Plugins missing

[chris.r]

I have quite a fresh Windows 10 Pro OS, built around a year ago from a clean install. Been adding plugins to my growing collection for a while, all in the default Cakewalk VST folder, until I stopped a couple month ago. Then a few weeks ago I had a break where I had not used this PC until yesterday. When I opened Cakewalk yesterday I noticed that I'm missing 2 plugins (vstscan notification said "2 removed"). Then I closed and opened Cakewalk the second time right away and the scan notification said that it added about 15 new plugins and removed about 20 (don't remember the exact numbers). The point is, now I'm permanently missing few plugins (I believe 7) even though I didn't do anything to them since months. Have never seen something like this in years of using Cakewalk. Anyone has an insight what's going on here?

Edited December 27, 2020 by chris.r

[4th Eden]

Have you checked the VST Scan Paths or maybe move the folders by accident?

[tecknot]

Might you have both VST 2 and VST 3 versions installed?

[msmcleod]

This happened to me a while back with some Waves plugins - I updated some of them, however... it turned out some of them had gone out of WUP.  As a result, it removed them.

I managed to restore my machine from a backup to get the older versions back, and later bought WUP for the out of date plugins. At that point I could update/rescan and everything was fine.

[chris.r]

No changes in the VST path nor folders. I keep everything under the Cakewalk's default path only. And yes, I do both VST2 and VST3 but that was never an issue in all years.

@msmcleod thanks, you may be onto something. I've ran through my Waves plugin list and did find 4 of them missing so far. Berzerk, Abbey Roads Chamber, and both the bass instruments: Fingers and Slap. Not sure how that would result in 7 (or so) plugins missing in total, but at least it's a good start.

BTW you don't have to pay extra WUP to keep using your old Waves plugins, I never did and I have a collection of V9 alongside the new ones installed without WUP and they are working without issues. The Waves guys don't tell you that straight, and they don't make it work out of the box, but you can keep using your WUPed and non-WUPed plugins at once, you just have to dig a bit on the Waves website and read some info prior on how to make it work because they don't make it obvious. That's how it is with Waves.

Edited December 27, 2020 by chris.r

[chris.r]

Found the 5th plugin - it's Morphoder. Two more left, but I don't see anything more missing from Waves.

I guess I might have a basic idea of what happened. Not so long ago I upgraded some Waves plugins V11->V12 - only a few of the bunch, those that was still covered with WUP, And I did it only through the web account on another pc, didn't update anything locally yet. That leaves a question however, how in the world did my desktop setup, the one I wasn't using for a long while, know that I have upgraded some of the Waves plugins in the meantime? Because I didn't touch anything there, and the plugins that got upgraded disappeared with the next Cakewalk start. It suggests that Waves is calling home servers during the scan...?

Think I'll have to update Waves Central and recover missing plugins, then I'll see how much will I get back.