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Helix Native VST's not scanning in DAWs


MusicalDee
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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!

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18 minutes ago, rd2rk said:

Try re-installing HXEdit v3.0. That will reinstall all of the drivers.

Don't forget to reboot after the install.

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.

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28 minutes ago, MusicalDee said:

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.

 

Yes, I did. My bad. 

Don't know the solution then, I've never had the slightest problem with Native in Reaper or any other DAW.

Just lucky I guess!

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I have the exact same issue and I don't believe I've changed anything (famous last words) since it was working. 

I've tried:

-Uninstalling/Reinstalling Reaper.  Even tried a previous version of Reaper.
-Uninstalling/Reinstalling Helix Native.  Tried previous versions of Native, but the "Show Details" under installation indicated that the installer found a newer "Core" file and I doubt it even installed.
-Deactivating/Reactivating Helix Native both online and inside Helix Native - I got it to run briefly (not sure what I did, maybe running the plugin as a separate process, but even that doesn't work now) and it then gave "Failed to Connect to DSP Engine. Error code 8201".  Not sure exactly what I did to get it to stop crashing and load, but it still never worked even then.

-"factory resetting" Helix Native.

-System Restore - A full Windows 10 system restore to a backup point that for sure it was working on.

 

It's also an interesting piece of data that my authorized devices show two, one with Windows 8 and one with Windows 10.  I've never had Windows 8, so no idea what's going on.  Licensing software issues?

 

I put the vst3 file in the right spot, had it scanned, but in Reaper it's listed under the "Plugins that failed to scan", which makes me think it's Native.

 

If there are any log files that can help pinpoint the issue I'm willing to provide them, but this has me at a complete stand still on my music.

I've submitted a ticket to Line6 and will report back if I am able to remediate the issue.

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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!

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11 minutes ago, MusicalDee said:

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!

 

Boldly going where others fear to tread! BRAVO! Keep us informed!

Having never had a problem with Native, I'm VERY curious what might cause this!

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2 hours ago, MusicalDee said:

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!


That's fantastic troubleshooting.  Thank you for putting in the effort.  I was going to do a packet capture since I thought it might have to do with the licensing software registering with the server, did you do safe mode with or without networking?  

I'm not super familiar with troubleshooting in a Windows environment, but if there's anything I can do to assist please let me know.  It must be some device driver conflicting with Native.  I think I may have updated my Nvidia drivers for gaming, any chance you did that recently as well?  Not sure why a video driver would matter, but perhaps rendering the plugin hits some weird nonsense.  How would one go about detecting a conflict there? 

I still have the ticket open with Line6 and awaiting a response.  SLA says I should have a response within another couple days.

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4 hours ago, johnzyphur said:


That's fantastic troubleshooting.  Thank you for putting in the effort.  I was going to do a packet capture since I thought it might have to do with the licensing software registering with the server, did you do safe mode with or without networking?  

I'm not super familiar with troubleshooting in a Windows environment, but if there's anything I can do to assist please let me know.  It must be some device driver conflicting with Native.  I think I may have updated my Nvidia drivers for gaming, any chance you did that recently as well?  Not sure why a video driver would matter, but perhaps rendering the plugin hits some weird nonsense.  How would one go about detecting a conflict there? 

I still have the ticket open with Line6 and awaiting a response.  SLA says I should have a response within another couple days.

 

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.

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Only just saw this thread.

I was going to chime in about checking for viruses and then lecture you about free AV not being worth the money, especially Avast/AVG... 

Sounds like you're on top of it. I'd recommend Malwarebytes for tracking down the malware. I'd be inclined to start backtracking on any free VSTs you've added recently... basically any free software you've added recently.

Bitdefender is one of the good guys, so it's likely you've introduced the virus via software install or attachment download.

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19 hours ago, MusicalDee said:

 

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.

 

I tried completely removing anti-virus and the firewall, no dice.  I tried safe mode, still can't see the plugin.  This is one hell of a problem.  Still no reply from Line6.

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2 hours ago, somebodyelse said:

Only just saw this thread.

I was going to chime in about checking for viruses and then lecture you about free AV not being worth the money, especially Avast/AVG... 

