Moving project to new computer, installed plugins are reported missing

[Jamie Robertson]

I recently reinstalled everything on a new computer, including all of my plugins. When I open an existing project, Cakewalk complains about several missing plugins (Omnisphere 2, for example), despite the fact that they have been successfully scanned, are in the installed list and can be used in new projects. The only difference between the two installations is that the plugins are on a different drive - same path but with a different drive letter.

Research on this forum implies that plugin absolute paths are not saved in a project file and shouldn't matter, but my experience seems to contradict that claim. I haven't found a solution to this, and unfortunately, I don't know how to re-insert the missing plugin on an existing instrument track in a way that retains all of the original plugin settings.

Anyone have any experience to share?

[John Vere]

I just went through this same mess short while ago. 
New machine everything slowly installed. 
Cakewalk would crash and then I’d use safe mode. But even that wouldn’t open certain projects. Real scary. 
I still had my old DAW running so I’d open same project and make notes. 
The crazy thing was I had actually installed most of the missing stuff?? 
This shouldn’t happen but it does. Cakewalk projects will ignore the plug in if it’s now in a different folder location. I had to re install the ones that were like that. 

Next issue was old DAW had both VST 2 and VST3 versions. New one I decided to use only VST3 if available. Big mistake. So had to re install those too. This was what I think caused crashing. 

Even after this Cakewalk now opens with out safe mode but has a list of missing plugs which of course are not missing.

 

Easy fix is click on the bracketed plugs and use replace to then use the same plug. Problem is you loose all the settings. I’m going to sort that out by figuring out how to transfer from old computer. But most I have my settings memorized.