Pro Tools crashed at “Initializing MIDI Engine”. The cause was OneDrive, even after it had been uninstalled.
This one took three sessions, and I didn’t find it until the third.
A composer got in touch because Pro Tools 2025.12 kept crashing on his Windows 11 PC. It got as far as initialising the audio engine on the splash screen, reached the MIDI stage, and disappeared. Every time.
He’d been away from the studio for a few weeks and had just updated some plugins and Pro Tools itself. He’d already tried what the forums suggest: going back to the previous version of Pro Tools, unplugging his MIDI devices one at a time, removing plugins, checking the playback engine at startup. Nothing helped. The one clue he had was that it started around the time he installed some Melda Production software.
Session one
We connected and tried everything I could think of:
- Disabled all the MIDI devices in Device Manager.
- Changed the audio driver.
- Moved every plugin out of the plugins folder.
- Held N while Pro Tools started and tried each playback engine option.
- Searched forums and Avid’s compatibility information for anything known about 2025.12 and his hardware.
Nothing. He’d booked 45 minutes and we went on for an hour and a half before he had to go. I had to call that session unsolved. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d already tried the right things.
Session two
This time I went to the Windows Event Viewer, which said more than Pro Tools’ own logs. It pointed at a Windows file called ucrtbase.dll. Searching for that turned up other music software users, some on Cubase, with recent crashes linked to the same file. It’s tied to the Microsoft C++ Redistributables, which software installers can add or update. That made the Melda installer look guilty.
So we removed the redistributables, wiped the Pro Tools preferences, restarted, and reinstalled Pro Tools. None of it made a difference. At the end of that session the nuclear option was reinstalling Windows.
Session three
Between sessions I went back over my notes with Gemini, which I use as a thinking partner when I write cases up. I listed everything we’d tried and everything he’d tried before he called me. It asked whether removing OneDrive might have changed some of his file paths.
So in session three we looked at OneDrive.
OneDrive had been switched on on his PC without him really meaning it, and had started syncing large amounts of files. He’d tried to stop it by uninstalling the app.
But by then OneDrive had already redirected his Documents folder.
Some of his software was now looking for Documents at C:\Users\[name]\OneDrive\Documents instead of C:\Users\[name]\Documents, and the files there were stuck with a “pending” sync status.
That matters because Pro Tools, like a lot of music software, keeps settings and preset files in Documents. When it reached the MIDI stage of starting up, it went looking for files in a folder it couldn’t properly get at.
The fix sounds backwards. We reinstalled OneDrive, then went into OneDrive’s own settings and turned off syncing for the Documents folder.
The pending status disappeared and Pro Tools loaded. We left OneDrive installed, with Documents syncing off, and I checked that Windows now showed his Documents folder in its normal place, not inside OneDrive.
Putting back the plugins we’d moved during testing took one more short session a few days later.
Looking back, the clue was on screen the whole time: that pending icon in his Documents folder. The Melda installer was a red herring.
Why this keeps happening
I’m seeing more of this, and it isn’t really the plugin makers’ fault. For years, Windows installers for music software have put settings, presets and sample libraries in the Documents folder by default. That was fine until OneDrive started taking that folder over.
Microsoft is pushing OneDrive harder now, and it often gets switched on without people realising. That causes two problems. The first is this one: OneDrive changes where Documents lives, someone tries to get rid of it the wrong way, and software can’t find its own files. The second is bigger. OneDrive starts uploading hundreds of gigabytes of sample libraries to the cloud, sometimes removing them from the computer, fills up the cloud storage and then offers to sell you more. Nobody needs their sample libraries in the cloud.
If Pro Tools on Windows 11 crashes at Initializing MIDI Engine, look at your Documents folder in File Explorer. If the path includes OneDrive, or files show a pending sync status, sort OneDrive out before you reinstall anything.
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