Does anyone have experience crashing NIHostIntegrationAgent and NIHardwareService

Anthonie

It is in Dutch, but Uitgeschakeld means Shut down. They are not stopped, but must be enabled before starten them again.

Jeremy_NI

Yeah sorry, we went a bit off topic here :)

Anthonie

Do you have problems and no MASHINE?

Last week I had the 22H2 update and an update of the Komplete Kontrol software. Nothing changed, alas. I know that I am not the only one with the problem of spontaneously disabeling the NI services. But I think I have a suspicion of the cause of disabeling the NI-services. I scanned the logs for activity at the moment of the disabling of the NI-services, but there is no activity to be found.

Yesterday I uninstalled all the Komplete Kontrol software and the map with the services (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Native Instruments\Hardware). I re-installed the Komplete Kontrol software in Native Access. What struck me is that the services for my S61 are not installed and I remembered that the services are in the drivers of MASHINE and I don't have a MASHINE but only a Komplete Kontrol S61. After installing the drivers, including the services for the S61 the services were disabled in a few minutes. The screen of my S61 went black and a sound of a USB-device disconnected is produced. Later I realised that I don't have a MASHINE. Both the services are diabeling themselves because they look for a MASHINE.

I reported my findings to support and I hope for a solid investigation.

PulseCode

Hi @Anthonie I have KK S88 MKII (running firmware 0.5.9) running on windows 11 home latest version (Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621).

under device manager it should show up as such...

NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe gets installed with the latest version of KK software. and it's the only service my KK S88 MKII needs to communicate with my setup. I have remove all the other garbage. if I shutdown this service the lights on the MKII go out, it's a blank screen. Also to isolate if it's a hardware issue with the keyboard or windows issue, you can disconnect your MKII keyboard USB cable, and start the NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe, to see if it stays running... if it still shutdown, it's a windows issue, if it continues to run but shuts down when you connect the keyboard, you need to send that keyboard back.

MK2 driver also gets installed when I install KK software.

One more thing you can try is check the windows "event viewer" Under==> windows logs / application

check for any message related to > NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe ...

Anthonie

Hello Pulsecode,

Thanks for your input.

I was busy in the device manager when I received your message. All is according to your input and all should be and is working properly at this moment, but it can stop any time by the disabeling of the services. Do you own a NI MASHINE?

PulseCode

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/44978#Comment_44978

hi @Anthonie I do not have MASHINE, I am only running 1 service for communicating with the hardware and that is the NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe. and nothing else. I had issues with NI's other services and I don't like anything running in the background for accessibility or cloud content management.

Anthonie

Hi PulseCode,

I immediately switched off the redundant service and started my PC again. But after two minutes NIhostIntegrationAgent.exe was disabled and the screens on my kk became black.

You are running firmware 0.5.9 and I am running firmware 0.6.0. Is it an idea to downgrade the firmware, if possible?

Anthonie

Downgrading the firmware is not possible, so this no option.

PulseCode

@Anthonie does the service stay active, when the keyboard is not connected? can you disconnect the USB cable and try it for few hours to see if the service stays active? try to isolate, if it's the keyboard or windows itself that is causing this service to turn off.

Anthonie

@PulseCode I think I fixed the problem, but I will try it out for a while before I make conclusions; it is already dark here in The Hague, so I will report my findings tomorrow - if it is still running;-)

You drove me in the right direction, I think. Thanks.

Anthonie

@PulseCode @Jeremy_NI

All is still running perfectly, what I did..

I did several things in my quest to overcome the disabling of the NI services and at the end my PC works perfect, the services are stable and stay active.

First I disabled service NIHardwareService.exe in services, a tip from @PulseCode

Because of the problems I mentioned above I thought it could be Microsoft Defender permission problem, so I added the services to the permissions in the Firewall & network protection by adding the service NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe in the option ‘ Allow an app through firewall’.

I remembered the problems at startup, so I opened the taskmanager and I found out that I could easily disable tasks, so I disabled all the CCleaner tasks and others such as Adobe Acrobat Update Task etc. and restarted the PC.

And then my KK became stable. I instantly reported to CCleaner support and asked if CCleaner could disable services and where to disable that function. Within an hour I had an answer. CCleaner has a feature called Smart Cleaning. This can evidently disable services. They sent me the following:

CCleaner's Smart Cleaning feature runs as a background process (if it's enabled). It checks the junk levels on your PC and alerts you when there is a certain amount you can clean in gigabytes.

Smart Cleaning gives you cleaning alerts when CCleaner isn't open:

This feature runs as a background process to ensure you receive these alerts without the need to keep the CCleaner app open on your PC screen.

How to turn off the Smart Cleaning feature:

Switch off Smart Cleaning by unticking the checkboxes in the Smart Cleaning menu.

To do this, go to Options > Smart Cleaning > Settings for Smart Cleaning.

If you disable Smart Cleaning, the background process closes and doesn't run the next time you start Windows.

I did so and CCLeaner enabled its own tasks in the Task Scheduler. The other task remained disabled.

Untill now my system is running perfectly and the services of NI are running without problems.

I hope it works for others too and thanks to all for the input. I'll report it to Support so they can add it in the knowledge base,

Kind regards,

Anthonie

Jeremy_NI

Hey @Anthonie Thanks a lot for sharing, it will be great for people who still want to use CCleaner along our products.

JesterMgee

Ah, yeah that makes a lot of sense.

While CCleaner can be handy to just do a quick clean of junk files from the machine it's really not a good idea (or ever suggested by anyone I know) to ever use it's "smart" service. You don't want it running in the background doing anything and that is probably what NI have been eluding to that it can kill what it "thinks" is unrequired services.

On a modern PC, none of that is needed and as you have found, it is actually detrimental. If you want to use it, just manually launch it and use it simply to clear your temp files, browser cache etc and that's it.

PulseCode

@Anthonie I am glad you were able to figure it out, so CCLeaner was disabling NIHostIntegrationAgent.exe windows service? because it thought it was junk service? lol that's quite an aggressive program.

Anthonie

@PulseCode I am glad too, but the question is why? CCleaner works normal now, but why? I think I let it go and start working with my KK. And I learned a lot the last week.