Any idea why Battery 4 is now encountering a major problem on startup?

StefBloke
StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

I reinstalled Windows and all my apps after a drive crash. I think most of them are working in Komplete 10 (not tried them all yet) but Battery 4 won't load in the DAW, nor standalone. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it, and reinstalled the factory library too. Same error. I'm aware I have old hardware (hence still running an old version of Komplete) but would love for all my NI apps to function again!

I have the battery crash logs if any support techs would please let me know where best to submit them.

Many thanks in advance.

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Best Answer

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member
    Answer ✓

    @elseland Seems like you have a different issue to mine that manifests in similar ways. Interesting that Battery 4 runs with the dialog floating around. I didn't try that, but now you mention it, the error dialog only popped up if I ran it standalone. I did successfully have it running inside my DAW for a while but it wasn't rock steady like usual. e.g. if I browsed for a kick sample, added some stuff in the piano roll and then reopened the Battery plugin, it would reset the browser to Kits and I'd have to navigate all the way to the sample sets again. Stuff like that, and it was slow to respond to clicks. But it limped along. Most of the other apps wouldn't start though.

    I really hope NI or some further diagnostics will help uncover the issue and fix it. You seem to have covered pretty much all bases already so I'm fresh out of ideas, sorry.

    @Vocalpoint Thank you for your continued help. In the last few times I've let it chunter away, sfc tells me there's nothing wrong with the filesystem. DISM likewise. As you say, I'd expect nothing less, since I made a full, clean OS install last week. Since it's purely a driver issue, why would reinstalling the OS and reinstalling the same gfx drivers fix it?

    What makes me smile is that the Microsoft knowledge base is full of similar advice:

    Poster: My Browser has stopped working after a system update.

    Answer 1: Clear its cache, delete cookies, turn your PC off and on again.

    Poster: It didn't work.

    Answer 2: Reinstall the browser.

    Poster: It didn't work.

    Answer 3: Backup all your files. Download this 5GB installer to a USB stick. Reinstall Windows. Dig out your licence key from the email sent to you 8 years ago. Install all the cumulative updates since the image was last slipstreamed, then reinstall and re-register all your apps and files. Sorry.

    Turning off/on/reinstalling the OS should be a last ditch attempt only if the machine's unbootable or locked up, not a catch-all because code is hard. It doesn't fix the underlying problem of code clashes or driver/hardware incompatibility due to software updates. Or, in some cases, shoddy code with memory leaks (not in the NI case). It masks issues by resetting to a default state and yes, in most cases, knocking your house down and rebuilding it with the latest materials will indeed make it better. But in this case, given the evidence and the fact I already started fresh last week, it would be a fruitless exercise.

    I came here after I failed to find a solution on the web and failed to find a path to NI tech support, in the hope someone would chime in and say "hey, yeah, I've seen this before, just tick such-and-such in the app or turn widget B on before you run app C". But it's clear now that this is very unique to my specific hardware (which, incidentally, I don't use very often compared to my daily MacBook, hence the reason it's still ancient tech and I can afford to spend a little time diagnosing things instead of hosing it back to bare metal every day or so if something crashes).

    Anyway, after using this community as a rubber duck and finding the gfx DLL link (wish I'd remembered to check Event Viewer sooner), I scoured the Nvidia website, located an older driver file—I just went back as far as it would let me to v546.33—installed it, and now all my NI apps run perfectly well. Quite why, I don't know, but clearly something in a later driver changed the DLL entry points significantly enough to kill a bunch of the apps.

    Not sure how far I can roll the drivers forward before it breaks, so I'll browse the release notes at my leisure and maybe try a few out to see the latest I can get to. But for now, problem solved.

    Thank you for your help and putting up with my often misguided attempts to get to the bottom of what's going on.

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Answers

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Edit: Nope, Kontakt, Kontakt 5 player and Reaktor 6 are issuing the same error message and dumping a crashlog. The FM8 interface won't even load, it just… nothing.

    Kontakt 7 and 8 players seem to load (not played anything through them yet to test the intruments).

    Massive loads up fine. So does Reaktor 5. But Absynth 5 throws an error about a missing sound library and says it'll analyse my sounds to create a new database, then does nothing.

  • elseland
    elseland Member Posts: 4 Member

    I have the same issue with Battery 4 and Reaktor 6. They were working just fine, but I had a momentary power outage, so my PC wasn't shut down cleanly. When it booted back up, the BIOS needed to be set up again. After repairing the BIOS and getting back into Windows, Reaktor and Battery won't load in standalone or as a plugin.

    I've uninstalled and reinstalled, tried repairing system files, manually removed all files for both programs, rebooted numerous times, disabled hardware, etc. Nothing I have tried has had any impact. Reaktor 5 works just fine, but not Reaktor 6 or Battery 4. I've opened a support ticket and I'm just waiting to hear back.

