Troubleshooting Convoluted Problem (Kontakt Not Working)

seanccalif

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me navigate through a nightmare of a situation I've found myself in when using Kontakt, as it's quite convoluted. I've submitted a comprehensive ticket to NI and am hoping to hear back from them soon, but in the interest of time, I'm opening up a discussion here in hopes that this will also be helpful for me. This is a long post, so for anyone who reads this entirely, I can't thank you enough.

When I opened up a song/project in my Cubase DAW, I received a pop-up error message that said "Kontakt 7 / One or more Kontakt instances cannot be recalled correctly, perhaps due to missing content. Please open any Kontakt instance in your host, Komplete Kontrol or Maschine to resolve the issue".  I clicked on the "OK" button (the only button available).

Once the project was open, I went to a track that uses a Kontakt 7 instrument, and clicked on the small keyboard button on the left to bring up the Kontakt 7 plug-in. When I did this, another error pop-up window appeared along with the Kontakt plug-in pop-up window. The error pop-up window said "Kontakt 7 / Loading instruments has failed, as the library "Kontakt" is not installed on this computer". I clicked on the "OK" button (the only button available).

Additionally, a second pop-up window appeared, that was a Kontakt demo / buy / activate window, and said "Thank you for using Native Instruments Kontakt 7!". I purchased Komplete 14 Ultimate a year ago, and shouldn't be seeing this pop-up. I decided to click the Activate button to see if this would help move me in the right direction, and the Native Access application was opened - under the "All" tab, there were 4 items, which includes Kontakt, Kontakt 7 and Reaktor 6. For Kontakt and Kontakt 7, the button on the far right says "Install", which confused me, as these programs are installed on my computer. When I clicked on the three dots next to the "Install" button for Kontakt 7, only the "Release Notes" pop-up option appeared. When I clicked on the "Install" button for Kontakt 7, there was an error message at the top right of this window that said "Installation failed: Review your location preferences". When I clicked up the red button that showed up on the bottom right of the window, the downloads showed that for Kontakt 7, "Installation failed: invalid location".

When I moved out of these error messages and got back to the Kontakt pop-up window, I see only four instruments appear, which are Action Strings 2, Glaze, Kontakt and Session Guitar Electric Mint (when I should be seeing many more show up here from the above purchase I made). Also, when I clicked on the NI icon on the top right, it appears that I am using a demo version (which shouldn't be the case as I purchased the program).

I had done nothing unusual to my computer, the Cubase DAW and song/project or Native Instruments, at least on my end, when this problem started happening. That said, the Native Access program itself needed to be upgraded at the time. Additionally, it appears that I have two Native Instruments folders, one under Applications (which I think is where everything should be), as well as one under "documents" in my iCloud drive, which feels like this should be unexpected. When I show two finder windows side by side of these two separate Native Instruments folders, then drill down the Kontakt subfolder from both folders, the Kontakt 7 subfolder under Applications shows the application itself and the license agreement documentation, while the subfolder under iCloud documents has subfolders for "ir_samples" and "presets" - this scenario is the same for the Kontakt subfolders under both main NI folders. I don't know why the two folders are happening like this, and I don't know if this shouldn't be happening, needs to be fixed, etc.

I included two screenshots to correlate what I mentioned, if this is helpful to anyone. The first screenshot is all of the error messages I received. The second screenshot shows what's in each of the Native Instruments folders, with the left folder rolling up to Applications, and the second folder rolling up to my iCloud documents folder.

Again, I would be incredibly grateful for any help that anyone might have to offer, even if it's just a recommendation for me to wait to hear back from NI's tech support.

My specs: macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, Apple M1 Max, Kontakt 7.5.2

Thank you very much for your consideration!

Uwe303

Your problem looks like this to me:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/13215/only-kontakt-7-player-reaktor-6-player-shows-up-in-native-access

you can check this:

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000848825-Native-Access-Error-Message-Activation-failed-Internal-error-during-activation?_ga=2.41759712.333878119.1691395256-385818851.1691395256

Uwe303

Hello,

so first just "kontakt" is kontakt 6 so this is fine, cause you own 5 to 7 and this makes sense. With the other stuff i can´t really help you much i fear cause i´m not a mac user myself but have you tried to give full access to all native instruments apps as described here: How to Enable Full Disk Access on macOS – Native Instruments (native-instruments.com)

seanccalif

Hi Uwe, thank you for replying so quickly!

