Problem with Carrara on Mac (Solved)

BrianP21361BrianP21361 Posts: 807
edited November 2019 in Carrara Discussion

I'm sorry to start a new discussion, but I couldn't find a relavant topic to raise this question. Maybe this can be a catch all for Mac related issues.

Carrara started acting strangly about a week and a half ago and I'm struggling to find a solution. When I launch Carrara my entire system hangs for a few minutes. If I try to open a file or import content and click in the search box, my system hangs for minutes. I've tried deleting Carrara, but finding all the bits and pieces scattered throughout my system is difficult. When I reinstall Carrara it doesn't require me to put in my serial number leading me to believe that I haven't find the file that stores it. Maybe that's the problem. 

Does anyone know where Carrara stores its serial number and where the file is located? 

Thanks in advance. 

Post edited by BrianP21361 on

Comments

  • de3ande3an Posts: 915
    edited November 2019

    Brian,

    To the best of my knowledge, these are the files you need to remove to get a completely fresh install.

    They are located in the Library folder in the User's home directory. I think the serial number is hidden in one of these files, but I'm not absolutely sure.

    You might want to save the originals before deleting them.

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    Post edited by de3an on
  • Thanks. I definately deleted Preferences.txt and com.eovia.carrara.macho.8.5.1.19.plist, but I don't recognize the others. Content libraries and font information is stored in Preferences.txt. I looked at it in a text editor and all my content libraries disappeared with the reinstall.  I will give it one more try.

  • de3ande3an Posts: 915

    I had a similar issue after migrating Carrara to my new Mac. It worked fine for a long time, but all of a sudden started trying to access the no longer connected remote volume whenever I tired to open a file (causing a long delay while it looked for the volume).

    Replacing those files fixed the problem. After reconfiguring my preferences and content, I made a backup of these files. Sure enough, the problem manifested again at a later time, and by using the backed up files I was able to fix the problem while retaining my settings.

    I still don't know what trigged this issue, but so far it has only happened those two times.

  • I think the trigger was loading content into Carrara using CMS. Never again. I normally download content manually and then add it to my content library. I must have spent 10 hours trying to fix this. 

    I replaced those files with backups and there's good news and bad. It fixed the hanging in a open dialog, but my computer still hangs for 1.5 minutes on launch. I can live with that. Thanks VERY much!

  • de3ande3an Posts: 915

    You're running Catalina, right? I wonder if that could somehow be part of the issue. Have you eliminated all plug-ins as a possible cause? A 32 bit plug-in would probably throw a monkey wrench into the mix.

  • That's the really weird part. I'm on Mojave. I created an external test drive for Catalina and that is running fine. It's older than whatever happened. I've been copying files from there. I tried removing all the plugins, same issue. It's working for now, except the 1 minute hang at launch. I'm going to try a clean install and see if that makes a difference. 
     

    you've been extremely helpful  thank you  

  • de3ande3an Posts: 915

    Maybe opening up the Activity Monitor (in the Utilities folder) and watching what process is using the most "% CPU" during the Carrara start up delay would give a clue. Maybe its not Carrara.

    I'm running on Mojave myself, and apart from a somewhat random rendering hang, Carrara's been working well.

  • I had Activity monitor open from the start. I'll post some screen shots soon. Maybe you can see something I missed. 

  • BrianP21361BrianP21361 Posts: 807
    edited November 2019

    I think I've solved the problem and it was very simple. d3an let me to it. I took a few scren shots beofre and after launching Carrara to post here. I noticed a tccd process was running after Carrara started. After some reading I found that tccd is related to access to contacts and can be changed in the Security & Privacty Preferences. I went to the Security & Privacty and noticed several places where Carrara had access. I unclicked access in Photos and Accessibility and the problem seems to have gone away. I have launched Carrara several times and even done a computer restart. No hanging at either launch or searching in a open dialog. That's more than a dozen hours of my life I'll never get back. LOL

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    Post edited by BrianP21361 on
  • de3ande3an Posts: 915

    Good! yes

    Interestingly, I don't have Carrara listed anywhere in my Privacy settings. Good to know though.

     

  • Thanks for all your help!

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