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Thanks for the reply. Kind of good it's not just me, but weird all the same.

    Would love to hear the result of the support request, if you'd be so kind to share it. I tried to find a link to raise a tech support ticket but went round in circles and ended up with the irritating automated bot chat, which was utterly useless!

  • Vocalpoint
    Vocalpoint Member Posts: 2,489 Expert

    You didn't really detail exactly "how" you reinstalled everything after your drive crash. Did you do this via Native Access? Which is the only way to do it.

    Not sure how Komplete 10 will fit into this scenario given how old it is - but most of the products should still be available in Natuve Access v3.1.6

    VP

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Yes, via Native Access. I thought that was the only way to do it?

    On that note, a slight wrinkle I forgot to mention. The C: drive was the one that got borked (and the restore points were damaged, and the last backup image I took had a load of ****** on it I wanted to get rid of anyway) so I clean built the drive, but because I'm wily, I did actually have all the NI apps installed on a second drive, and the instrument libraries on a third.

    So when I reinstalled Native Access first, the majority of instrument libraries (except for Battery Factory Library) allowed me to simply relink to the already installed data by setting the installation paths. Then if any required an update, I did that afterwards.

    Of course, registry info and /AppData would have been trashed in the crash so I had to redownload the apps themselves via NA and give each the original path to the 2nd drive for it to overwrite the files and install the latest version.

    When Battery 4 and some of the others refused to open, I wondered if maybe overwriting the old app version hadn't gone completely as NA expected, so I followed the usual process given in the NI web instructions: uninstalled the offending apps via the Win 10 'Programs and Features' panel, then redownloaded / reinstalled from Native Access. But it gave the same issues.

    So, unless uninstalling in this manner leaves fragments of stuff behind (registry, C: drive, etc) that is causing the problem because it thinks it's not a true reinstallation and some hybrid version, I can't see why completely removing the app from Windows and reinstalling via NA would only work for some of the apps and not others.

    The only other thing I can think of is that maybe the latest version of the broken apps are not compatible with my ageing hardware? In which case I need to somehow roll back to a slightly older version but I don't see a way to do that from Native Access.

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    As I say, I have the crashlogs, so if there's a way someone can point me to supply them to NI tech support via a ticket, I'll do that rather than bother everyone here.

  • Vocalpoint
    Vocalpoint Member Posts: 2,489 Expert

    "When Battery 4 and some of the others refused to open, I wondered if maybe overwriting the old app version hadn't gone completely as NA expected, so I followed the usual process given in the NI web instructions: uninstalled the offending apps via the Win 10 'Programs and Features' panel, then redownloaded / reinstalled from Native Access. But it gave the same issues."

    TBH - I think you are missing some critical files etc with all this overwriting going on.

    Battery is usually rock solid and the error message you screencapped is not one I have ever seen - telling me this scenario is most likely environmental to your machine.

    If this was me - I would leave the content (and only the content) where it is - and then bare metal clean install the OS AND Native Access and start over. There are simply too many variable here to try and do a "walk thru the raindrops" kinda thing where you are hoping things will work by moving this here and that there.

    NI installs are nasty, complex things that work best with a clean slate so all these files and registry settings can be laid down in the right place and in the right order without modificativos.

    VP

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Yeah, I've no problem wiping the 2nd drive clean and starting fresh with the apps, but how do I ensure that the registry is pristine and there aren't any files or DLLs or shared files lurking on C: before I reinstall? Are you seriously telling me that every time someone upgrades NI, they're advised to wipe Windows and start again, just in case?

    I can hunt for any directories with "Native Instruments" or "NativeInstruments" and check the usual haunts in the HKLM and HKCU hives and blat anything that smells native instrumenty. But I doubt I'll get it all.

    I don't relish going through and reinstalling the OS again for many reasons, including that the motherboard has started refusing to boot a modern OS off a USB stick, and Windows 10 won't fit on a single layer DVD any more. Last week I had to actually take the SSD out of the machine, put it in a case that did boot off USB, provision the drive, and put it back in the original tower. Then reinstall all the apps and restore the user profiles. Not fun!

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    I'll trash the app installation directory, hunt for anything I possibly can that looks to be related to NI, install native access again, and go from there. Fingers crossed that works.

  • Vocalpoint
    Vocalpoint Member Posts: 2,489 Expert
    edited November 25

    "Are you seriously telling me that every time someone upgrades NI, they're advised to wipe Windows and start again, just in case?"

