Ableton 12 crashing with komplete kontrol

I am using windows 11.

Sorry if this is covered by elsewhere but I can't find it (I can see some things related to mac). Ableton 12 is crashing every time a project is opened that has used an instance of komplete kontrol. If I load a new ableton project and try to add an instance of komplete kontrol it also crashes. This happens every single time band not with other plugins.

Really frustrating as was working great with mk3 keyboard and ableton 11. And initially was fine with 12 too. It didn't start after an ableton update tho. I updated ableton as I wondered if was that the issue but it also continues

Not sure if anyone can please help?

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Stefan DA

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/157509#Comment_157509

Thanks for all your time and thorough answers BIF. I actually upgraded to ultimate in the sale and had to get a bigger hard drive. Same brand/model (otherwise). But when I changed the library location to new drive, everything in both komplete kontrol and ableton has now been working for a couple of days now (komplete kontrol wouldn't open for days). I initially tried removing some more recently installed plugins, but I wasn't brave enough at that time to try your suggestions (I am very non-technically minded). What I did notice was that the new drive, although same brand/model, was formatted as Exfat and the new one NTFS….maybe the problem will return, but I am hoping it was something about the drive/format. Any way, it was very kind to offer so much help. All the best

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BIF

Versions needed.

==========

What patch/build of Windows 11?
Are your graphic drivers current?
Is your audio interface driver current?
Full name and Version of Live?
Version of Komplete Kontrol?
Are you using a Kontrol or Komplete Kontrol keyboard controller and if yes, which one?
- If no, what controller ARE you using?
Whatever keyboard controller you use,
- has it been correctly added in Setup/MIDI In and Out?
- Did you do that in KK?
- Did you do that in Ableton Live?
Version of Native Access? (yeah, it might matter)
Does KK cause other hosts (if you have any) to crash?
Does the KK crash before, during, or after you try to load it with a plugin?
Does KK crash in standalone? With or without a plugin loaded?

Okay, that's a start.

Stefan DA

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/154751#Comment_154751

Thanks so much for your help.

What patch/build of Windows 11?

Its Windows 11: 22631.3593

Are your graphic drivers current?

Yes I have checked and they are.

Is your audio interface driver current?

Yes it is.

Full name and Version of Live?

Ableton 12.0.2 (Suite), build: 2024-04-09-491daled88

Version of Komplete Kontrol?

3.2.1

Are you using a Kontrol or Komplete Kontrol keyboard controller and if yes, which one?
- If no, what controller ARE you using?

Kontrol MK3 61 (sometimes with Push 3, but crashes either way).

Whatever keyboard controller you use,
- has it been correctly added in Setup/MIDI In and Out?

Yes I set it up in Ableton as per instructions on NI website - It was working previously with ableton 11 and 12.

Did you do that in KK? Did you do that in Ableton Live?

I did that in Ableton.

Version of Native Access? (yeah, it might matter)

3.11.0

Does KK cause other hosts (if you have any) to crash?

I don't have any other hosts

Does the KK crash before, during, or after you try to load it with a plugin?

All sets that had been saved with KK in midi channels crash when I try to open them. If I try to add a new instance to a brand new set, it also crashes.

Does KK crash in standalone? With or without a plugin loaded?

It doesn't crash in standalone.

Thank you for your time

BIF

Hi, and thanks for the added info.

I skimmed your answers, and my first gut feeling is maybe there's a dodgy VST instrument or effect getting its dirty fingers in the works. Here's my suggestion, but you'll probably want to see what others say too.

If Ableton Live is running, shut it down.
Start KK in standalone, then review all of your VST2 folders in KK settings and make sure you don't have any odd ones sneaking in there. Make sure that each folder in the settings matches an actual folder on your hard drive.
Check for the VST3 folder. There is no settings for it; it's fixed at C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 so just make sure that folder exists.
Then force a rescan in KK.
Then shut down KK and fire up Live.
Check the VST2 and VST3 folders for Live like you did for KK.
Get Live to rescan.
See if the crashes continue.

I'm at the edge of my knowledge here though, so anybody else, your contribution will be appreciated.

Good luck @Stefan DA

Adding @PoorFellow and @mykejb in case they can think of something or give you better guidance than I can.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/31003/ableton-12-crashing-with-komplete-kontrol

initially was fine with 12 too. It didn't start after an ableton update tho.

I am with BIF with respect to try a re-scan when having such a problem. (Deep-rescan all installed plug-ins. To start a deep rescan, hold ALT/Option and click "Rescan.") , then try opening a KK plugin in a completely new project.

Ableton : Plug-ins Tips and Troubleshooting

Stefan DA

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/155036#Comment_155036

Thanks for your response I'll give that a go. Really appreciate it

Stefan DA

Thanks so much for your help

Stefan DA

I have finally been giving this a proper go (work/kids) - the deep scan seemed to help thank you. After doing it, I could load instances of komplete kontrol in new projects. But I still couldn't open old ones. I then left ableton trying to open an old project (with komplete kontrol instances saved in midi channels), and forgot about it, and after maybe half an hour, it opened. Then I could open all my tracks without issue.

Weird thing is, the problem reverted after a day or so, but then after doing another scan its working again for new projects, but I can't open old ones (that had instances of komplete kontrol). I am going to try it all again and will report back in case anyone having similar issues. Starting to wonder if its my hardrive but its new and working for other plugins etc

BIF

It could be the behavior of Live.

