VST not found, and "A VST scan is already running"!

[Stephen Morgan]

I just bought a couple of u-he VST's, Zebra2 and Dark Zebra.  Zebra2 works fine (in fact I had already been using the demo when I purchased the license).  But Cakewalk has never found Dark Zebra, or "ZebraHZ".  The files exist - I've found them in the directories they're supposed to be in and those directories are in the "VST Scan Paths" list.  Just to get a "second opinion" I opened ZebraHZ in another VST host, Cantabile, and it works perfectly.

Now, here's a big clue (I think): whenever I click "Reset" in the VST Settings page, I get the error "A VST scan is already running. Please wait for it to complete before starting another scan." I get the same error in the Cakewalk Plug-in Manager if I click under VST Configuration, "Options", "Plug-in Properties", or "Scan VST Plug-ins".

And one final clue: on the VST Settings page, checking "Generate Scan Log" does nothing.  I looked in %appdata%\Cakewalk and there is not even a "Logs" folder.  So, I created one just to see if that would get around the problem, but no luck.   I believe Cakewalk has decided it's running a scan, so the Log option is never being executed because it would happen on the next scan and the next scan cannot happen.

So, is there a way to tell Cakewalk to stop its VST scan, or tell it that it's not running a scan?  Is there even any indicator that a scan is in progress (other than the error message of course)?

Thanks for reading 🙂

Edit: "Rescan Failed Plug-ins" and "Rescan Existing Plug-ins" are both turned off.    "Version: 2020.11 (Build 099, 64 bit)"

Edited January 6, 2021 by Stephen Morgan

[scook]

By default when the scanner is running a toast message appears in the lower right of the screen. This may be suppressed by disabling Show Notifications.

It may be hanging on a plug-in. 

Make sure "Scan in Sandbox" is enabled.

When running the scanner shows up in the Windows Task Manager. It may be killed from there.

 

Try the following:

• Set the scanner to manual scan in preferences.
• Reboot.
• Run CbB.
• Run a VST Reset from preferences with "Scan in Sandbox" and "Generate Scan Log" enabled.
• If the scan completes, reset the scan frequency to your preferred setting

 

[Stephen Morgan]

Thanks very much for your help, scook.  It appears rebooting has cleared the blockage.  The re-scan found ZebraHZ for the first time, and a host of misbehaving VST's, which I will now track down individually and deal with harshly.  Also, a 'Logs' folder has appeared as it should, with a VstScan.log file.  Yay.

- There was no scanning toast message, and Show Notifications was turned on

- "Scan in Sandbox" was enabled

- The scanner was not showing up in Task Manager <-- that's the real puzzler; why did Cakewalk insist there was a scan running?

Thanks again for your help!