Kontakt 7 randomly freezing for minutes and crashing

zaj16664

I've been avoiding using Kontakt since I've had this issue for ages. Kontakt randomly freezes for up to 2-5 minutes at a time, and also freezes my DAW along with it. In rare cases it causes my DAW to crash entirely.

I have a video recording of Kontakt freezing here. Freezes occur at 0:29, 1:19, 2:13, 3:09. (I'd like to post a link to the video but this is a new account and I'm not allowed to post links yet)

2024-05-30 22-56-13.zip

Different things can cause Kontakt to freeze, including opening/closing the window (most common), switching tabs in the UI, clicking the instrument config button. (It feels like whenever the UI window size changes it has a chance of freezing)

I've done many things to try to fix this. I've tried reinstalling a fresh install of Windows 10, reinstalling Kontakt, updating Window's C++ Redist packages, downgrading to an older version of Kontakt, switching to a different DAW (confirmed freezing on FL Studio, Ableton, Reaper). No matter what I do the freezes still occur.

Kontakt has no logs so I have no idea how to further investigate this, can anyone help me please?

My OS: Windows 10, 64-bit

CPU: i7 13700K

Kontakt version: 7.10.1

zaj16664

Even weirder is that the freezes sometimes stop occurring for several days. After a few days, Kontakt starts freezing again when opening/closing the window. Sometimes I thought I had fixed the freezing issue, but it was just Kontakt pretending to be fine until a few days later it starts freezing again!

zaj16664

To add, I've also done all the suggestions on this page already:

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004169849-Kontakt-Crashes

The freezing don't get fixed with these methods.