When creating my NI ticket, one of the steps was your question of if I gave full access to all NI apps, and I toggled all of the NI apps to full access. However, Kontakt is not appearing on this list as an app that I can toggle to full access, and I don't know exactly what this means. The NI apps I see on this list are iZotope Product Portal, Native Access and NTKDaemon, but not Kontakt.

Uwe303

as the article says:

1. Ensure that your desired app appears in the list.
2. If it does not appear in this list, click the + icon and add the location of the app from here:
3. - Native Access and other audio software: Macintosh HD > Applications
4. - Other NI apps: Macintosh HD > Applications > Native instruments

try this and report back

seanccalif

Got it - I see the plus icon at the bottom now, and I added both Kontakt and Kontakt 7 to the list, which both showed up as toggled for full disk access. When I tried to re-open my Cubase project, unfortunately the same error pop-up windows/messages still appeared.

Uwe303

Have you tried to open kontakt stand alone first?

seanccalif

Yes. The window that pops up when opening up the app by itself is different compared to when I open up the app as a plug in within Cubase (I’m currently away from the computer but can share a screenshot when I'm back). I don’t use the app as a standalone - I always use it as a plug in directly in Cubase

Uwe303

It's always a good idea to start with the stand alone app if you have problems like that, also the stand alone app can build up the database for all the libraries. If it works stand alone you can go on and use it as plugin.

seanccalif

Thank you, but I'm afraid your last comment does not help me. I am trying to resolve all of my error pop up windows and be able to access and use the Kontakt plug-in and related instruments directly on my Cubase as I usually do with my projects and have done for the past year, and I don't see a reason why I need to change how I use the plug-in, as this problem should be fixable with a successful solution. If anyone has a solution that may be effective, I would be very grateful. Otherwise, I will wait for Native Instruments tech support to respond back to my ticket. Thank you again to everyone who is reading this, I truly appreciate it.

Uwe303

You should of course not change how to use your plugin inside of cubase but to start with the stand alone version is, as I already said, good practice to resolve issues like that.

DunedinDragon

I'm suspecting @seanccalif is going to be pretty upset when the first thing NI tech support asks him to do is run the Kontakt plugin standalone to start troubleshooting to find the actual problem.

seanccalif

Thanks @Uwe303 and @DunedinDragon, appreciate your latest comments. It's difficult for me to understand what "start with the stand alone app if you have problems like that" means exactly, and @Uwe303, I should've said that earlier - it's not easy navigating this problem when there's a fear of losing work that's been done. I believe I understand "run the Kontakt plugin standalone to start troubleshooting to find the actual problem", and @DunedinDragon, thanks for this clarification. Just to share, I wouldn't be upset in running the plugin standalone if this is what the NI tech support person wants me to do. If the next step is for me to wait until NI tech support contacts me, that sounds good to me, while if there's anything else specific that I can do in the meantime, I'm happy for any further suggestions/instructions. Thanks again for all of the help! :)

seanccalif

I remember I said I was going to share a screenshot of when I open Kontakt as standalone, so I'm following up with that here.

When I opened up both Kontakt and Kontakt 7 as standalone just now, they opened up showing a screen that appears the same as when I open them up as plugins in Cubase. When I tried this two days ago for Kontakt 7, I had seen a different kind of screen, and I'm not sure why I did. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to see the same screen as standalone compared to the screen I see as a plugin in Cubase, but if I should be, then that would make sense to me.

To add, when I opened them both up as standalone (Kontakt and Kontakt 7), there was another pop-up window that was layered on top, which was a "Demo / Buy / Activate" window. I'm sharing a screenshot of the Kontakt 7 instance that has this extra pop-up message. I'm not sure what I should do from here in troubleshooting (if there's something that I could do now, or if I should wait for NI tech support).

Thanks again!

Uwe303

Your problem looks like this to me:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/13215/only-kontakt-7-player-reaktor-6-player-shows-up-in-native-access

you can check this:

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000848825-Native-Access-Error-Message-Activation-failed-Internal-error-during-activation?_ga=2.41759712.333878119.1691395256-385818851.1691395256

seanccalif

This solution worked! I may have had corrupted or missing activation tokens, and when I followed those instructions and restarted Native Access, all of my purchases were recognized again. Thank you @Uwe303, I greatly appreciate all of your help that you provided!

Uwe303

Cool 😎 - then I hope you have fun again.