This is insane... ALL vst plugins vanished.

[inkwarp]

This is the most bizarre thing to ever happen to me ( on a computer),
I had a bad crash a while back and was forced to reinstall windows. It took a while but I eventually clawed back most of my setup including all my Vsts and DAWs etc. I finished last night and after having my DAW scan the plugins folder put the machine on sleep and went to bed. Today, reinvigorated and chomping at the bit to get back to my tunes I discovered.. the ENTIRE VSTPlugins folder, gone. I have spent a few hours combing over everything but cannot find even one DLL. It's a long shot but has this ever happened to anyone else? It's possibly some form of corruption... I really have no idea. Anyway, that's how it is. I will have to reinstall everything again but maybe there is some arcane reason as to why this has happened...

[antic604]

This is the most bizarre thing to ever happen to me...

I suspect you've interrupted Windows installation and once you've turned the computer off it finished it before going to sleep? Or perhaps it recovered from a backup point that was created when you had clean install previously? But in either case everything would be gone, not just plugins particularly.

BTW, what kind of crash did you have that you had to reinstall OS?

In some sense I envy you. I don't use 80% of plugins I've installed and going through the process of elimination and actuall uninstalling would be painful... Take the opportunity and only install what you actually use

[chk071]

It definitely is bizarre. I have no idea why something like that would happen.

Maybe you could tell a bit more about your system though. Operating system? DAW? 64-bit, 32-bit?

Also, do a virus scan. A DAW won't just delete your plugins.

[antic604]

...A DAW won't just delete your plugins.

What if it was bored? Or jealous? Some people hate the idea of having fun with their DAWs

[chk071]

I could definitely understand the jealousy, considering how many DAW's people usually tend to own and use.

[whyterabbyt]

This is the most bizarre thing to ever happen to me ( on a computer),
I had a bad crash a while back and was forced to reinstall windows. It took a while but I eventually clawed back most of my setup including all my Vsts and DAWs etc. I finished last night and after having my DAW scan the plugins folder put the machine on sleep and went to bed. Today, reinvigorated and chomping at the bit to get back to my tunes I discovered.. the ENTIRE VSTPlugins folder, gone. I have spent a few hours combing over everything but cannot find even one DLL. It's a long shot but has this ever happened to anyone else? It's possibly some form of corruption... I really have no idea. Anyway, that's how it is. I will have to reinstall everything again but maybe there is some arcane reason as to why this has happened...

Have you had a look at the registry to see if there's any references to any of your plugins? ie anything under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE

Generally, if you've got plugins that had an installer, you'd see some registry entries.

Or you could even check what installers have been run by going through the entries at

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products

If you can find evidence of your plugins in the Registry, I'd suggest that your filesystem has been corrupt. That's not a great sign if that's what also caused your original problem; you may have a failing drive.

If you cant find any evidence of any plugins in the Registry, then the possibility of a rollback to a backup point seems likely.

[inkwarp]

Somewhere in this shit-show I have def. lost all the vst plugins. I think I can guess at why but it's way too tedious to discuss it here. It's some singular even linked to my own incompetence.
However, as commented above, this will have the clear benefit of clearing out all unnecessary plugins. I had about 400 all told. That includes Reaktor which has a tonne of stuff of its own. I have managed to save that so that lessens the heartache a bit. But, yes, thinning it out until I am beautifully limited to only what I need, that's a good thing.
The reason I was frustrated was because of the time I have to spend doing this when the whole point is to be able to work on my precious music. ( I am a bit of a Photoshop geek but there is just no problem with graphics stuff even remotely similar to audio).
Anyhoo, I suspect somewhere on here is a folder with a name a few hundred letters long with infinitely recursive folder structure and perhaps down there, in the bowels are all my vst treasures...
There are worse things I guess...

[OzoneJunkie]

It's probably tied to an uninstall of a single plugin, in which you may have specified the installation path (during the original installation) as your VST folder. In fact, I remember some company/companies listing this as an issue with one of their uninstall processes (although I can't recall which company). But basically, uninstall would delete the target install folder or the contents within, and so had the potential to delete everything in the VST folder.

[codec_spurt]

sfg

[pixel85]

I had a situation like this a few weeks ago. Several days after Win10 reinstall. Everything was installed, working perfectly fine. One day I turned PC on, DAW on (Cubase), project on and... a lot of plugins was missing. It took me a moment to realize that the entire Vstplugins folder was wiped out. Only vst3 plugins were still available (in another folder).
Plugins and OS on the same NVME drive. I didn't do anything exceptional the previous day.

Why? I have no f***** idea. I never saw anything like this. I'm surprised to see that it happened to somebody else, not only me.
Now I keep the zip file of all my plugins folder on a separate drive.

[chk071]

It's probably tied to an uninstall of a single plugin, in which you may have specified the installation path (during the original installation) as your VST folder.

Usually, files which aren't related to the installation will remain on the uninstall of that single plugin then. If there are really uninstallers which just remove the installation folder no matter what, then that is really dangerous behavior of the uninstaller... never had that for any software.

I rather suspect either a drive failure as whyterabbyt stated, or a malware infection.

[OzoneJunkie]

It's probably tied to an uninstall of a single plugin, in which you may have specified the installation path (during the original installation) as your VST folder.

Usually, files which aren't related to the installation will remain on the uninstall of that single plugin then. If there are really uninstallers which just remove the installation folder no matter what, then that is really dangerous behavior of the uninstaller... never had that for any software.

I rather suspect either a drive failure as whyterabbyt stated, or a malware infection.

Yes, I agree about the uninstaller. But that's exactly what the bad uninstaller did, delete unrelated things. Dangerous indeed.

[inkwarp]

Before you totally accept defeat there is one last very quick thing that you can try.

Go to this site and download 'Everything' (if you don't already have it): https://www.voidtools.com/

It will very quickly index all your disks, and if those .dll files are anywhere at all on your system, it will read them and give you the path, no matter how buried or lost they may be. This will only take a matter of minutes to do (indexing) - it's super quick. When your disks have been 'updated', type this in to the search bar at the top:

Code: Select all

*.dll

or this:

Code: Select all

*.vst

or this:

Code: Select all

*.vst3

The first search string (*.dll) will probably give you thousands and thousands of results, but just scroll down slowly and look at the file paths. Or if you prefer you could type in the exact name of the .dll for a known plugin, say 'reaktor5.dll', then it will show you where on your system it is, if it is indeed still on your system.

Thanks : )
I was ahead of you.
I'm quite impressed by this little piece of software.
In the end, I decided to just sit down and slowly reinstall everything I know where everything is. And the culling of unnecessary plugins is a REALLY good thing. If I had more time I would try and find out what happened but alas, now is not the time...
I'm going to buy an external drive and make an image of my whole system. Just in case.
Nasty Windows 10 ;/