Manually Removing Plugins in Sonar 8.5 Producer

[Ricky Wayne Hunt]

Hi, my name is Ricky...and I'm a plug-aholic. I have over 1,100 plugins and Sonar no likey.  I remove them from their vst folders, reboot, rescan and they still show up in Plugin Manager. I assume they are looking at the registery and not the plugin folders. Does anyone know a quick and easy way to handle this? Even better would be a batch removal program. .Thanks for your help[.

[Jacques Boileau]

First, make sure you have removed all instances of a plugin. Check the path Cakewalk/Sonar scans for plugins in preference and ma,e sure you do not have duplicates. Also, you may have installed vst 2 and 3 of some plugins, if you delete only one version the other will still be found by Sonar.

If your intention is to start fresh, as if you never where a plug-aholic, you could rename the directories where the vst are installed and Sonar is looking for them. Then you create new ones of the original name and leave them empty for now. Of course, I would suggest you leave the directory of Cakewalk/Sonar default plugin directory alone. Do a scan and your vst list should be very short. You could then cherry pick the vst from the backup dir and copy them over the new directory. It's not something I have tried, but it should work.

[lapasoa]

The only way I kow to remove plugins is to  click start button and choose  "Control Panel". Inside Control Panel you have to open "Programs and Feautures".

Here you'll find all your programs and plugins. Here you can unistall them.

[Glenn Stanton]

not all plugins install where the app manager can perform an uninstall, and many don't have an easy uninstall option either (esp if the plugin is installed as part of another software package).

using the plugin manager you can see the location of the plugin file and the file name, then simply (using the File Explorer) click on the file, click again (now it's going to let you edit the name), use CRTL+-> or CTRL+END and type ! (so it's now .dll! or vst3!, etc), hit enter to close the edit, and say Yes to window warning you the file may not function...

if you have a bulk renamer (i use StEx) you can select all the files you want to drop from the scans, and use the replace .dll with .dll! (or .vst3 with .vst3!). if the plugins have an associated folder, you can do the same thing, just add a ! at the end.  then rescan. you should find all the files you appended with the ! are no longer showing up, and yet, if you decide to "restore" the plugin, just remove the ! from the file (and associated directory).