Promise utility two days ago and had forgotten about it as it seemed so unrelated. Actually the promise support made me install this tool while we were trying to detect why one of my raids was kinda slow writing and the old tool couldnt generate a log file.

I have now deleted this tool and for now actually for the first time since yesterday could complete a full render.

That's so bizarre, if really this driver caused all this. I don't understand how it could have an influence on the graphics drivers, but well, here we are. It's too early to call this a solution yet, need to observe it for the next hours, but at least it's a trail.

In a situation like this - systemic failure - it's always best to go into a minimal configuration mode ( remove all components except for the ones necessary to get the system basically running ) and then add components one at a time and observe when the instability returns . With earlier Mac models , Apple would have guidance on rebuilding a Mac one component at a time even if the Mac was not really usable in any particular configuration . The goal was to find the culprit systematically . But we don't have those service sources yet for the MP7,1 .

 

[chfilm]

In a situation like this - systemic failure - it's always best to go into a minimal configuration mode ( remove all components except for the ones necessary to get the system basically running ) and then add components one at a time and observe when the instability returns . With earlier Mac models , Apple would have guidance on rebuilding a Mac one component at a time even if the Mac was not really usable in any particular configuration . The goal was to find the culprit systematically . But we don't have those service sources yet for the MP7,1 .

Do you have any explanation on how this promise utility couldve caused all this havoc?

 

[bsbeamer]

Reports of Promise RAID Utility issues in Mojave:

Promise Utility just hangs in Mojave

Hi. I have three Promises conected to an iMacPro and while volumes mount OK and are useable, the Promise Utility software

forum.promise.com

And seems to have lingered into Catalina if the end of this thread is accurate:

macOS 10.15 Catalina Compatibility

I use a PegasusR2 and, of course, the Promise Utility software. With macOS 10.15 Catalina due to be released soon,

forum.promise.com

So far nothing you're mentioning has documented even an attempt at a near barebones setup to test/troubleshoot. You still have not reported answers to any of this:

JUST your video output window (not the entire screen) that shows issues?
Have you turned Mercury Transmit off everywhere?
What exact version of macOS Catalina is installed?
What were the results of the Apple Diagnostic test?
What does your RAM report as in about this mac?
Have you tried only ONE MONITOR connected directly the GPU without TB adapter/converter involved?

Have you contacted Promise?

If you did a full clean install of Catalina, why did the issues linger through that clean install?
Was the Promise utility installed as part of what you considered a clean install?
Did you fully erase your hard drive before clean install of Catalina or as part of that clean install?

AFAIK, no special drivers/utility are part of the standard Catalina installer so they should not be present unless you actively took steps to instal them.

 

[jasonmvp]

In the meantime I'm on to another lead:
In the email from Adobe, the lady asked if I was using any Promise Pegasus Raid and had recently installed drivers from them. She said there are some known compatibility issues and I should downgrade those drivers/their utility.

Say, didn't I ... oh never mind. Here's hoping for a stable system!
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Do you have any explanation on how this promise utility couldve caused all this havoc?

Based on the link I posted earlier, Adobe and Promise know about this issue and are working to figure out why it's happening. So at this point: they don't even know. That means no one here would, either. ;-)

 

[defjam]

I don't want to start a Windows versus Mac debate with this post but rather just say I would like everyone to keep this thread in mind when labelling Windows as problematic. Issues happen on all platforms and, as the original post shows, Macs are not immune.

 

[chfilm]

Reports of Promise RAID Utility issues in Mojave:

Promise Utility just hangs in Mojave

Hi. I have three Promises conected to an iMacPro and while volumes mount OK and are useable, the Promise Utility software

forum.promise.com

And seems to have lingered into Catalina if the end of this thread is accurate:

macOS 10.15 Catalina Compatibility

I use a PegasusR2 and, of course, the Promise Utility software. With macOS 10.15 Catalina due to be released soon,

forum.promise.com

So far nothing you're mentioning has documented even an attempt at a near barebones setup to test/troubleshoot. You still have not reported answers to any of this:

JUST your video output window (not the entire screen) that shows issues?
Have you turned Mercury Transmit off everywhere?
What exact version of macOS Catalina is installed?
What were the results of the Apple Diagnostic test?
What does your RAM report as in about this mac?
Have you tried only ONE MONITOR connected directly the GPU without TB adapter/converter involved?

Have you contacted Promise?

If you did a full clean install of Catalina, why did the issues linger through that clean install?
Was the Promise utility installed as part of what you considered a clean install?
Did you fully erase your hard drive before clean install of Catalina or as part of that clean install?

AFAIK, no special drivers/utility are part of the standard Catalina installer so they should not be present unless you actively took steps to instal them.

No those drivers are not part of the installation, I just reinstalled them because I always had them and never did they cause any trouble. I didn’t assume that this could be the cause of all of this...

JUST your video output window (not the entire screen) that shows issues?


Have you turned Mercury Transmit off everywhere?
-like where? In afx it was never on, in Premiere it was on but premiere wouldn’t launch an

What exact version of macOS Catalina is installed?
10.

What were the results of the Apple Diagnostic test?
- ADP000 - no issues found.

What does your RAM report as in about this mac?
- nothing unusual, my Mac contains 6x32gb 2933mhz dimms

Have you tried only ONE MONITOR connected directly the GPU without TB adapter/converter involved?
I tried one monitor, but not without the adapter, don’t know how u could do that. They only have DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort and neither attaches to the new Mac Pro.

Promise is looking into the issue, of course I have contacted them.