MusicalDee

I've actually had Helix Native start doing the same thing to me again. No rootkit or virus at fault this time. I've given up on Helix Native for now and switched to Bias FX. I still like the sound of Helix Native a bit better, but I'd rather have something that actually works reliably. If Line 6 starts to show that they care about bugs in Helix Native, I might switch back, but until then, Bias FX it is.

So I've got it going again. After cleaning all malware, including getting rid of the rootkit, I just got lazy, and rather than getting the update server service working again manually, I figured it couldn't hurt to just do a windows reinstall keeping all files and apps (you can get to it through update from windows media), as that'd catch anything else that might have been broken by the malware too. It's all stuff I can do, but it comes to a point where you've got to weigh up what's more important - showing the malware who's boss, or getting a working workspace for creating music again. Anyway, long story short, after the reinstall keeping apps and files, Helix is working perfectly again! I'm really curious to know exactly what was causing the issue, and part of me wishes I'd kept going down the troubleshooting path to narrow it down to the exact cause, but at the end of the day, so long as it works again and I have one of my main music creation tools back, it doesn't really matter. Cheers for all your help! And please, johnzyphur, still keep this post updated with your results too! Hopefully anyone else having the same issues will find this thread and get a few different solutions to it!

Yeah I've done some pretty extensive scans, but it looks like I've picked up a rootkit, likely along with a free reverb VST I was trying out, but it's possible I picked it up before then, and it just took a while to activate to make it harder to work out what it came in with - I've got rid of every bit of free software now. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for cleaning rootkits out (used to do this for a living back on Windows 7...), and then I'll need to get Windows Update working again - looks like the first things it did were break the wuserver service, and remove my AV. Kaspersky is currently topping the AV Comparitives list, so I've switched to them for now (a friend lent me a licence), and then once it's completely clean, I should be able to switch back to my Bitdefender subscription. For now, the Helix Native issue is on the backburner...

I have to confess I'm more comfortable with troubleshooting on Mac these days... It was safe mode with networking, but I didn't have it plugged into my router when I tried it, so it might as well have been without networking - wifi doesn't work in safe mode on my PC, but I have a thunderbolt3 to ethernet adapter that hadn't been plugged in yet. After coming back out of safe mode again, I actually noticed that the antivirus software I normally use (Bitdefender) wasn't loading, and seemed to have uninstalled itself. It turns out I've picked up a virus from somewhere, so I'm currently going down a bit of a malware removal rabbit hole... I'll let you know when I get back onto trying to get Helix going again. Y'never know, this might just fix it anyway.

Interesting! I've had a teensy bit of progress on this. On an impulse, I tried reinstalling Helix Native in safe mode. Now Reaper actually recognises it! It works perfectly when in safe mode, but crashes Reaper, Cantible and Bitwig when I boot back into normal mode - I tried booting back into safe mode again after it crashed Reaper, and it still works there. Clearly there's something running that is clashing with it. I'm going to experiment and see what it might be. Hopefully if I figure it out, it might work for you all too!

I think you must have misread my post. I'm using Helix Native inside a DAW (or trying to anyway), not one of the hardware units. There are no drivers needing to be installed for it, other than perhaps the drivers for my audio interface, but installing HXEdit wouldn't have any effect on those.

Completely 100% sure (I just double checked...). Besides even if I didn't, that wouldn't explain why it isn't working in other DAWs.

So, I've been using Helix Native as my main rig for a few years now, and this is the first time I've run into any issues I couldn't solve on my own. At my last rehearsal, I went to load up Helix Native as I usually do, in Reaper, inside a project that has all my midi routing from my controller set up, only for it to instantly crash. The only thing that had changed since the last time I had used it, was I had updated Reaper. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling both Helix Native and Reaper, with no change. Then I discovered that version 3.01 of Helix Native had been released, so I downloaded and installed that, only for Reaper to fail to scan it at all (It appears in Reaper's list of plugins it's attempted to scan, but failed). Bitwig also fails to scan it, and while Cantible Lite (which I installed just to test things) does actually find it and add it to the list of available plugins, it crashes immediately when I try to load it. Fully uninstalling and reinstalling doesn't seem to fix the issue. Thankfully I have my old laptop still running a much earlier version of Reaper, and Helix Native 1.9x (I forget the exact version) as a backup, so I'm still able to continue gigging with it, but I'd really appreciate some help figuring out what might be causing all these issues. As it happens in multiple DAW's, it suggests it's a problem with the plugin, though I guess it could also be an incompatibility with something else on this laptop, though I have no idea what it might be. Thanks!