Need to delete/uninstall all traces of Avid/Digidesign drivers and start over

Question

Need to delete/uninstall all traces of Avid/Digidesign drivers and start over

My question in short: Where should I look for Avid and Digidesign files so I can trash them and reinstall?

Are there invisible files that I need to reveal with Terminal?

Can I just trash the Avid00Family.kext file? (Or is there an index somewhere that the OS looks at? Will it flip out if a kernel extension is missing?)

I have tried Avid's uninstall tool. It returns an error.

I've found the Avid folder and the Digidesign folder under HD/Library/Application Support

There are also a ton of Avid frameworks in the Library folder.

I don't want to miss anything. I've seen a few lists of files to delete for this sort of thing, but they don't match with what I'm seeing on my system.

I have long since given up on ProTools since it breaks so easily. But I'm still using my Digi002 Rack as an audio interface. Well I was until something went screwy with the driver. (Way too long a story to recount here.)

The not too long, not too short version of the story is, the SSD I was booting off went corrupt. I was able to make a clone of it -- sort of. When I replaced the drive, I was able to transfer over the user account from the clone. Most everything worked like a charm, except my interface.

Thinking that all I needed to do was reinstall the driver again, that's what I did. Now, nothing shows up in Logic. Garageband won't even load. When I look under Preferences for audio, it shows two options for the audio interface "Digidesign HW" and "Avid 002 rack." Selecting either choice hangs system preferences and I have to force quit it. AudioMidi Setup shows the two options, too. (Both are greyed out in the MIDI window.)

I am running Yosemite 10.10.4.

This was a clean install, so there shouldn't be any funky legacy cruft.

I installed the drivers from Avid's page here:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/Digi-002-003-Drivers?retURL=%2 Fpkb%2Farticles%2Fdownload%2Fen379411&popup=true

I believe what happened is the first go around, I tried it with the most recent 11.1.3 before the SSD went corrupt then (suspicious of that driver) I decided to try the 10.3.3 version the second time.

Everything must go!

Thanks for reading all this,

Chuck

Posted on Jul 12, 2015 11:02 PM

Reply

Answer 1

May 6, 2017 7:57 AM in response to Charles Floading

This post has been the most helpful post I've ever seen on these type of websites. Even the Apple engineers are not this complete. The IMAC El Capitan now shuts down automatically and restarts when needed. No more manuals.

I'm going to try installing the 11.1.3 installer but after you say good idea!

Reply

Answer 2

Guitartist

Level 4

1,204 points

Jul 13, 2015 12:34 PM in response to Charles Floading

Chuck,

It sounds like you know what you're doing so I'm not sure how helpful I can be, but I too have a Digi002r and had to try different drivers till I finally got things working properly. In my case, I'm running LPX on Mountain Lion on my internal drive and also on a bootable external drive running Yosemite.

I had no problem using the Avid uninstallers when I was trying different drivers. One tip you might find helpful is to download a free program from the App Store called EasyFind. I much prefer this to Spotlight for searches. Once installed and launched, just type in "avid" and you will see all kinds of avid files and folders (including invisible ones.) Double-click on an file/folder's path and you will be taken directly to it.

FYI, I believe I'm using the 11.1.3 driver for Yosemite (and the 11.0 driver for Mountain Lion.)

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 15, 2015 11:12 AM in response to Guitartist

Thanks, Guitartist.

Good to know you're running fine in ML. I skipped from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, but I have a drive with ML on it. If nothing else, knowing that you work successfully there tells me that I can always just set things up on that drive if I can't get satisfactory performance on Yosemite. Have you been able to get MIDI working? I've seen that other 002 users have had issues.

Thanks for the tip on EasyFind. You're right it does show invisible files. However, on second thought, I may back off deleting those since there's a reason Apple hides system files... 😉

There are Avid files that neither EasyFind nor Spotlight identifies. I've manually discovered framework files that don't have Avid or Digi in the name. I found them by doing Command-Option-I (to have a permanent Get Info box open) then scrolling through everything in the frameworks folder. The Avid stuff has "copyright Avid etc..." Lord knows how much other stuff is hiding like this.

Too bad I can't get Spotlight or EasyFind to search the copyright info! There's an option in Spotlight to search copyright, but I think it just searches the date of copyright, not the name of the copyright holder.

I think my problems with the Uninstaller come from the fact I used two different Installers, not realizing that there was already something installed. I've found a few plist files that have the ".1" suffix that the OS adds when you create something with a duplicate file name.

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 18, 2015 9:35 PM in response to Charles Floading

Here’s what I ended up doing. Maybe it will help someone.

My problem is specifically with the Avid/DigiDesign drivers for the Digi002 Rack audio interface. I think some of my trouble shooting steps can be generalized to anyone who needs to uninstall a piece of software for which the developer does not have a proper uninstaller.

Based on the advice in other posts recommending vendor uninstallers over manual removal, I did try the developer’s uninstaller again. No luck.

"That operation failed due to error 5364"

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Troubleshooting/Driver-Error-That-opera tion-failed-due-to-error-5364?retURL=%2Fpkb%2Farticles%2Fen_US%2Ftroubleshooting %2FDriver-Error-That-operation-failed-due-to-error-5364&popup=true

Here’s a forum post from a user listing things they deleted. It’s old (2010) and incomplete. But still gives an idea what to look for where.

