Random exits - any tips?

[Murray Webster]

Hi all,

I have just re-installed everything on a new Win 11 PC and a few projects out of 50 or more are exiting before finishing the screen build or telling me if any plugins are missing.

These projects load fine on my Win 10 and Win 11 laptops (these even have ASIO4ALL whilst I'm using my Clarett 4Pre on the new machine).

I've spent days matching all the plugins and they seem to be fine. This happens in CbB and Sonar.

At my wits end tracking this down. Is there a safe mode to load plugins one by one or any other tips?

Thanks!

M

[Amberwolf]

Could be a plugin, or a graphics driver.

Safe mode is holding I think the shift key while opening the project .  EDIT, yes:

https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Dialogs2.096.html#:~:text=Note%3A Safe mode is activated,the SHIFT key is pressed.

[Murray Webster]

12 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

Could be a plugin, or a graphics driver.

Safe mode is holding I think the shift key while opening the project .  EDIT, yes:

https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Dialogs2.096.html#:~:text=Note%3A Safe mode is activated,the SHIFT key is pressed.

Thank you, it wasn't working for me but it seems I had to be signed in as Administrator.

CbB loaded so shouldn't be graphics and most noticeably it came up with dozens of tracks with a Tube Saturation plugin missing - AFAIK I'm not even using it explicitly in the project and can't find it anywhere - is it ProChannel?

I tried to save the renamed project but can't find it and CbB won't go into Safe mode now and Sonar hard crashes. SNAFU in my usual user account.

No solution but interesting?

M

Edited Wednesday at 01:10 PM by Murray Webster

[bitflipper]

There is a ProChannel module for tube saturation, called Saturation Knob.dll. It can be found under cakewalk\shared utilities\internal, along with all the other ProChannel plugins. I don't know how it would come to be missing, given that it's part of the basic install. Do you get any warnings when you open a new project?

At any rate, you should be able to simply ignore any missing-plugin warnings if you're certain none of them have actually been used in the project (they could have been  used at one time but were subsequently disabled). The warnings should go away after saving and re-opening the project. I've often had missing plugins after opening old projects, plugins I'd forgotten even existed. Sure enough, though, if I went through every track and bus I'd find a grayed-out entry for it.  Most of the time the plugin wasn't really missing but had been moved to a different file location, in which case you can right-click on it and use the "substitute plugin" option to point it to the new location.

When one of your problem projects aborts, do you get any messages at all, or does it just quietly exit? When that happens, is there an orphan process listed in Task Manager? That usually indicates a problem with a plugin that's seriously broken, e.g. missing a file dependency. Such problems can be identified by running a full VST scan (click Reset before running the scan). Any third-party plugins that are missing dependencies will fail the scan. You can also enable logging, which writes a blow-by-blow history of the scan to a log file, making it easier to search for failed plugin initializations.

 

[Murray Webster]

tThanks Bitflipper,

Saturation Knob is there, perhaps it's 3rd Party but I can't find it. The project displays a message related to opening Channel 5 of the Console and then simply exits without warning. There is no orphan process.

The thing is, one of these projects used to do exactly the same thing on my Win 10 machine in Aug 2023 and I had to resume from 6 months earlier. Now all the versions open fine on Win 10.

A scan reports a problem with WaveShell1-VST3 14.12_x64 and WaveShell1-VST3 14.25_x64. If it's Waves then other projects load fine.

How do I turn on logging?

M

[Sock Monkey]

Warning- The information about Safe Mode is wrong. You have to open using the FILE MENU.  Then hold shift.  Support apologized to me about the error in the document. 
 

This sounds an awful lot like my recent experience. Sorry Im on my phone so can’t seem to copy the link. But in the Sonar Forum here look for “Bad Day in Sonar Land.  
 

I haven’t heard anything solid from support yet but I sent in the project a few days ago along with a dozen crash dumps. 
I think basically the problem was that the original project was started with Sonar 8.5. Which didn’t have pro channel. This results is an opening error due to the missing EQ. which seems might be your issue as well..

Then other suspects are CA2A a ghost of the TTS-1. Addictive drums was also in one of the dumps 

The project opens now after I excluded the Untitled EQ and Untitled CA2A and re saved. But the pro channel is empty for a couple of tracks and buses. 

Edited Wednesday at 05:10 PM by Sock Monkey

[Xoo]

Compressed folder (where saturation knob's dll is)?

[msmcleod]

6 hours ago, Xoo said:

Compressed folder (where saturation knob's dll is)?

This has definitely caused issues in the past.

These folders should definitely not be compressed:

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities
C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Plugins

Their content isn't very large, so if you do have a compressed drive, uncompressing these two folders shouldn't make much of a difference.

[Murray Webster]

This is now getting pretty frustrating, as it's my most important project.

I managed to get into safe mode the first time I tried as Administrator and saved the file under a different name. Now it won't open in safe mode and I can't see where the file has been saved to.

I renamed the crashing Wave Shells and they no longer crash but the project still doesn't open. 'This one's going to be a hit!' and 'Keep the momentum going' pop-ups feel like taunts 😉

Do I get Support to help?

Thanks!

M 

[David Baay]

6 hours ago, Murray Webster said:

Do I get Support to help?

PM me a link to a zipped copy of the project folder and I'll give it a whirl.

[reginaldStjohn]

Support can be accessed by sending an email to support@cakewalk.com if you haven't already done that. Or you may be able to submit a support request on the bandlab website.

[sjoens]

Help in finding files on your system: Everything from voidtools has been a life saver here.  It literally finds everything and does so in an instant.

[Murray Webster]

Thank you David and thank you Reginald.

After a rant sometimes comes a realisation...I needed to keep the shift key pressed throughout safe mode! 

So, I have a version of the project from March 2014 which says it's X3 and opens fine.

The next version is May 2022, presumably CbB, and has the exact same tracks and plugins and won't open. It's a clone of the 2014 one so I could resume. This one opens on my Win 10 and Win 11 laptops.

I'm not sure what that indicates...

M

[Murray Webster]

13 hours ago, sjoens said:

Help in finding files on your system: Everything from voidtools has been a life saver here.  It literally finds everything and does so in an instant.

That's very useful! ☺