Subject:Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Posted by: ejo

Date:12/4/2008 9:03:04 AM

Hi all,

I have yet to hear from Sony technical support so I'm hoping someone here may had a similar experience to help solve my problem.

I upgraded to Acid Pro 7a. In the Plugin Manager I set the Add path to C:\ thinking that it would load only the plugins on my harddrive that I have in various folders. It was a bad thing to do. Acid cannot tell the difference between vst .dlls and system .dlls. When I launch the application it attempts to load every .dll on the computer. After many minutes it locks up and the cell windows never load. Then I kill the process in the Task Manager to get back to the desktop. The hidieous thing about this is that some of the system .dlls activate and strange things happen like icons being deleted off the desktop. My error turned this program into malware.

Re-installing Acid does not solve this problem. I have spent much time looking through the registry for starup information to alter but no success. So that is my thinking at the moment - to find where the startup config is stored on the computer so that I can reset the program to it's startup defaults. Any ideas? Reformating and re-installing Windows is not an option.

I'm using WinXP Pro Service Pack 3

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/4/2008 9:15:28 AM

The only way to determine whether a dll is a VST plug-in is to load it. This is a limitation of the VST technology.

You should definitely not scan your entire system for VSTs. By default ACID looks at a registry entry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VST

for the default VST search path. This registry entry is defined byt the VST SDK.

If this key does not exist, then ACID defaults to

C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins

To correct your problem:

1. Exit ACID
2. locate the following directory on your system:

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Sony\ACID Pro\7.0

3. delete the file

acidpro.plugincache.xml

4. Start ACID.

This will force ACID to rescan the default directory paths.

You can then manually add additional directories where you believe plug-ins are installed.

Avoid large search paths like c:\Program Files as any number of dll's that are scanned can cause the problems you experianced.

We are looking at solutions to prevent this from happening, but there is only so much that can be done given the way VST enumeration works.

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: ejo

Date:12/4/2008 9:25:29 AM

Peter! Thanks!! All is good now.

Yeah, My bad assuming Acid would know the difference between vst and system .dlls.

Out of curiousity, does the Acid .exe have any old school type command line switches?

Thanks again for you help.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/4/2008 10:43:15 AM

Yeah, My bad assuming Acid would know the difference between vst and system .dlls.

Believe me, I wish we could. We do have an interal "don't ever scan this file" list, but it could never be made 100% complete. We are looking for a solution to prevent - even if it is just a warning - the use of large search paths like C:\ , C:\Windows, C:\Program Files.

Out of curiousity, does the Acid .exe have any old school type command line switches?

Nothing that would be useful to end users.

Is there something you are interested in?

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: ejo

Date:12/5/2008 11:18:38 AM

I had tried acid70.exe -noplugins to see if it would load the program without searching for vst plugins.

And a few others:
-novst
-help
-?
etc.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/5/2008 4:15:15 PM

Try

-NOVSTGROVEL

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: ejo

Date:12/6/2008 11:06:10 PM

Interesting. Using that switch: Program loaded and the main frame window stayed a blank white. Frozen. I closed the program in the Task Manager. On subsequent loadup the program loaded lightning fast.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/8/2008 5:51:10 AM

It is undocumented, so use at your own risk. It is intended for internal use. If it does not work, don't use it.

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: ejo

Date:12/11/2008 9:36:51 PM

Good thing I don't own a curious cat.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 7a Plugin Manager loads system .dlls

Reply by: april.exe

Date:2/1/2009 7:21:25 AM

THANK YOU! LOL!

Its great fun to try out the plugs on KVR and Gersic but not so fun when theres old vendor lists, unavailable listings etc.

Deleted the XML and AP7 loads MUCH faster.

Before it was "adding" old dll listings which would wind up in the "unavailable" folder of the plugin manager. (plugs that were in the VSTPlugins folder when I installed AP7 obv. )