CWBL won't launch, gets stuck on driver

[OPunWide]

I've been trying to get ready for the new Sonar, and as part of that I reinstalled the old Sonar 3 Producer. Why? I have about 300 Cakewalk/Sonar projects and I'm trying to make sure than most of them transition properly with all the plugins.

Sonar didn't work right, so I add ASIO4ALL (which previously worked on a different computer). That caused other problems, one of them was a warning that CWBL didn't work well with ASIO.

So I uninstalled the ASIO4ALL. Now Cakewalk won't launch.

I'm using an old AudioBox USB interface, and it works fine with Windows 11. What doesn't work is launching CWBL.

It gets the small splash screen, and behind that screen it's doing driver profiles. Then those close, and it gives up.

I've tried launching with SHIFT, rebooting, etc.  It's writing the driver results to "\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\WaveProf.Txt" and that looks reasonable (I'm guessing).

I've rebooted, powered down, tried launching with the AudioBox unplugged and then plugged in as normal.

Any suggestions? I'm very hesitant to go to Sonar 2025 unless the older programs are working right.

 

[57Gregy]

Au contraire. Cakewalk recommends using an ASIO audio interface, just not the RealTek ASIO driver, or any of the wrappers like ASIO4All or any generic drivers . I'm about to run out but someone should be able to help you soon.

[OPunWide]

Thanks to @57Gregy I persisted with ASIO and got old Sonar to work using ASIO, without ASIO4ALL.

Now I probably just need a way to force CWBL to start over in deciding which driver to use.

[OutrageProductions]

As @57Gregy started on; completely delete anything that is ASIO4ALL related on your system and in the registry.

You may need to do the same with the Realtek driver system, but it causes lesser issues in about half of all systems, and may reinstall if it is on your MOBO.

The Audiobox should only use the Presonus ASIO drivers that were either supplied or can be DL'd from their support pages.

I've used one for 18 years with RT latency as low as 5.3ms and no other issues.

Any time you see anything relating to "wave profile" (or derivations thereof,) you are using the Win OS WDM/Wasapi style driver set, which have far inferior response specifications. 

Edited Wednesday at 04:38 AM by OutrageProductions

[John Vere]

Best practices. 
Download and install the latest Drivers from the manufacturer website.
Important- Follow the instructions! Make sure the version says that it supports your current OS. 
Connect the interface when instructed to. 
Look in Windows settings/ Sound and confirm that the device is the default. 
Disable all other audio devices especially HDMI. 
Set Windows to the same sample rate you want to use in your Daw. 
Now open your Daw and set the driver to ASIO. 
 

Cakewalk/ Sonar will have an issue if there’s any Generic audio drivers present on your system. They should be removed completely from the apps list and in the register. 

[OPunWide]

@OutrageProductions I never thought about the "wave profiler" being about  WDM/Wasapi style drivers only. The popup behind the CWBL splash screen does show "WDM kernel streaming". Since I can't start Cakewalk I can't change what it does at launch.

It seems the responses here (adding @John Vere to this) assume that the computer is only used for Cakewalk.

Thanks to both of you for the inputs so far.

I've used both the Presonus and a Scarlett interface on this in the past. Sometimes I just use the standard 1/8" audio for Zoom meetings. I plan to go back to the Scarlett in the future. So I'm not sure I can (or want to) disable all of the stuff that has been working.

I did disable the HDMI device that goes to the monitor speakers since I never use those.

>> I suspect most of the current problem is from ASIO4ALL, which I uninstalled.

>> I also suspect that there's a problem in the AUD.ini file. That seems a likely place for a start-up issue. I don't want to randomly start hacking at it, but it does still have ASIO4ALL entries.

Is there a guide to that ini file somewhere? I'd be concerned about deleting it and having the break Sonar 3, but have no idea if that's a reasonable concern.

Everything but Cakewalk Bandlab works. Even Sonar 3 works. Audacity works, etc.

 

I have verified that the AudioBox is the default device. It has the most recent drivers (which are ancient) and was reinstalled using the latest appropriate version of their "PreSonus Universal Control". 

I have verified that the sample rate in Windows matches the AudioBox (it only support 44.1).

As far as the registry:

• There are no ASIO4ALL entries other than one in Cakwalk. (I'm ignoring recent files, etc.)
• There is only one entry in "Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility":
• Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility\{232685C6-6548-49D8-846D-4141A3EF7560}
• That has the NAME field set to "ASIO4ALL v2".

CWBL was working 2 days ago with this setup, meaning all of the drivers other than ASIO4ALL. Maybe Something may have been corrupted by Sonar 3, but then I'd probably have to reinstall CWBL to overwrite that. I don't think that's possible at this point.

 

Does it make sense to focus on the AUD.ini? Should I delete the "DriverCompatibility" registry entry?

[OutrageProductions]

You can rename the Aud.ini to aud.OLD and it will get rebuilt on next open of the DAW.