    No - that is not what I am saying. But when someone's C drive goes south - you cannot expect anything to work if this is actually true (hard to tell to be honest):

    "because I'm wily, I did actually have all the NI apps installed on a second drive, and the instrument libraries on a third"

    Usual practice for all software installs (regardless whether it is NI or anyone else) is to install the OS on C and all software on C. And then place your content where ever you want. There is zero advantage to installing your apps anywhere else but C.

    Again - if I am reading this right - and you are trying to use a clean installed Windows (on C) with a separate install of a bunch of apps that were not on C (as part of a prior install) - I can see why there are challenges.

    VP

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Yeah, absolutely, and I agree unless one has a stupidly small SSD and a son who routinely insists on installing 100GB of Steam games on it :o

    I think my weird setup harks back to when I first got Komplete. I saw the total download was, like, 120GB and figured it'd never fit on the SSD when uncompressed so I offloaded everything to external drives, then realised the apps were somewhat more modest and it was the content that was the lion's share of the download. I know I know, newbie.

    By then it was all set up and it worked and, well, if it ain't broke...

    Until the day it does break. *sigh*

  • elseland
    elseland Member Posts: 4 Member

    I'm still waiting for a reply or update to my ticket that was created through a chat bot. I was able to attach a screenshot of the errors (Battery 4 and Reaktor 6) in the initial conversation, but not the crashlog files themselves. So, I also have the crashlogs, but no way to provide them to NI support.

    I wasn't able to find legacy installers, but I did finder legacy updaters. So, I downloaded the Battery 4.1.5 updater and ran it. It allowed me to downgrade to Battery 4.1.5, which runs fine without crashing. However, this is a very old version that still requires the Service Center to register (and does not include a VST3 plugin), so it runs in DEMO mode. Tried updating back to Battery 4.3.0 and it gives the crash again.

    I tried the same thing with Reaktor 6, downgraded to Reaktor 6.3.2 and it runs fine, registered and all. But once again, there's no VST3 plugin and all the content has been saved in Reaktor 6.5.0, so this isn't a solution.

    While I understand that NI products can be finicky with the install, the idea of completing wiping my OS and reinstalling EVERYTHING is simply not an option for me. My system was built earlier this year and this is the first issue I've run into. The hardware is all brand new, high end stuff. The fact that it broke after the power outage and BIOS reset definitely points to some sort of system incompatible setting, driver corruption or other similar issue. After the power outage, I had to reset everything in the BIOS and then Windows did a number of updates and restarts before I got back in. At that point, the Machine ID or Device ID or something changed, because Line6 products were no longer registered to this computer, meaning it didn't recognize it as the same machine. There were no physical hardware changes that occurred. Once again, this is a brand new, high-end machine loaded up with RAM, a fast processor, etc. There's no reason for incompatibility here, and everything was working fine until the power outage. I wish someone could look at the crashlogs to see what dlls are needed or something like that.

  • StefBloke
    StefBloke Member Posts: 10 Member

    Well, this is becoming more interesting…

    I uninstalled all the apps (left the libraries alone), got rid of any hints of user settings for the apps and whatnot, changed the installation paths to the C: drive and reinstalled a couple of apps. I haven't got to Battery yet, but Massive (still) works fine. Kontakt 5 and 6, however, show the same error message as in the OP. The FM8 app just silently never starts up.

    So I went digging in the windows event log and found entries like this, one for FM8 and one for Kontakt:

    Faulting application name: Kontakt 5.exe, version: 5.8.1.43, time stamp: 0x5b17f5f5
    Faulting module name: nvoglv64.dll, version: 32.0.15.6603, time stamp: 0x670e6d27
    Exception code: 0xc000001d
    Fault offset: 0x00000000009c99a3
    Faulting process ID: 0x28a4
    Faulting application start time: 0x01db4054f351b796
    Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Kontakt 5\Kontakt 5.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_ab3196e1830c9b6c\nvoglv64.dll
    Report ID: 4a7dbd53-a9ad-47cb-943b-71092be4398f
    Faulting package full name:
    Faulting package-relative application ID:

    Event ID 1005

    Windows cannot access the file for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Kontakt 5 because of this error.

    Program: Kontakt 5
    File:

    The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
    User Action

    Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.

    • If the file still cannot be accessed andIt is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.

    Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.

    If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.

    Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

    Additional Data
    Error value: 00000000
    Disk type: 0

    All that guff at the end about not being connected to the network and the drive being faulty is standard Windows default output to cover up for the fact it hasn't a clue what's going on. But, intriguingly, the module that all the failing NI stuff is complaining about is nvoglv64.dll. Which is an Nvidia display driver file.

