Reverting to older version - UPDATED

[paulo]

At the beginning of the year when my offline DAW pc wanted CW to be reactivated I updated from 2020.09 to the newest version.

Short version of the story ... wish I hadn't ....it's doing my head in....how do I go back to 2020.09? 

Is it as easy as just replacing the current Cakewalk Core folder with the 2020.09 version that I still have or will that find me in a world of pain ?

Or, can two versions exist at the same time ?

 

TIA

 

UPDATE: Some misinformation in the OP . I ran the update on 7th Jan 2023 so assumed that what I now had was the latest version, but according to Help>About Cakewalk what I actually have is 2022.02 build 039.

@msmcleodcould this explain why I'm having problems ? I've downloaded the 2022.11 installer today but haven't installed it yet.

Edited February 28, 2023 by paulo

[Colin Nicholls]

I'm trying to imagine what exactly changed between 2020.09 and 2022.12 that would "do my head in" ?

Can you expand on that?

 

Unfortunately unless you have a copy of the full installer for 2020.09 in a backup somewhere, I don't know that you have a good option.

[paulo]

9 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Can you expand on that?

I deliberately didn't to avoid the inevitable trudge down the I've got a new gazillion core hyper fandabbiedoubledozy pc and it's works just great for me so it's your wrinkly old pc that is the problem path. This may be so, but the fact remains that pet peeve aside (which still remains) 2020.09 worked just fine for me, hence why I stuck with it for so long. This time when it wanted reactivation I came over all positive and broke my own rule of not fixing something that wasn't broken. Proof, if ever needed, that positivity is for people who actively seek disappointment. ?

But seeing as you asked.......It's generally just more laggy for want of  better word. Playback efficiency is worse (by which I mean some projects that were admittedly probably pushing at the edges of what the PC is capable of in terms of plug-ins just freeze up randomly now) UI sometimes slow to respond during playback,  random plug-in windows open up when I'm not even touching anything and touching anything at this point will cause everything other than the actual audio playback to completely freeze/grey out. If I'm lucky it will right itself and not crash. (50/50)  Hidden folders/tracks (and saved that way) are reinstated next time I open the project, so I have to hide them again, save again and next time they'll be back again......all this and more......

So yeah, certainly enough to do your head in after a while. I use it most days for an hour or two and I can't remember the last session where I didn't have something occur that didn't used to happen.

I wasn't asking for analysis of the problems, so all of the above is not really relevant to the question. I just wanted to know how to go back to 2020.09.

Thanks for replying.

[msmcleod]

25 minutes ago, paulo said:

I deliberately didn't to avoid the inevitable trudge down the I've got a new gazillion core hyper fandabbiedoubledozy pc and it's works just great for me so it's your wrinkly old pc that is the problem path. This may be so, but the fact remains that pet peeve aside (which still remains) 2020.09 worked just fine for me, hence why I stuck with it for so long. This time when it wanted reactivation I came over all positive and broke my own rule of not fixing something that wasn't broken. Proof, if ever needed, that positivity is for people who actively seek disappointment. ?

But seeing as you asked.......It's generally just more laggy for want of  better word. Playback efficiency is worse (by which I mean some projects that were admittedly probably pushing at the edges of what the PC is capable of in terms of plug-ins just freeze up randomly now) UI sometimes slow to respond during playback,  random plug-in windows open up when I'm not even touching anything and touching anything at this point will cause everything other than the actual audio playback to completely freeze/grey out. If I'm lucky it will right itself and not crash. (50/50)  Hidden folders/tracks (and saved that way) are reinstated next time I open the project, so I have to hide them again, save again and next time they'll be back again......all this and more......

So yeah, certainly enough to do your head in after a while. I use it most days for an hour or two and I can't remember the last session where I didn't have something occur that didn't used to happen.

I wasn't asking for analysis of the problems, so all of the above is not really relevant to the question. I just wanted to know how to go back to 2020.09.

Thanks for replying.

AFAIK ( @Noel Borthwick - please correct me if I'm wrong here),  there is a time limit where older versions of CbB can no longer be re-authorized.

It would be better to work out why the latest version is giving you so many issues.  Given that I'm running with an 11 year old 3rd gen i7 CPU,  I seriously doubt it's an aging PC issue.

