[Replied] Missing VST's in Cakewalk Plugin Manager

[HeavyAl]

I searched here in the forum as well as the cakewalk main forums and didn't find the exact answer I was looking for so perhaps someone can help with this:

The plugin manager displays 9 plugin categories in the left pane. The registered plugins pane displays <<No entries>> regardless of the directories I set under VST configuration. The plugin menu layout is always empty unless I specifically choose the Music Creator 6 Touch entry from the drop down list at which point the menu that I would expect to see is shown but there are still no registered plugins listed in the middle pane and when right-clicking in the FX box of a project track none of the entries are visible in the right-click menu.

As an example of the above behvaior:

When right-clicking in the FX box there is no option to select "Guitar AMP Simulator/TH2 Creator" but if I click "load an fx chain preset" and double click one of those presets then TH2 starts up and I can tweak it from there. I can't imagine that this is the desired method for working with the system though.

I've tried executing CWMC.exe as administrator and after this certain VST's elsewhere on my system do get loaded into the FX menu but if I execute it as a standard user no VST's get loaded.

System Specs:

Alienware M17xR3
8 GB RAM
Over 600 Gigs free space, recently defragmented
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

-HeavyAL

[GibsonPro-Audio]

İlk olarak HeavyAl tarafından gönderildi:

I searched here in the forum as well as the cakewalk main forums and didn't find the exact answer I was looking for so perhaps someone can help with this:

The plugin manager displays 9 plugin categories in the left pane. The registered plugins pane displays <<No entries>> regardless of the directories I set under VST configuration. The plugin menu layout is always empty unless I specifically choose the Music Creator 6 Touch entry from the drop down list at which point the menu that I would expect to see is shown but there are still no registered plugins listed in the middle pane and when right-clicking in the FX box of a project track none of the entries are visible in the right-click menu.

As an example of the above behvaior:

When right-clicking in the FX box there is no option to select "Guitar AMP Simulator/TH2 Creator" but if I click "load an fx chain preset" and double click one of those presets then TH2 starts up and I can tweak it from there. I can't imagine that this is the desired method for working with the system though.

I've tried executing CWMC.exe as administrator and after this certain VST's elsewhere on my system do get loaded into the FX menu but if I execute it as a standard user no VST's get loaded.

System Specs:

Alienware M17xR3
8 GB RAM
Over 600 Gigs free space, recently defragmented
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

-HeavyAL

Hey HeavyAL,

I'm sorry for the frustration. Could you check the plug-in manager and make sure that TH2-Creator isn't excluded under VST Audio Effects? It may be as simple as just switching a plug-in layout.

[HeavyAl]

Hi Seth,

Thank you for taking the time to look into this with me.

Unfortunately there are no exclusions. Regardless of what is ticked in the dialog no vst/dxi/etc shows up in the registered plugins section.

I just found this other thread over in the SONAR Producer forum that matches my problem almost exactly except that I neither have the plugins nor the menus and it appears the solution was never found for this user either:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Plugin-manager-is-empty-m1696498.aspx

To note, I have never had any other cakewalk applications on this computer but I have had other DAW's including Reaper, PreSonus Studio One, and FLStudio (They should have left the name alone, I loved it back when it was just Fruity Loops, lol).

I also have a directory that I have a dozen or so third-party VST's in C:\VST but I haven't added that path to MC yet as I was waiting to find a solution to this initial problem.

The screenshots in the above url match my own except for the one where he shows the menus being populated - on my system the only entries in that list are VST Plugins/Cakewalk Sound Center, SI-Bass Guitar, SI-Drumkit, SI Electric Piano, SI-String Section.

I've also looked in the registry location that the above thread references and I too have a huge list of the plugins that are supposed to be available to this application.

This is very perplexing, any more ideas?

HeavyAl

[GibsonPro-Audio]

What I would do first is launch Steam as admin: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5688-ifhz-2170

Then try running 'Verify Application Cache" when right clicking on MC6T in Steam and going to properties > local data? This may do the ticket, I have a feeling something's not being copied over.

When you had Steam download the files, did you choose the default paths?

[HeavyAl]

No, that didn't work either. And when that didn't work I did a complete uninstall. After doing the uninstall I cleaned the registry of every item referencing cakewalk, I further deleted every file and folder on my system regarding the software. Above and beyond that I removed every other tool on my system that had anything to do with audio plugins.

Finally, I downloaded and reinstalled the software. The problem at this point became that the registration information wouldn't work. The cakewalk site tells me there are multiple registrations for the supplied serial number. I can only surmise that this is because I had to do the reinstall and actually cleared out the previous registration data when I cleaned my windows registry. I don't seem to have any registration emails in my inbox so I don't know what to do about this part of the problem.

Now back to the original issue, and after the last three hours of clearing everything out, the same problem exists! Nothing in the registered plugins section.

I gotta say that this has been the toughest install of any I've done in my 20+ years of working on computers, lol.

If there's anything you can do to help me out further on this problem I'd really appreciate it.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

HeavyAl,

Unfortunately you did not have to uninstall other sound applications. Does your original problem still show up after the re installation?

Reading through your first post again I noticed this again:

I've tried executing CWMC.exe as administrator and after this certain VST's elsewhere on my system do get loaded into the FX menu but if I execute it as a standard user no VST's get loaded.

Do the factory VST plug-ins show up then as well? If they do then something with your system privileges is effecting the scanner.

