UpdateParticle system should not happen on disabled GO

Looks like someone else on the Unity forums reported a similar issue a few months ago. Not sure if their solution will work for you, but it might be useful.

No particle systems are instantiated or have ever been.

I have particle systems attached to non-instantiated prefabs

These particle systems function perfectly

Possibly an important detail: if the prefabs aren't in your scene, how do you know the particle systems function perfectly?

This happened to me recently and this is how I solved it:

This error occured when I try to Play a particle system attached to one of my objects. I had the particle system prefabed since I wanted to use it somewhere else as well. In a hurry I accidently dragged the prefab to the inspector rather than dragging the particle system I attached to the object(both had the same name). So I think this problem occurs when you have already a particle system attached to the object and you try to play the prefab one.

So I simply removed the prefab one and dragged the particle system I had on my object to the inspector to solve the problem.

I think I explained it a bit bad but hope it helps you :)

I had this same problem after I clicked on a prefab of a particle system in the Project section in unity, and created a script, then dragged that script onto the prefab. It's as if somehow doing that confused Unity into thinking that that script should be run even if the prefab hasn't been instantiated - hence the error. My guess is that clicking on the prefab and creating the script from there (there by creating it as a sort of static component of the prefab?) is what caused the problem. I tried removing the script component from the prefab, but that didn't fix the problem!

Here's what I did to fix it (it may be much more than necessary):

• back up the script outside of unity and MonoDevelop

• delete the script

• synchronize Unity with MonoDevelop (right click in the hierarchy)

• drag the prefab into the hierarchy (and hence into the scene)

• duplicate the ps in the hierarchy (so now there are two)

• delete the original ps in the hierarchy (now there is one)

• delete the prefab (the duplicate of the ps is all that's remaining)

• create a new blank prefab

• drag the duplicate of the ps onto prefab

• delete the duplicate of the ps from the scene

• clean all, then rebuild all in MonoDevelop

• build all and run in Unity (the problem was gone at this point)

• recreate the script, by clicking on the Folder, not the prefab

• click on the prefab, and use the Component -> Scripts menu to add the script to it

Problem gone, prefab works, etc.

For me, as I said, removing the script from the prefab didn't fix it. I had to delete the script, sync, clean and rebuild. Once the problem was gone, I was able to add the script back in and use the Component menu, rather than dragging the script, to add it to the prefab.