The main feature that was added in 2020.10 was Articulation Maps.  This is based on the same UI technology as the Arranger, so in theory if 2020.09 is working, there shouldn't be any real difference for you. In saying that, it could be that there's a configuration issue on your machine that is causing it problems.

It might be worth running dxdiag.exe  - just press Windows Key + R, then type dxdiag and press the OK button.

The diagnostics should run automatically. Once it's finished, click on each of the tabs (Display 1, Display 2) etc and check in the notes box at the bottom of each tab to see if any problems were identified.

 

[paulo]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Given that I'm running with an 11 year old 3rd gen i7 CPU,  I seriously doubt it's an aging PC issue.

Thanks for reply Mark. It's even older and less powerful than that. The PSU is a hamster on a wheel. It could be an unrelated coincidence which is I was hoping that reverting to my previous version would also demonstrate that  one way or other. Because  there are several different things happening I was trying not to put anyone to any trouble, least of all you guys who I'm sure have bigger and better things to do, by not diving any deeper than what I hoped was the simple solution. I will try what you suggest later. 

I think the re-appearing folders/tracks might be template related  though as the ones that keep reappearing are in my regular starting template, but no longer required once I'm past tracking stage, so usually I just hide them out of the way and they stay like that.  I guess I could delete them instead and that would solve that problem, but I've done it this way for years and it didn't used to happen so it seems to me that something in CW has changed in this regard, but obviously I don't know when...could have been any version between 2020.09 and now.

[bitflipper]

2 hours ago, paulo said:

Positivity is for people who actively seek disappointment.

This is so you, Paulo. It could be your signature. 

I know you don't want anybody diagnosing your issues, but I'm curious...do those hidden tracks stay hidden after you re-hide them? There have been changes since 2020.09 involving hidden tracks, e.g. the new "Show All/Hide Previously Hidden Tracks and Buses" feature. I'm thinking there could have been some confusion over the state of hidden tracks after the update, but I'd expect the hidden tracks to stay hidden once they've been re-designated as such.

As an aside, my experience has been that rolling back more than one or two revs of any software often causes more problems than it resolves. To do it properly, you'd want to completely uninstall CW first, a drastic step that entails losing customizations. Honestly, friend-to-friend, I'd advise against it. 

 

[paulo]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

I'm curious...do those hidden tracks stay hidden after you re-hide them?

No. I can open a project hide the folder again, save it, close it, re-open it and it's back again. I haven't been documenting it or anything as at first I thought I was just going mad or maybe forgot to save after I changed it, but it comes back time after time.  My projects are all set to open as track view left monitor and console view on the right so I see that the extra tracks are in the console view straight away. In track view I see just the closed folder and I could  live with that, but in console view it's 5/6 tracks that I just don't need to see at all. In track manager window the keep track/console visibility in sync is checked as it always was.

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

As an aside, my experience has been that rolling back more than one or two revs of any software often causes more problems than it resolves. To do it properly, you'd want to completely uninstall CW first, a drastic step that entails losing customizations. Honestly, friend-to-friend, I'd advise against it. 

I don't doubt for one minute that you will have forgotten more about this stuff than I will ever know. I'm a PC user, I have no clue as to how they work. That said, the reason why I have several versions of the Cakewalk Core folder is because I read here way back when that it was a good idea to copy that folder, rename it as per version (ie Cakewalk Core 2020.09) and keep it somewhere before performing any update as protection against the update being problematic, hence why I hoped it was a simple case of swapping out those folders. It was quite a long time ago and I can't remember who posted that now - I tried a search, but have a guess how many pages of results you get if the word cakewalk is in the search criteria..?

Edited February 24, 2023 by paulo

[bitflipper]

I'll admit that I hang on to previous versions for awhile before deleting them. But usually it's just the previous one or two, as insurance just in case there's a showstopper bug that prevents me from doing something. I'm also a beta tester, so such precautions are especially prudent when I know that only a handful of other people have ever run a particular build before me.

In all these years, though, I've only had to roll back once, mainly because Noel & Co. are so quick with fixes. That one time, however, I was glad I'd been cautious. btw, that time it wasn't even Cakewalk's fault, but a VI vendor - and Noel fixed it anyway.

[paulo]

17 hours ago, bitflipper said:

In all these years, though, I've only had to roll back once, mainly because Noel & Co. are so quick with fixes.