    That kinda makes some sort of sense because I installed the very latest Nvidia gfx drivers when I reimaged the SSD and, presumably, the NI stuff is calling some routine in the DLL that doesn't exist any more in the newer driver, and seg faulting or something. Perhaps Massive doesn't use that DLL, but many of the other NI apps do. I hadn't updated the gfx driver in, well, forever before the drive crashed so I bet the NI apps were happy with the older driver.

    The path C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_ab3196e1830c9b6c does NOT exist on my machine. The closest match is C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_adf5a840df867035. So it might be a simple case that some of the NI apps have a hard-coded path in them. I'm unable to rename the directory or clone it to find out if it works, because it's a protected dir and I'd need to turn off SIP first, which is a major faff.

    So, at this point, the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of an Nvidia←→NI incompatibility. The six million dollar question is whether I can get hold of an older version of the Nvidia driver and roll it back. I've no idea how far I need to go back. Perhaps a year or two? With luck, the wayback machine will have copies if Nvidia don't host them any more.

    Alternatively, if (and it's a big if) I can get hold of an actual living breathing person at Native Instruments instead of the infernal chatbot, they might be able to unpick the crashlog or perhaps maybe even update the apps so they are compatible with the latest Nvidia display driver.

    @elseland Do your Windows eventvwr application logs give any similar diagnostics or threads we can make educated guesses over what's going on?

  • Vocalpoint
    Vocalpoint Member Posts: 2,489 Expert
    edited November 27

    @StefBloke

    "So it might be a simple case that some of the NI apps have a hard-coded path in them. "

    This is not correct. I do not even have a graphics card in my DAW - and all my NI stuff works flawlessly. In all my years with NI (Since 2002) - I have never come across any scenarios that have anything to do with any specific graphics card. If it's drivers - this is a Windows problem - guaranteed.

    Which comes back to what I mentioned a few days ago - there is no way to get past this without a full clean install.

    The irony is - a full clean re-install will have most likely taken way less time than you have already invested into trying to troubleshoot this existing sceanrio.

    You call on what to do - but even if you get hold of NI - they will not be able to help you rebuild the Windows driverstore - their focus is troubleshooting their own software in already known good OS environments.

    One thing that we should try - with NOTHING else running is these two commands :

    Start an elevated CMD prompt (Run as Admin)

    Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

    Followed by:

    sfc /scannow

    These two commands will do a comprehensive deep dive into the Windows subsystems and let you your know the general state of the OS. Usually - both of these should say "No problems detected"

    Tell us your results.

    VP

  • elseland
    elseland Member Posts: 4 Member

    I had checked out Event Viewer before and didn't find anything useful in it. The faulting application and modules are both Battery.exe with paths to the install location (C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Battery 4\Battery 4.exe). I suppose I could change the install path to another drive, just to give that a try. I also have all the content located on a separate drive, but all the programs installed to the default C: location. But I don't have any errors related to Nvidia drivers.

    I heard back from NI support, and oddly they are unable to open the crashlog files. They have their own Soundwide Support Tool, but it fails to run properly on my system. I get an ActiveX error when trying to run it. I have run DISM and sfc scan several times now. The very first time I ran sfx scan, it found and repaired these two:

    2024-11-24 19:56:32, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\BthA2dp.sys

    2024-11-24 19:56:32, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Repaired file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\BthA2dp.sys

    2024-11-24 19:56:32, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\BthHfEnum.sys

    2024-11-24 19:56:32, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Repaired file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\BthHfEnum.sys

    I've found that these are very common files for sfc to find and repair, even on brand new systems. The repair hasn't fixed Battery or Reaktor, so those sys files are clearly not the issue.

    I've updated Windows, graphics drivers, and downloaded and installed the Visual C++ Runtime Installer (All-In-One) repack. While I already had every version of Visual C++ installed, this repack should have reinstalled and or repaired anything that had any issues. However, none of this has even changed anything. I still can't run Battery 4.3 or Reaktor 6.5

    Another random tidbit here, while I get the crash dialog box for Battery 4.3.0 upon startup, the program itself still runs just fine. If I just move the crash dialog box out of the way, I can use it seemingly without any issue. I can change settings, load, save, etc. It's as if nothing is broken. If the ASIO driver it's looking for isn't available, though, the crash doesn't occur until I set a valid ASIO driver. When I close the crash dialog box, the program closes as well. But the other funny thing is I can close the program without closing the crash dialog box. I can then open Battery 4 again and get another crash box.

    This is not the case for Reaktor 6.5, however. Reaktor crashes immediately upon program start, without displaying the GUI at all.

    I've been trying to check all the dll files that these programs use, compare them with working versions, trace the processes that are going on before the crash, etc. I haven't come up with anything yet, but I'm still working on it. I don't know if NI will be able to help out since they can't even open the crashlogs that the programs create (and the crash even says to send the log to NI).

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