I'm in the middle of Apple Support Hell. Long story short, after updating to Monterey 12.2, something has been causing major problems with my system. I can't get Apple to run a start-up trace to find the culprit and they're talking about replacing hardware…

While going through every plug, license, app etc. making sure I was up to date, I found the culprit. Antares changed from iLok a few years ago and is now using a run time from WIBU Systems called CodeMeter to manage their licenses. Apparently, the version I had from 2020 was causing too many problems to count. I saw the following and wondered.
Quote:
CodeMeter Runtime no longer contains a Kernel Extension (kext).


Huh? Anyway, I downloaded and installed CmRuntimeUser version 7.40 21-12-2021 and rebooted.

WiBu Runtime Downloads Page

My Mac now boots in seconds again, Option Boot works again, I can get back into the Recovery partition again to run APFS Snapshots restore, boot from an external… Oh yea, my Mac was having major problems.

I don't know if any company is using this other than Antares. Since I've not used Autotune in a few years, thinking of yanking it out of my system altogether.

Anyway, after the install, I went to the Antares Central app in Applications/Antares and it reactivated my Autotune and AVOX licenses. I haven't tried it on any of my current projects so I'm assuming it will work but it'll be a few days before I check it out.

Antares is not claiming Monterey compatibility but they don't say it won't work. The current CmRuntimeUser_7.40 is M1 compatible per the WiBu web site.

Now that I have access to the Recovery partition and APFS Snapshots again, after moving my current projects onto another drive, I was able to restore to an earlier Snapshot from yesterday morning where the problems came back. I then reran CmRuntimeUser_7.40 and it re-activated my Antares licenses again and the big problems disappeared again.

The APFS Restore wiped my later Snapshots, of course, but it's a simple task to move my current projects back in place so I've not lost any work.

I'm having other crashing issues with certain apps so I'm gonna still let Apple Support make their housecall ("waiting on parts" that I probably don't need) since I would like to fix other issues if possible. If, however, they don't run diagnostics first and just guess like everyone else I've spoken to… oh that wouldn't be good but I'm not expecting that.

I did plop a 4TB SSD into my TB2 dock and added it to Time Machine where a complete backup of my 4TB storage took only four hours. If Apple does find a hardware problem (could happen, right?) and I do have to run another complete TM Restore, it won't take 40 hours again, at least.

BTW, had I taken it to the Genius Bar, my iMac Pro would have been wiped as part of the process. AppleCare+ still has a provision for house calls on covered desktop Macs even though Apple no longer advertises this. In fact, first level support is unaware of that fact but Business Level knows. Even though I have six Apple stores within 13 miles of me including the old and new HQs in Cupertino, no way was I going to pack up and lug this thing with my handicap.

BTW, those unfamiliar with APFS Local Snapshots, the near instant recovery tool built into the MacOS since High Sierra, should read this.

APFS Local Snapshots — Cool Recovery tool! OS 10.13 & later

I do a lot of beta testing and updating. If I couldn't just restore my entire system to an hour or more prior, I couldn't do that.

BIAB 2023 Audiophile, 24/60 Core M2 Mac Studio Ultra/8TB/192GB Sonoma, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP
Digital Performer 11, LogicPro
Finale27.4, Dorico5, Encore5, SmartScorePro64, Notion6, Overture5