Noel and his team are great, but I am aware that I am running an old pc with an OS that they haven't tested on for some time and that means I accept certain risks and don't expect to cause them any work to bail me out if something stops working because of that. That's why I had been sticking with what I knew to work and also kept the various core versions aside because I thought it would be a case of just swapping them over. I'll try a bit harder to find where I read about that over the weekend.

Meanwhile, in a bid to satisfy your curiosity I have discovered the following.

If I open the same file in Platinum, it behaves as it did before. ie they remain hidden. Open it again in the current version and it put them back in but in console view only. The sync box is still checked and depending on what screen I open it on it will either hide them again in console view or unhide the folder again in track which I guess is what it's supposed to do.

Open a new completely blank project add 10 tracks, hide five of them, save, close, reopen and they stay hidden.

Then I opened a project that is based on my template that has never been opened before in this version and the hidden tracks show up in console view.

So it would seem to me that at least I'm not going mad and this problem is definitely a CW version thing and not a pc thing that is somehow linked to sync status and templates. 

^^^^

EDIT: In the same project hidden tracks that are not related to the original template remain hidden.

Edited February 25, 2023 by paulo

[paulo]

8 hours ago, msmcleod said:

It might be worth running dxdiag.exe  - just press Windows Key + R, then type dxdiag and press the OK button.

The diagnostics should run automatically. Once it's finished, click on each of the tabs (Display 1, Display 2) etc and check in the notes box at the bottom of each tab to see if any problems were identified.

I did that and all tabs say no problems found.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

I would guess that the continual reappearance of hidden tracks is down to a Workspace or Screenset issue

1) Set Workspaces to None 

2) Make sure your current screenset isn't locked

3) Save the project

Edited February 24, 2023 by Bristol_Jonesey

[paulo]

12 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

I would guess that the continual reappearance of hidden tracks is down to a Workspace or Screenset issue

1) Set Workspaces to None 

2) Make sure your current screenset isn't locked

3) Save the project

TBH I never use either, but I checked anyway and they are already set as you suggest.

Thanks for replying.

[msmcleod]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

I'm wondering if your project got into a state that's confusing things in the current version? Like Bit said, there's been some changes to the track visibility since 2020.09 so your older project(s) may have something tangled somewhere that's only exposed by the new version.

If you're seeing weirdness with track visibility and you've ruled out screensets/workspaces, this is almost certainly the cause.

There have been a bunch of template bug fixes since 2020.09, especially with Track Templates, and of course there's now the nested folder functionality, so I'd highly recommend re-creating your templates if possible.

Another thing that might fix things in a project would be to move all of your tracks into a single parent folder, then move them back out again - do another move operation, not an undo.  This will force a recalculation of the folder hierarchy that might be enough to fix any anomalies. 

If Cakewalk crashes while doing this, then that would certainly point to some corruption in the existing track folder hierarchy/visibility states. 

FYI since the introduction of Folder Tracks long ago, there has always been a placeholder for a parent folder - it just wasn't used. If for some reason this had a value in it, that could certainly cause tracks to appear/disappear randomly, as a track's visibility is related to the visibility/expanded status of its parent folder.

The next version of Cakewalk will have some improvements for managing track visibility.  Also, there were a bunch of weird issues with track visibility when "Keep track/console visibility states in sync" was unchecked in Track Manager, and the console view had to rely on the tracks view for visibility state of tracks within folders. These issues have been there for a long time, but have been fixed in the next version.

 

[paulo]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

I'm wondering if your project got into a state that's confusing things in the current version? Like Bit said, there's been some changes to the track visibility since 2020.09 so your older project(s) may have something tangled somewhere that's only exposed by the new version.

Might be worth getting a copy of your .cwp over to a Baker to have a look at and see what's going on.

Thanks for reply Tim. Or should that be Lord ? ?

It doesn't matter which project it is, it happens in all of them. Furthermore, the one  I was using as an example for Bitflipper was created in the current version although it is based on the same template that all the others are which wasn't, so that is why I think whatever it is that was changed relates to templates somehow.

[paulo]

3 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

If you're seeing weirdness with track visibility and you've ruled out screensets/workspaces, this is almost certainly the cause.