I say that because Live's saving of its settings doesn't give me a lot of confidence that they'll be persistent across a restart of Live.

I've observed this dodgy behavior when I modified Live's configuration settings (to add or remove custom VST2 folders from the configuration), only to close Live and re-open it later and see that the folders all CAME BACK in the settings. Thankfully I didn't actually DELETE any of those folders from my hard drive, because there's no telling what kind of hole I might rip in the space-time continuum if Live is looking for a folder that doesn't exist on my hard drive, lol!

Also note that Live offers the user to add a "custom" folder each for VST2 and VST3. And trying to set that option to "no" (no, don't use a custom folder) has ended up making Live do the circle-spin dance for 20 minutes, after which I just closed Live.

Yeah, that was weird, and I'm just not in the mood to keep poking at THAT bear right now.

But maybe check whatever Live forums or reddit subs you go to; see if the behavior you are seeing has been noticed by others. Good luck!

Stefan DA

Thanks for your help and response - I can only really find a similar issue with people using macs which has a mac focused solution. After doing another deep scan on komplete kontrol app its working again for now, for both opening old projects with kk instances, and adding new kk instances to new projects.

Stefan DA

The same thing occurred again - this time (and last time actually I should have mentioned), komplete kontrol standalone got stuck on "waiting for product scan" upon opening. After maybe twenty mins it opened and I did the deep scan again and its working in Ableton now.

BIF

I'm still thinking you have a particular VST (either an instrument or an effect) that is mucking things up.

Here's my next suggestion. Your mileage may vary, so back up your entire computer before you start messing around with settings and folders. Also remember that you should not rename any folders while the host that uses them is running. So shut down KK and Live before doing any renames. And also be sure to do a full scan all over again after renaming any folder.

I'll number these, just to give you an order you can try things in.

Check on KK Standalone's VST2 folder concatenation, and compare it to the concatenation in Live's settings. If one or both lists is long, I'd take pictures of each one and see which one is different.

Here's what I'm getting at: It's Live that fails, right? So maybe your configuration for Live has an extra VST2 library in there. If so, I would physically have a look at that folder and see what's in it. If there are a lot of plugins in that folder, I'd consider renaming it and then making a duplicate-but-empty version of it with the original folder name. Then see if Live still crashes.

2. Do the same check for the VST3 folders listed in Live's "VST3 Custom Folder" setting. Most hosts don't let you "add" custom folders to the VST3 concatenation, but Live does, so there's always a chance you have one in there and that's giving Live a belly ache.

Levelset: Now you should be down to this: You've checked to see if Live has anything DIFFERENT than KK standalone, and you've either found no differences or you've made them the same (1 and 2 above). The next thing to check on (I would think) is whether or not there's a VST2 plugin that is causing a problem for Live but not for KK standalone.

The easiest way to do this is to completely remove all VST2 plugins and then retest. And the easiest way to do THAT is to go through each folder listed in the plugin concatenations (after 1 and 2 above, the concatenation list should be the same now between KK standalone and Live, right?) and perform the steps in "1" above. That is, rename each VST2 folder, then create a new EMPTY folder with the original folder name.

Here's why I suggest that: It's the least destructive thing to do, and it's the fastest way to do it. It's least destructive because it forces KK and Live (and any other host you may have that uses those folders) to find the VST3 version of all plugins, and to never even see the VST2 plugins. It's also non-destructive because you can re-add all of your plugins in any given folder by just renaming the empty folder and the original folder with the plugins back.

3. If removing all VST2 plugins fixes the situation and stops Live from crashing, now you can decide whether to slowly add your VST2 plugins back and see which one starts making Live crash again…or you could decide to just not use VST2 plugins anymore.

If removing all VST2 plugins does NOT make a difference, and Live still crashes, then you can re-add your VST2 plugins just by renaming the folders back. And then maybe go through that same exercise with your VST3 plugins.

============

All of this work would be a major undertaking, and it would be more than a mild hassle. But if your crashes are happening because of a bad plugin, you will surely find it by methodically removing and then slowly re-adding your plugins.

And if you find it, then you can decide whether or not to re-install that plugin, leave it out, find an alternate that does the same thing (who doesn't have 18 different reverbs?), or get in touch with the maker of that plugin.

One last thing: 32-Bit plugins are on their way out, along with VST2 plugins. So when I went through this exercise, I went one step further and just left all of my VST2's out of my configurations, and I also made sure that there were no 32-Bit plugins still present in any configuration either.

Now of course, this makes it more challenging to deal with older projects that would now not find their VST2 and/or 32-Bit plugins. THAT I can deal with. Crashes are hard-stops.

Good luck!

Stefan DA

Thanks so much for your help - there's a lot of helpful detail above and I am going to give this a go properly when kids/life allows. Reading your suggestions, I am actually remembering something that may be important (which due to being useless at this stuff I hadn't thought of). I had these difficulties after some time away from using ableton and komplete. And only now I remember, before this issue, I installed some extra uhe diva preset packs (from their official site). They were difficult to install and I remember pasting some folders into komplete folders as per instructions. Could that be important? Maybe I will start there and retrace my steps or try to uninstall those present packs (I couldn't get the nks presets to load and think I read online about pasting them into some komplete folders, so maybe there are duplicates).

Stefan DA

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/157509#Comment_157509

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