Deinstall, clean, reboot, reinstall seems to be a good idea.
How do you go about “clean” a plugin, just try figure out its folders and remove them?
First deintall the plugin, then delete literally everything (folders, data, whatever) what’s left manually, reboot the computer and make a fresh installation of that plugin. It helps in most cases.
1 Like
I haven’t used it in years, so I can’t vouch for how it works today but in the past I alwasy had good results with Revo Uninstaller. Free and portable.
CCleaner was also great, again haven’t used it in years so your millage may vary. As far as I know it’s still free. And here is a recent list of different unistallers.
My brain hurts when oneself have to do such cleanup manoeuvres…
Anyway I just tested both VST2 and VST3 in Ableton Live, Cakewalk and Reaper and Effectrack works in all those other DAWs, so this appears to be a Renoise related thing somehow I just don’t see the connection as it literally happened overnight without I should have changed anything.
I just tried remove all the Cachedvst files etc and made Renoise rescan but now the VST2 version has disappeared completely from the list of effects and now only able to chose the VST3 version.
I’m no longer confident about how Renoise interact with plugins these days, so many VST3s have serious GUI issues and we still have a serious Sidechain bug that has gone unfixed for far too long.
2 Likes
Maybe it’s because of an update of your operating system. I’ve had one last night…
After the deinstalltion just delete all the folders and what’s inside. I would also deinstall the VST3 version and everything else about the plugin. When you’re reinstalling again, VST2 and VST3 will usually be installed at the same time, unless you decide not to. In terms of Renoise this “should” help, regardless of what’s happening in other DAWS just like Ableton Live.
Hm, I never had any problems with any VST3 that I’ve used. No GUI issues, no dysfunction, nothing. I don’t know, maybe I’m lucky or maybe I don’t use the “wrong” plugins. Are you talking about this sidechain bug? It seems that I’m lucky again, because this bug only affect groups and I don’t use groups. Anyway, this should be fixed of course, no doubt.
The free version isn’t that good, but the chargeable version is quite good. I’m using it all the time. Good for anything in terms of registry issues, driver updates, performance issues, deinstallations, cleanings and so on.
I did notice an update was available a few days ago and now it’s gone but I don’t recall actually installing it so that could actually be the culprit here… anyway it works in the other DAWs, so I will point my finger at either Renoise or Soundtoys and not my installation.
I kept postponing my update, then the other night Windows forced itself to update overnight, without my permission, and rebooted even though I had stuff open & running. 
It’s your decision. I would at least give it a try instead of waiting for somebody fixing this next year or whenever. You know exactly how often there’s a Renoise update, how long it takes until something is getting fixed and what you can expect if you report your problem to a company developing any VST.
Ouch that can be costly, maybe you accidentally pressed a key just as a dialog window popped up? else nuts!
Yeah you are right. I will eventually try, I mean I also have to try all options as it’s used in all my songs since 2020.
Isn’t soundtoys requiring ilok driver? Maybe you should update it? Did you restart? Best Windows tricks from a mac user…
It is indeed, I just tried updating it unfortunately that didn’t help.
But I’ve got it to work when I turned on “Run all plugins in sandboxes” in preferences, that does make it able to run and not crash or anything, now I just wonder if there are any serious downsides to this and why on earth does things like this happen over night (hello windows update!?).
So for now I’m okay … 
Thanks for all the ideas
2 Likes
Sounds like a bug in soundtoys. Maybe report to them that it crashes as soon as no sandboxing in involved. This also happens in first Surge versions, multiple instances sharing resources which it shouldn’t.
What happens if you disabel sandboxing again and only load a single instance of it?
I have written to Soundtoys before I figured out about the sandboxing, I’ll be sure to mention that their VST2 version has this issue when they reply some day. 
Disabling sandboxing again doesn’t help, it still won’t open up.
No, I mean, load a empty project with sandboxing disabled. Then load a single instance, so make sure, there is ONLY ONE soundtoys instance in the project. Also make sure you didn’t load your buggy project before. Make sure Renoise was freshly started.
Does it open normally?
I just tried save a new clean song, turn off sandboxing, closed Renoise, then opened the clean song and tried open Effectrack VST2 and Renoise show a modal dialog stating it failed to initialize it.
From the Log.txt:
Application: Successfully loaded ‘clean template.xrns’.
GraphPort: Initializing in WindowedMode
GraphPort: Successfully initializedApplication: Init OK
Application: Enter MainLoop…VstPlugs: Trying to instantiate C:\VSTPlugins\Soundtoys\EffectRack.dll
VstPlugs: Instantiate FAILED (caught structured exception) !!!Audio Plugins: Failed to open plug VST: EffectRack
Exception: Failed to initialize the plugin ‘VST: Soundtoys: EffectRack’.
Error Message: Failed to initialize the plugin ‘VST: Soundtoys: EffectRack’.
“caught structured exception” 
1 Like
Thanks though. I have a mac it’s just a bit old and unable to run my music these days. I contemplate getting the new mini m2 pro as it’s powerful, small, not too expensive and most importantly for me easy to take on the road. I think Intel and AMD are heading for stormy weather if they don’t get their chips optimized versus ARM chips, Apple have shown the way, Nvidia will probably release something similar to Apples M chips I guess.
About Macs, a tip is to always use VST on you mac projects so that songs can be imported on the PC, if you plan to collab or are on dual systems, I have so many unfinished songs on Mac that I haven’t been able to continue due to having used AU versions.
DAWs should be able to exchange parameter settings between AU, VST2 and VST3 versions of a plugin, that would also solve my case right now where only the VST3 version work.
Yes, you also should try to use VST3 only on Mac, since Renoise often differs the VST2 plugin id on Windows vs mac systems due to a conceptual flaw. If you only use VST3, these problems are gone.
Oh, so why not migrate your songs to the VST3 versions of Soundtoys? Since you wrote that the problems are only happening with the VST2 versions. I read that Cubase can “auto-migrate” VST2 presets to VST3 or similar… On the other hand, Soundtoys does not have a lot of parameters.
I’ve started using the VST3 version of course but have hundreds of XRNS files using the VST2 version, how would you practically go about migrating these files from VST2 to VST3 of the plugin, you can’t get the parameters unless you somehow decode the XRNS file!?
Effectrack has ~130 parameters and remember it’s unfortunately an Effectrack that has all their plugins in one.
Oh haha, why am i not surprised.
Oh F*** there are GUI issues with the VST3 version … of course there are, I can’t see or scroll down to the plugins below FilterFreak.