There have been a bunch of template bug fixes since 2020.09, especially with Track Templates, and of course there's now the nested folder functionality, so I'd highly recommend re-creating your templates if possible.

Another thing that might fix things in a project would be to move all of your tracks into a single parent folder, then move them back out again - do another move operation, not an undo.  This will force a recalculation of the folder hierarchy that might be enough to fix any anomalies. 

If Cakewalk crashes while doing this, then that would certainly point to some corruption in the existing track folder hierarchy/visibility states. 

FYI since the introduction of Folder Tracks long ago, there has always been a placeholder for a parent folder - it just wasn't used. If for some reason this had a value in it, that could certainly cause tracks to appear/disappear randomly, as a track's visibility is related to the visibility/expanded status of its parent folder.

The next version of Cakewalk will have some improvements for managing track visibility.  Also, there were a bunch of weird issues with track visibility when "Keep track/console visibility states in sync" was unchecked in Track Manager, and the console view had to rely on the tracks view for visibility state of tracks within folders. These issues have been there for a long time, but have been fixed in the next version.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's a whole load of work if I have to do that to every project. I'd rather just delete the hidden tracks and stop it that way. I had already  been thinking of revising my template, so I might well do that if reverting to the earlier version is not possible. Currently, I still favour finding some way to get back to where I was because even if a new template solves the hidden tracks issue, as I said before  it's not the only problem here.

Maybe I'll just live with it until the next version and see if that fixes it.

Thank you for trying to help me. 

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/24/2023 at 5:20 AM, paulo said:

It's even older and less powerful than that. The PSU is a hamster on a wheel.

I have no tech help to offer, I just want to give you a tip of the hat for getting it done on a wheezy old system. Some people like to brag about how new and powerful their PC's are, but I'm kind of the opposite. I think it's cool to run the wheels off, get all the use you can, people can be surprised at how much you can do with so little. If you can make cool stuff using a computer that shipped during the Bush administration, that's impressive. If you did have the latest zillion-core DDR5 rocket sled, that would be nice, but there'd be nothing remarkable about making music with it.

I've been like a low rent Jim Roseberry recently. I rebuilt a couple of systems for friends to use, a couple of systems that originally shipped with Vista installed. One is a Core 2 Quad with 8G RAM that I received years ago as a hand-me-down. It was my main DAW computer for a few years and then my #2 for several more. My friend had no computer and needed one for some online exams, so now it's his. He's also a musician and Cakewalk on that computer is overkill for his stuff that usually maxes out at 3 or 4 tracks.

If I were somehow forced to use only that computer on a daily basis to do my web browsing and TV watching and music creating on, I would definitely miss the newer systems that have replaced it, but I would not be dead in the water. I'd just have to be more clever with freezing synth tracks and such. It would be more work, but it would still happen.

The second was an old Dell laptop that another friend of mine found at the bottom of a drawer at his house. He took it to the IT guy at his former employer and they said "toss it," so he brought it to me to see if there was a webcam I could salvage from it or something. Of course, telling me that the IT guy at work said to put it in the dumpster is a very good way to pique my curiosity. I don't remember what it had under the hood, probably a Core 2 Duo. I couldn't get past the Windows Vista password, even with my cracking tools, so I wiped it and put on Windows 10. Came right up, running on 3 Gigs of RAM(!). I dug up a 2G RAM stick and bumped it up to 4 and it runs fine as a web/YouTube/Netflix box.

So of course I had to try it....and damned if Cakewalk didn't chug right along on just fine on it. Since he was expecting me to tell him that it was toast, I couldn't resist plugging a MIDI controller into it and jamming on the Cakewalk Studio Instruments for him, of course to his utter astonishment. Another guy who would do just fine recording his 1 guitar 1 voice demos on it if he bothers to try it. I found him a replacement charger on CL for $10 and now he has a portable Windows 10 system that works fine.

As for the issues you're seeing, after a certain number of releases, I start to be concerned about "template rot." Cakewalk is wonderful about maintaining backward compatibility with files created in long-dead versions of the software, but how long should I challenge it by using such files as templates for new projects? ? Maybe at the 5 year point, I rebuild my template just to be sure. The 5 year point for my time with Cakewalk is coming up in April.

When the time comes that you do go to get a newer computer, I think refurbished Dells are a really good value. There are many Dells from the corporate world that got early retirements and probably have a decade left of decent computing to do.

