Hi guys! I've been experiencing an issue for the past year or two, where Kontakt crashes after a period of inactivity both in standalone and in DAW. So if any given Kontakt instance isn't receiving any active MIDI input for a period of time (starting at around 20-30 mins from my experience), it will crash. In standalone it means the program insta-quits, in DAW it means it hard-crashes my DAW.
CCs don't trigger the crashes, only notes do. Doesn't matter whether the input notes are from live MIDI-keyboard playing or from a MIDI event. So it's to do with sample streaming or sample access most likely.
My stuff and the steps I've taken to fix:
This happens both on my laptop and my recently built (2 months) workstation PC, which both have Corsair RAM and Ryzen CPUs, if that can influence anything. Both running Cubase 14 Pro.
The real common denominator is that the samples are stored on my Samsung T500 SSD, which doesn't show any issues or device health in my checks. The crashes only happen with Kontakt however, even though my non-Kontakt libraries live on that same drive. The disk has been health checked both with cmd and Samsung Magician. I've excluded the drive from Windows Defender, as well as all of the NI file extensions. USB Selective suspend is off on both machines.
Any version of Kontakt: 6, 7 or 8. All of them up to date. Everything up to date on both machines, all the drivers, ALL OF IT. I've done all of the steps listed on the "Kontakt Crashes" NI Help Page. Uninstalled, reinstalled, installed on a brand new machine, still happening.
Examples:
A more explicit example of the in-DAW crash, would be the following: I have a orchestral template with a mix of Kontakt and non-Kontakt sample libraries. If I have MIDI events on the Kontakt ones and I mute those tracks for a period of time (for example for mixing the non-MIDI elements), as soon as I unmute those tracks and start playback, Kontakt will crash. The same thing occurs if I simply start writing another section of the music with the non-Kontakt libraries and after a while I move on to add some of them to the arragement, it crashes. 100% of the time.
A more explicit example of the Standalone crash, would me going to make myself a coffee or a short break, coming back, playing a note on my MIDI keyboard, and it will crash. 100% of the time.
One way to potentially avoid crashes that SOMETIMES works, is opening one of the any Kontakt instance's interface and hitting the "!" icon. In these cases, the crash might be delayed until I play notes in quick succession (could be an important detail) or it might never happen. You just don't know :)
Steps to reproduce:
- Open Kontakt in Standalone or DAW
- Load an instrument
- Leave for 30 mins
- Play a note
- ???
- Behold the crash
Again, seems to be an issue with sample streaming and access, but only for Kontakt libraries. I'm at a loss as the SSD shouldn't be sleeping, Windows Defender shouldn't be interfering, and plenty of people use this same SSD with similar systems to mine. All seems to be pointing to something that is wrong with either my SSD or a very specific conflict with some combination of apps, settings and/or hardware that is on both of my systems.
Please help! I used to be able to ignore it for the past two years, but I'm working on increasingly more time sensitive projects, so I can't ignore it anymore.
Thanks!
Event Viewer relevant crash logs:
STANDALONE:
- Event 1000, Application Error
Faulting application name: Kontakt 7.exe, version: 7.10.9.0, time stamp: 0x689b376b
Faulting module name: Kontakt 7.exe, version: 7.10.9.0, time stamp: 0x689b376b
Exception code: 0xc0000006
Fault offset: 0x00000000006ac160
Faulting process id: 0x221C
Faulting application start time: 0x1DC4614E6A8C393
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Kontakt 7\Kontakt 7.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Kontakt 7\Kontakt 7.exe
Report Id: 04ccf860-e59f-4355-9377-7ff0d14c8dde
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
- Event 1005, Application error
Windows cannot access the file D:\NI Content\Piano In Blue\Samples\Piano In Blue__0.nkx 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 programme Kontakt 7 because of this error.
Programme: Kontakt 7
File: D:\NI Content\Piano In Blue\Samples\Piano In Blue__0.nkx
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 programme runs again.
- If the file still cannot be accessed and
- It 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 back-up 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: 0xC0000013
Disk type: 0x3
DAW (pretty much the same stuff):
- Event 1000, Application Error
Faulting application name: Cubase14.exe, version: 14.0.32.342, time stamp: 0x6853d3bf
Faulting module name: Kontakt 7.vst3, version: 7.10.9.0, time stamp: 0x689b376f
Exception code: 0xc0000006
Fault offset: 0x00000000006a91e0
Faulting process id: 0x5754
Faulting application start time: 0x1DC4581323F349D
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 14\Cubase14.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Kontakt 7.vst3
Report Id: 666590a3-8242-4069-8bc7-1963d9d05843
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
- Event 1005, Application error
Windows cannot access the file D:\Spitfire Audio\Spitfire Audio - Spitfire Symphony Orchestra\Samples\Strings_Violas_6.nkx 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 programme Cubase 14 because of this error.
Programme: Cubase 14
File: D:\Spitfire Audio\Spitfire Audio - Spitfire Symphony Orchestra\Samples\Strings_Violas_6.nkx
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 programme runs again.
- If the file still cannot be accessed and
- It 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 back-up 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: 0xC0000013
Disk type: 0x3
Both of these also give this warning:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 during a paging operation.