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=261316

Here are two Avid pages that list files to delete and where to find them

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/how_to/Manually-Uninstall-Avid-Audio-In terface-Driver-Components-Mac-OS-X

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/how_to/Uninstall-Pro-Tools-Mavericks

The second link is aimed at uninstalling ProTools. But there are files not listed in the first link which are installed by the Digi002 driver installer. For example: /Library/Frameworks/AFnd.framework

/Library/Frameworks/CFnd.framework

Neither of these frameworks have Avid or Digi in the file name which makes them hard to find using search tools. I found them by doing Command-Option-I (to have a permanent Get Info box open) then scrolling through everything in the frameworks folder. The Avid stuff has "copyright Avid etc..."

The app EasyFind from DevonTech shows things Spotlight doesn’t. Plus it will let you delete items right from the app. http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware/

Before you start trashing files, make a bootable clone of the drive.

When you’re trying to delete something like this, most of your files will be in the HD/Library. Occasionally there might be something in HD/user/Library. Use extreme care with HD/System/Library.

You’ll need to enter your admin password to delete a lot of this stuff.

/Library/Frameworks/AFnd.framework

/Library/Frameworks/CFnd.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DAE.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DFW.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DHS.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DigidesignFWDriver.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DigiPlatformSupport.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DirectIO.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DSPManager.framework

/Library/Frameworks/DUI.framework

/Library/Frameworks/SystemLink.framework

Now for the kernel extensions

/System/Library/Extensions/DigiDal.kext

/System/Library/Extensions/DigidesignFireWireAudio.kext

/Library/Extensions/Avid00Family.kext

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.avid.00family.helper.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.digidesign.fwfamily.heler.plist

/Library/StartupItems/DigidesignLoader folder

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/Digidesign CoreAudio.plugin

/Library/PreferencePanes/Avid 002 003 Family.prefPane

/Library/PreferencePanes/Avid 003 Family.prefPane

/Library/Application Support/Avid The whole folder*

/Library/Application Support/Digidesign The whole folder

/Users/CharlesSFloading/Library/Application Support/Avid The whole folder

/Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers/DigiDioMidiDriver.plugin

/Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers/DigidesignFireWireMIDI.plugin

/Users/CharlesSFloading/Library/Preferences/com.avid.panel.{F4CDDB0D-C92E-4914-8 2D7-178F384992DF}.plist

/Applications/Avid 003 Family

/Applications/Avid 002 and 003 Family

/Applications/Digidesign The whole folder

/Users/CharlesSFloading/Library/Saved Application State/ com.avid.app.00family.uninstaller.savedState

/Users/CharlesSFloading/Library/Saved Application State/ com.avid.panel.{F4CDDB0D-C92E-4914-82D7-178F384992DF}.savedState

/Users/Shared/Library/Preferences/ com.avid.device.{F4CDDB0D-C92E-4914-82D7-178F384992DF}.plist

and com.avid.device.{F4CDDB0D-C92E-4914-82D7-178F384992DF}.1.plist

I suspect there are two of these plist files here because one driver tried to install over another…

I know this isn’t all of it since EasyFind revealed a bunch of invisible items with Avid in the file name. I hate to zap any of this stuff since the OS get’s very touchy about changes to these folders.

Empty the trash.

After you get all this stuff deleted, restart your system and make sure things are working. The restart took a VERY long time.

In fact, what happened with me is, when I clicked restart, the shutdown process took for ever. (In computer user terms, that’s 10 minutes.) So I did a force shut down by holding the power button. When I started up again, it took close to 15 minutes to boot. Fortunately, the progress bar did move a little every minute, so I didn’t do something stupid like shut it down again while it was booting.

All I can guess is that deleting all those files left OS X with a lot of housekeeping to attend to.

Subsequent boots were much faster.

When you are booted up, confirm that things run right. (In my case, then meant checking sound settings panels, system prefs, etc to be sure there was no trace of Avid stuff.)

Once you confirm that, save THIS as a bootable clone before re-installing stuff. You want to have this as a point you can roll back to if you need to.

My back-up/cloner of choice is SuperDuper. The developer has insanely great customer support. Some people prefer Carbon Copy Cloner. But the guy behind SuperDuper saved my butt, big time, so I’m loyal to SuperDuper.

I used the digi driver 11.1.3 installer. Tested GarageBand and Logic Pro. Everything works! Even MIDI, which some folks say they can’t get to work in Yosemite. So Lucky me!

*note: When I emptied the trash, it wouldn’t delete stuff in this folder because it was “in use.” LaunchdDaemon to be precise… After the first reboot, I was able to empty the trash.

Reply

Answer 5

Sep 18, 2016 3:42 PM in response to Charles Floading

Hi Charles,

I just wanted you to know that I just discovered your post on removing Avid drivers. My Mac had been refusing to shut down or restart for a year. I had been working on it in fits and starts over that time, trying various fixes that were posted in the forums until I finally stumbled onto your very detailed post. I followed your instructions and now my Mac works like new. Thank you for taking the time to describe the problem. I no longer have to resort to force shut down, or launch the activity monitor to quit various processes, or any of the other workarounds I've tried over the past year. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Reply