[paulo]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I have no tech help to offer, I just want to give you a tip of the hat for getting it done on a wheezy old system

There's nothing noble about it in my case. I'm just putting off the ball achingly painful exercise of setting up a new one until I have absolutely no other choice.?

But yeah, as long as it still does the job, then why not ?

Edited February 26, 2023 by paulo

[marcL]

2 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I have to say, though, as painful as that first week was

One week only? Lucky guy!

My last system set up (2019) took about 1 month until most of the plugins and other software was properly working! Most trouble was caused by the motley authorization and installation ideas by many developers! It took some time to find out how to do it! How I was glad about all those plugin providers that had  a simple offline authorization (none, file, key or registry) or the ones that had iLok! But many of the others with machine dependency were a nightmare!

The same thing with the installation: The worst are those like NI that require to re-download a lot of the stuff (the cool installation managers)! NI alone took quite some time!

That is also the reason why I push the W10 update of my recording pc along. It runs fine with W7. Why to fix something that isn't broken?

[Starship Krupa]

I definitely understand “if it ain’t broke,” but the truth of the matter is that there is a tradeoff.

The longer you wait, the more painful the transition will be, and the greater the likelihood of running into trouble, and the greater the potential of that trouble will be annoying.

Windows 10 has been around long enough that it’s clear that it’s a safe upgrade from 7. And I have found that in every case, even the aforementioned Core 2 system with 4G of RAM, 10 ran better. Of course it was initially on the despised Vista, but Vista wasn’t all that different from 7 once they ironed out the issues.

Cakewalk itself is no longer tested on or guaranteed to work with Windows 7. When the devs announced that years ago, that was my tipping point.

There are many hidden benefits to doing a new system build. Not insignificant, you’ll weed out a TON of software you’re not using. I posted a topic in the Computer Systems sub about doing a new build and what I ran into, good and bad.

One thing to be aware of is that Windows 10, when first installed, takes about 24 hours to settle down. Somehow it analyzes your system and fine tunes itself. There’s a lot of communication with Microsoft’s servers. So if you do anything heavy with it in the first day or so, it may look like performance is degraded.

Yeah, machine-dependent authorizations are a pain in the cases where you must contact the manufacturer once you get past a certain number of authorizations. Plugin Alliance has a good system, all you have to do is go to their website and deauthorize your previous system. WA Production is one of the ones you must contact after you run out of authorizations.

[msmcleod]

On 2/27/2023 at 3:11 AM, Starship Krupa said:

Windows 10 has been around long enough that it’s clear that it’s a safe upgrade from 7. And I have found that in every case, even the aforementioned Core 2 system with 4G of RAM, 10 ran better. Of course it was initially on the despised Vista, but Vista wasn’t all that different from 7 once they ironed out the issues.

+1 to this.

Apart from the nightmare upgrading to 2020H1, Windows 10 has been a dream for me... and the refusal to upgrade to 2020H1 ended up being 3rd party drivers: one of them a Korg driver, the other a Native Instruments ISO reader driver that was no longer used/required.

Funny you should mention a Core 2 system with 4GB RAM - I've got a dual boot Vostro 1700 Core Duo (2.2Ghz, 4GB RAM).  One boot is Windows 10 64 bit, the other Windows 7 32 bit. 

I use the Windows 7 32 bit with my Yamaha 01X because it's rock solid, but I'm tied to using SONAR Platinum 32 bit.  Windows 10 in general works marginally better, but the Yamaha MLAN drivers require Windows to be run in test mode and BSOD every time it shuts down... not a huge hassle for Windows 10, but the Windows 7 boot then insists on a full chkdsk on ALL drives on reboot.

IMO the only reason to stay on Windows 7 is drivers and/or old applications.  I've got a Windows 7 32 bit boot on my DAW PC simply to support my DS2416 cards and older 16 bit software (old patch editor software).  My Windows 7 64 bit boot is pretty much never used now, apart from doing a quick smoke test on new CbB builds.

Windows 7 is slowly becoming unusable.  Many websites have updated security that older Chrome/The Edge/IE versions won't support.  Firefox seems to be the only browser that continues to update on Windows 7, but who knows for how much longer.

As far as CbB is concerned, Windows 7 does work still, but it may not in the future.