In the registry under (IIRC) HKLM a section for ASIO (just search the reg for ASIO) and make sure that any "ASIO" named drivers for ASIO4ALL, Realtek, Nvidia HDMI  etc. are deleted, reboot & restart CW.

Make sure that you have the ASIO drivers for your I/F installed (Presonus or Scarlett) and try again.

Interesting that you can only get 44.1SR. My 18 year old Audiobox has always been set at 48k/24b and works perfectly. 

Edited Wednesday at 09:22 PM by OutrageProductions

[Jeremy Oakes]

4 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

You can rename the Aud.ini to aud.OLD and it will get rebuilt on next open of the DAW.

In the registry under (IIRC) HKLM a section for ASIO (just search the reg for ASIO) and make sure that any "ASIO" named drivers for ASIO4ALL, Realtek, Nvidia HDMI  etc. are deleted, reboot & restart CW.

Make sure that you have the ASIO drivers for your I/F installed (Presonus or Scarlett) and try again.

And also anything to do with Magix, Fruity Loops, Steinberg, Low Latency  …….

J

[OPunWide]

Nothing in registry for ASIO other that Presonus and Scarlett.

To be safe I followed the full instructions to uninstall the Presonus Universal Controller, reboot, install again, reboot, plug in AudioBox, try Cakewalk. Same crash during open.

Rename AUD.ini, rebuild looks cleaner, still crashes.

Last resort, removed the reg entry in Cakewalk that referenced ASIO4ALL: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility

No change.

In summary: Sonar 3 works. CWBL starts, makes it far enough to update the AUD.ini file, then silently crashes. It does create an entry like this in the Event log on every crash:

This happens every time I try to launch, from the Event Viewer...

Faulting application name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Faulting module name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Exception code: 0xc0000094
Fault offset: 0x000000000051d66f
Faulting process id: 0x3A1C
Faulting application start time: 0x1DBF6899F352B24
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Report Id: f0ad3f56-4e33-4701-9040-3cd0f2f1f985
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

[OutrageProductions]

At this point, maybe a complete clean install of CW is in order. Noel has a sticky about how to do this near the top of the forum categories. 

Edited Thursday at 12:16 AM by OutrageProductions

[OPunWide]

@OutrageProductions Thanks, that's what I was thinking too. I couldn't find the post you mentioned -- at least not one the led to a way to reinstall.

It seems that they have removed all the installation links and all that remains is new Sonar and Next. At least everything I've found by searching through this forum ends up going back to the page for those products. All CWBL references have been scrubbed other than general information and really old pages.

I did a reinstall using the Product Center and it had no effect.

I tried to submit a Legacy bug report, with every field filled, and it just kept coming back to the same page with the data I had tried to submit still filling the form.

I'm feeling pretty abandoned by this company.

I suspect we'll get one shot at doing the new Sonar upgrade and if that doesn't go well the old installation will likely be corrupted.

If anyone knows of a way to do an uninstall / reinstall where all of the setups won't be lost I'd like to hear about it.

[Jeremy Oakes]

16 hours ago, OPunWide said:

Nothing in registry for ASIO other that Presonus and Scarlett.

To be safe I followed the full instructions to uninstall the Presonus Universal Controller, reboot, install again, reboot, plug in AudioBox, try Cakewalk. Same crash during open.

Rename AUD.ini, rebuild looks cleaner, still crashes.

Last resort, removed the reg entry in Cakewalk that referenced ASIO4ALL: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility

No change.

In summary: Sonar 3 works. CWBL starts, makes it far enough to update the AUD.ini file, then silently crashes. It does create an entry like this in the Event log on every crash:

This happens every time I try to launch, from the Event Viewer...

Faulting application name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Faulting module name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Exception code: 0xc0000094
Fault offset: 0x000000000051d66f
Faulting process id: 0x3A1C
Faulting application start time: 0x1DBF6899F352B24
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Report Id: f0ad3f56-4e33-4701-9040-3cd0f2f1f985
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

I

f I'm not mistaken its HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Asio  that you need to clean up.

J

Edited Thursday at 03:10 PM by Jeremy Oakes

[OPunWide]

29 minutes ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

If I'm not mistaken its HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Asio  that you need to clean up.

J

I searched the entire registry multiple times. There's nothing unexpected in that key. But thanks for another tip and helping.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

56 minutes ago, OPunWide said:

I searched the entire registry multiple times. There's nothing unexpected in that key. But thanks for another tip and helping.

This page might be useful

https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034066393-Clean-Install-Cakewalk-by-BandLab

[OPunWide]

@Bristol_Jonesey Thanks for the full instructions.

First another question: does following those instructions also uninstall the old Sonar(s) that are on that system?

Unfortunately, I can't back anything up using their instructions (" back these up separately if you like, using Utilities menu > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager, Edit > Preferences >..." if I can't launch CWBL. So it seems all of my project setting for plugins will be gone if any are saved as part of Cakewalk.

