A fix for Logic crashing in Snow Leopard

Apple's audio-creativity software suites Logic Pro and Logic Express apparently have a bug in certain setups running Snow Leopard, which sometimes leads the programs to crash at launch or when attempting to perform some manipulations to projects. The crashes will happen even if the user has carried out general maintenance routines such as clearing caches and preference files, and even after reinstalling the Logic programs and updating to the latest versions again.

MacFixIt reader Kevin wrote in describing his issue with these programs:

Ever since I upgraded from Leopard (10.5.8) to Snow Leopard (10.6.8), Apple's Logic Pro flashes once and then quits whenever I attempt to bounce or export an audio track to the hard drive. I also have to force-quit Logic to quit it. This happens with Logic 8.0.2 and 9.1.5 but only since I upgraded to Snow Leopard - everything was fine with Leopard. I've fixed permissions, rebooted, and trashed all of Logic's preferences but it's made no difference at all.

When these issues happen, if reinstalling and clearing the temporary files the program is using does not work, then it suggests there is either a problem in a plug-in or other third-party add-on to the program, or a problem with how the program is handling other shared resources such as a framework library. As a result, if you have recently installed any audio units, plug-ins, or other add-ons that might affect Logic then you might consider uninstalling them as an approach to troubleshooting the issue. However, in the case of the Logic suites, the problem may lie in a core framework that Apple uses for Logic Pro and Logic Express.

It appears the ProKit framework that is used for managing the interface and some key functions of Apple's Pro applications (such as the handling of data sources) may have a few bugs, and earlier this year Apple released version 7.0 of the framework to address these problems. While your system may have the latest version of ProKit installed, if there is a problem with it then actions like exporting, importing, and launching the program may result in odd behavior. Therefore one way to fix these problems is to reinstall the framework, which can be done with the following procedure:

1. Go to the /Macintosh HD/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ folder in the Finder.
2. Locate and remove the "ProKit.framework" file (move it to the desktop or the Trash).
3. Download the latest ProKit 7.0 framework installer from Apple's downloads page.
4. Run the installer and restart the system if prompted.

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