Premiere Pro CC crash on launch, crash opening project, update issues

Question

Hi,
iMac 2011 quad i7 3.4 GHz, 20GB RAM, MacOS 10.9.2 and 10.7.5, Premiere CC 7.0.0 & 7.2.1
I've been having a crazy time with Premiere CC. I started an Africa documentary 2 weeks ago, which forced me to upgrade to CC (on MacOS 10.9.2). Other than some issues with the Creative Cloud installer app (which seems like a great idea but never seems to work as it should, especially with updates), I was happily working away for about 10 days.
During that time I had to install Premiere CS6 again to open another project -- and continued happily working.
Then I needed to export some markers... and discovered that the Creative Cloud app wasn't reporting any updates beyond 7.0.0, and I needed 7.2.1 to export markers. That's when my problems started.
I tried to update to 7.2.1 with the Creative Cloud app -- it wouldn't see the update.
I tried to download the 7.2 and 7.2.1 patches from Adobe's site directly -- neither of these would install, because they said I didn't have the right software (or something like that -- didn't write down the error).
Finally I used the Adobe Cleaner tool to uninstall and clean all Adobe apps off my system. Then I was able to use the CC app to download 7.0.0, and my patches to update to 7.2.1.
I tried to open my project... Premiere crashed as it opened the project (as it was loading the clips).
I uninstalled all 3rd party effects, checking to ensure nothing was in the MediaCore folder. I deleted all caches and previews. I checked the permissions of the Adobe preferences folder, and trashed the Premiere preferences. I rebuilt permissions.
Now, not only could I not open the project, but Premiere itself would not launch -- it would freeze to the point of forcing a reboot.
Cleaned Adobe apps again, went online with Adobe tech support for a full hour. The main thing they did was remove a CUDA extension, but after reinstalling, the problem persisted... at first it crashed while loading the project, and then crashed in the launch itself.
Luckily, I had a backup of MacOS 10.7.5, which I had been using before starting this documentary project. I went back to that backup, installed Premiere 7.2.1... and now Premiere launches properly but still crashes about halfway through loading my project.
I can load the project if the clips are offline (temporarily renaming the footage folder), so it seems that somewhere along this zany process, one or more clips got corrupted.
With 15,000 clips of different formats in this project, finding which clip(s) is corrupted is like finding a needle in a haystack. For now, I am importing my sequences into a new project, and just importing the clips I need to finish my edit at hand. Then I will likely have to build a new project from scratch -- a long process, since Premiere can't import nests of subfolders like After Effects and Final Cut Pro can, and that's how the footage from this project has been organized.
Arg! At this point I have a workaround (at least in MacOS 10.7.5), so I'm not really asking anything, but if anyone has light to shed I'm all ears.
P.S. I think when I installed CS6 after installing CC, it confused the CC app. I don't think that caused my Premiere issues, but I think it may have contributed to the issues installing updates, and the CC app getting confused.

Answer 1

Hello GrayJones,
This does seem like some pretty unusual behaviour! And I can only imagine the frustration it must be causing (believe me, I've been there!)
I've seen a lot of crash issues that are related to computer's graphic cards. You may want to try updating your graphics card's driver before proceeding forward. Also, there are a very small number of graphics cards that just don't work well with Premiere. You can also check the settings of your Mercury Playback Engine GPU. This can impact the performance of your software, especially depending on your graphics card. I may have missed it above, but didn't see anything related to Graphics cards in what you tried.
If you update your graphics card's drivers, and then update your version of Premiere Pro, it may solve the crashing on launch issue that you were having. Moving forward with fully updated PP software would be my first course of action, if it's possible.
Although I see that you have tried it alreay, you might want to reset your preferences (hold Cmd and Shift on the Mac while opening the program until you hit the splash screen) and resetting your PP cache (Premiere Pro - Preferences - Media - Click on "Clean Media Cache Database"
Without seeing the errors that caused your updates to not install originally I can't really offer suggestions regarding that. It could be a system conflict somewhere on your computer, but there are dozens of possibilities of what could be causing, especially if you have other plugins, older versions of Adobe or other video softwares, that kind of thing...
Moving forward from there:
How are you working? Are your images stored on an external hard drive or locally? How are you connecting the hard drive to your machine? Are you tossing all of the clips with different time code into one sequence and working from there, or editing on separate sequences?
As for your project: Do you have the ability to test it on a different machine? You can try doing a project manager (File-Project Manager) and putting your entire managed project onto a different machine to see the behaviour, that way you can figure out if the issues are related to the project itself, or to your install of Premiere Pro on your machine. IF the project works fine on another system, then clearly the issue is related to your software/hardware configuration, if you have the same issues with the project on every machine, then it might be something different. Can you test other projects on your current set-up? Is this the only project that is affected?
If you have one or several corrupted files I know it can be painstaking to try to locate where the damage is at, generally it's a process of elimination, make a sequence with files from one camera and see what happens, if it glitches, try another camera until you can see if it's a general issue to all of your cameras or specific to some. Narrow it down from there, if it's multiple cameras, then the error (again) is software/hardware or transfer related or occurs in your transfer/storage process, or may be related to your uninstalls/re-installs with CC and CS6 (although I don't think I've ever seen that!)
If it's only clips from one camera (you mention the Canon XF100 has problems) maybe something affected your camera. I once saw standing too close to a radar-dish corrupt 1/4 of the clips from a BBC videographer's camera. I have no explanation why... but it can happen, so if only one camera is affected you should consider the possibility.
I'll try to assist with this as much as I can! But remember that the forums are not here for Adobe personnel to provide support to clients, but as a community for Adobe-philes to share and help. A lot of Adobe staff who are posting on here are generally doing it because they've got a bit of free time and want to help out. You should consider contacting support again if you can't resolve the problem and getting them to connect you to a video specific team.
Cheers!
J