There's another bigger problem: the link at the bottom of that page is only a link to install Sonar.

That mean that my Bandlab would be gone, I will have lost all of its settings, and who knows what new Sonar will decide to import of the older Sonar/Cakewalk installations.

If that's my only option I may as well just cross my fingers and install Sonar and potentially save some part of the current setup. 

That would depend on how Sonar migrates the old information. Other then generalities it seems every bit of the migration process is on a need-to-know basis, and nobody but the developers need to know.

A few days ago, when I started this process, I though I would do some system prep to make the "upgrade" more likely to work. Then I'd ask what happens during the transition if I'm using a ProChannel effects chain. Do the effects disappear? If I could get an answer, then I could modify some projects before mandatory transition.

Now it's a question of if I can save any of it. I still can't tell from what's been published what I'm going to lose, but I've read a lot of conflicting opinions about it. (Rant over.)

If the upgrade needs a working copy of CWBL I'm screwed. If only only needs to grab the setting from the files there is hope. That same need-to-know issue.

[Jeremy Oakes]

To try and answer your questions : 

To back up files all you need  to do is copy Projects folders somewhere. A separate drive.

Have you downloaded and installed Cakewalk Product Centre and tried re-installing CbB from there ?

If you haven’t yourself physically uninstalled CbB it will still be there. 

Have you tried installing Sonar - it will port your CbB settings over and will recognise your plugs. ?

what « system prep » did you do ? Has it affected your set up in some way ? Are your audio drivers up to date ?

You may be over thinking somewhat - i suggest you just download and install Sonar using the CPC, fire it up and see what happens. Your files are still there on your HDD.

J

[OPunWide]

@Jeremy Oakes Yes, I'm probably overthinking, but I've had decades of issues with Cakewalk variations. It's great when it works. Other times I spend days like I'm doing now just trying to get it to function. Further, I tend to overthink everything. To make things worse, I'm a retired engineer, so I tend to want to know way too many details. But enough about me. 😀

I'll answer your easier questions first.

I'm not concerned with the projects themselves. They are in a separate area and have multiple backups. My concern is for the stuff that is stored somewhere in Cakewalk. That concern was raised as a response to the suggestion that I follow the full uninstall process from a link above, which requires removing registry entries and folders. There was a warning that settings and plugin presets would be lost, among other things.

Yes, I have reinstalled CWLB from the Product Center (twice), but I did not go through the uninstall process.

The prep I referred to was described early, but in brief I had to reinstall Sonar 3 to get some plugins that were missing in an older project. I installed ASIO4ALL because S3 wasn't working, which broken CWBL. My bad, so uninstalled ASIO4ALL (details above). Sonar3 works CWBL does not.

Audio drivers are fresh install... etc. This is all above in this thread if you want more details.

Why I'm hesitant to just try it...

If I thought it was safe to install New Sonar over a broken CWBL, I'd do it just because I'm sick of working on this. Nobody seems to KNOW if this safe or what it would do to the CWBL installation. There are a lot of "just try it" type of suggestions. Since CWBL won't launch and I don't know how NewSonar migrates, I don't know what damage that might do to CWBL if the migration fails.

From a preference standpoint, I'd like to do what I first intended: clean up some of the CWBL project (perhaps export bus tracks, things like that) in case NewSonar breaks something because it doesn't support it. Are Sonitus effect supported? I've read yes and no. Older Cakewalk plugs from previous version? It depends, probably. Old DX effects? I'm pretty sure DXi instruments won't work. In the various threads I've read definitive yes and no answers to a lot of questions. 

Yeah, if there was a way I knew I could go backwards if things crash from the migration, I would do it. I'd prefer not to lose the ability to remix the last couple of years of songs, as a minimum. I'd like to have the starting point of when I last worked on them. Old Sonar 3 can access the stuff before that if there's a problem.

Community support is great when people know the answers and I've had quite a few things solved that way. I'm more nervous about excessive optimism if I don't know how to recover from it.

Here's a basic question: Does NewSonar use all different registry entries and install in different folders than the old one? If it did, it would add to my comfort level that no disasters will happen.

[pedwal wally wally wha]

try debugging with windbg you'll get much more info

[Bristol_Jonesey]

14 hours ago, OPunWide said:

I had to reinstall Sonar 3

Do you really mean S3 or Sonar X3?

14 hours ago, OPunWide said:

If I thought it was safe to install New Sonar over a broken CWBL, I'd do it

It's perfectly safe. They both have their own paths mapped in windows and can happily co-exist

14 hours ago, OPunWide said:

Does NewSonar use all different registry entries and install in different folders than the old one?

Yes!

[Bristol_Jonesey]

I will add to the above, do NOT be tempted to uninstall CbB once Sonar is working because they do share certain folders.

Uninstalling could break both!