Regarding the registration issue now: Can you post a screenshot of the registration window you are seeing?

[HeavyAl]

The registration issue turned out not to be an issue. I had forgotten to exit steam after I had opened it using the admin account. Apparently on first launch, if you're running steam as admin the music app can't tell who you are and instead shows the dialog for a person who had downloaded it from the Cakewalk site. Might be a registration bug and I'd send a screenshot but now it doesn't come up after I logged back into steam under a non-admin account.

Hopefully that made some sort of sense.

Back to the matter at hand though. I know I didn't have to uninstall everything but it gave me an excuse to do some system cleanup that I had already been meaning to do and it also allowed me to create a clean base to test from. Having said that, I'm still having the same problem as is indicated in the linked screen shots:

http://grab.by/oCLq
http://grab.by/oCLs

So what do you think?

[HeavyAl]

Hey Seth, I just found something a bit odd. If you look at the .reg files under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Cakewalk\RegFiles, the entries in the ExtAudioEnc64.reg and ExtAudioEnc.reg are flip-flopped. The 64 bit reg file is actually pointing to the x86 directory and the other is pointing to the 64bit directory!

As an example:

File: ExtAudioEnc64.reg
Line 8: "Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Cakewalk\\Shared Utilities"

File: ExtAudioEnc.reg
Line 8: "Path"="C:\\Program Files\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Cakewalk\\Shared Utilities"

Obviously these reg files have nothing to do with the VST problem I'm having directly, but I'm wondering if entries got flipped here might they also have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ flipped in the base installation reg files?

I notice you are working with another user with a similar problem as this one and thought the information might be pertinent.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

HI Heavy, thanks for all the updates.

The registration screen you saw is normal. It defaults to the traditional Cakewalk one if you are lacking internet access at the time or the Steam utility fails to run.

Both of those paths are correct as 64 bit systems have all 32 apps live under Program Files (x86)

Thank you for the screen shots that helps. I'm still looking into this. You're literally the only user I've seen with this issue besides that one forum post you listed :\

[HeavyAl]

Wow, I feel special, lol!

Actually, I'm running Windows 7, 64bit and 64bit apps go under "c:\program files\" by default and all 32bit apps default to "c:\program files (x86)\". That's why I thought those reg files were odd because the one that's not noted as being for x86 points to the default "c:\program files\" instead of "c:\program files (x86)\". The other thing that's weird about that is that if a user is running Win7/64bit they won't actually have a steam folder under their default "c:\program files" because steam is a 32bit app.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm harping on something that is a non-issue but I'm a programmer by day, and I love puzzles, so I kind of notice things like this and can't let them go until I can at least come to some reasonable conclusion.

Back on track again though, here's a screen shot of the reg keys related to the plugin manager:

http://grab.by/oD1y

Looks like it's pretty slim info but I know how one little piece of data can sometimes trigger an epiphany.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Yup that's how the paths work. MC6T is a 32-bit app though so when we list ExtAudioEnc64.reg its in relation to installing on a 64-bit OS.

Here's another thing I thought of.

Go to Edit > Preferences > File > VST Settings.

Make sure, Re-Scan Failed and Re-scan existing are checked.

Click the [Reset all VST Plugins] then [Scan VST Folders]

I'll keep digging on my end.

[HeavyAl]

Ok, cool, I see what you guys are doing there.

Tried the re-scan thing, made sure the other two settings were checked. Still getting the same result.

http://grab.by/oD8o

[HeavyAl]

27 hours or so of testing later and still can't get it to show anything in the plugin managers central window.

I did get some vst's to show up in the right-click menu automatically. Third-party vst's though. Added them to c:\vst and it read them out of there. The unusual thing about that though is that if I drop the Cakewalk default vst's in that folder the menu will ignore them.

I deleted and re-downloaded several sections of the app to see if there was some corruption that snuck in. Also reinstalled a bunch of the MSVC dll's to make sure it wasn't a framework bug of some kind (used to have problem with that programming with the delphi vcl back in it's early days) and did a rollback and reinstall of directx just to make sure that was clean.

I really like working with the system but these few issues are rather like a sliver that you just can't quite reach! If it were just the plugin manager itself I could program a replacement fairly readily, but the issues with the menus are really what screws up the work flow.

Any more info on your end?

[HeavyAl]

Just noticed in my debugger that there are a lot of calls to mfc110.dll when using pluginmanager.exe. Any chance you guys have a build off of a more recent version of the MS foundation classes? That ones from 2011 or so. Not that it's likely the problem, just grasping at straws here.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Hi HeavyAl, I'm still looking into your issue. I've been working on MC6T issues the majority of the day.

You may be on to something. We have recompiled the VST pluginmanager.exe lately for new redists.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3219-TDFN-7795

Check out that page with all the redists that are copied and installed locally. Try running them all again.

EDIT: Also, the DXI audio effects need to be registered within windows. The plugin manager should be displaying a list of these. Either keys aren't being written or some dependencies aren't being installed correctly. I've been in touch with a developer directly on this, don't worry you're not forgotten :)

[HeavyAl]

Thanks for the attention, Seth. I reinstalled the MFC's but no joy. Also, the DXI's aren't listed in the plugin manager either, for some reason I thought I mentioned that but I can't seem to find it in the thread. Sorry if that turns out to be a key piece of info!