Sounds like you're on top of it. I'd recommend Malwarebytes for tracking down the malware. I'd be inclined to start backtracking on any free VSTs you've added recently... basically any free software you've added recently.

Bitdefender is one of the good guys, so it's likely you've introduced the virus via software install or attachment download.

 

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...

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On 2/2/2021 at 7:02 PM, MusicalDee said:

 

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 contacted Line 6 Via chat and am very happy to learn that one of their employees has the exact same issue, reproducibility is great .  It sounds like this will be escalated internally, QA/Dev will take a look at it, and we should have an answer back early next week.  I will relay the info here and hope you can relay the same info to your reddit post so it gets a wider audience, in case others are affected.

 

Thank you.

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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!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Glad you sorted it.

FWIW, I've been using Kaspersky Total, and Internet Security since 2007. Never let me down.

Funnily enough, a kid on the Reaper forum posted a similar issue, just after I read this... I gave him all the above pointers... not heard back, I'd be surprised if it wasn't a similar cause.

You clearly know yer stuff, but for the benefit of innocent bystanders, I'd steer clear of Avast and AVG and also the once reputable CCleaner.

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On 2/19/2021 at 5:14 PM, rd2rk said:

FWIW - I've used the Microsoft AV and CCleaner for years without problems, but everybody's systems and surfing habits differ, so YMMV.

Cool.

No issues with MS AV, but AVG were involved in a bit of strife a few years ago when they released an AV for Windows phones. For reasons I don't understand, it turns out AV is unnecessary on Windows phone OS, which is why no one does one. Turned out the AVG app was basically data mining. AVG was never that good an AV anyway and it's owned by Avast.

When Avast bought CCleaner a few years back, I, or more to the point, my AV, found it started installing all sorts of adware at the same time.

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  • 4 months later...
1 hour ago, fremen said:

Same problem here, with SONAR. Win10 64.

 

I don't know about the original Cakewalk Sonar, as it's long gone from my machines after "The Big Gibson Rip-off", but if you're using the latest Bandlab Cakewalk (virtually identical but with updates), make sure that Cakewalk is scanning the folder that you installed Native to. Also be aware that it won't let you use the VST2 version, which doesn't really matter since Native in Cakewalk (or anything else W10 unless it supports AAX/AU) won't do MIDI Program Changes anyway. CCs work fine.

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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.

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  • 2 months later...

you might have looked at this but thought I would mention it. Probably would not have helped with the root kit, but you never know...It's just something that has helped me get a bit more out of the box and isolated all those unneeded services.

 

one thing that I do on my DAW (Windows 10) is I create a hardware profile for my DAW boot(s). This disables quite a number of services that are not needed. When I am working on something a bit more critical I have an Air Gap DAW profile that disables everything not needed(wifi, nics, ports not in use, services, apps on startup etc...). This is usually for larger projects than any sort of risk so I can exploit as much as possible for audio. Disabling everything that is not required recovers a good bit of RAM and frees up a little CPU. The default profile has virus scanning and just regular old PC stuff. The nice thing about it is that you can really get your machine optimized for whatever work you are doing. Just depends on the situation if profiles are worthwhile or not. years ago when I was on Windows XP I was a bit more paranoid and my DAW was always air gapped.

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  • 2 months later...

I started having trouble with Helix Native 3.11 a couple weeks back, tried it in Gig Performer 3, and had built a "rack", working with it in there. I initially had an issue with Softube Amp Room (VST3), and then Helix wouldn't work anymore either, - VST2 or 3.

 

Also doesn't work in Cubase 11 Pro, Studio One 4.5, Reaper 6.42, MPC2.10.1, OR Reason 11.

 

Anybody else having trouble with Helix Native 3.11? Any ideas to fix it?

 

Helix Native has been mostly solid since the beginning, I have tried all I can, I don't have any older installers though. I can't use it, at all, this is ANOTHER reason for a STANDALONE version. 

 

The weird part of this is, all the hosts DO scan Helix Native, no blacklisting.

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Native works fine in Reaper 6.42, Cakewalk, LIVE! and S1 v5.

That's on two different system, i5 and i7, W10 Pro on both

Sounds like you have a system problem.

Are you by chance short on HD space? HD need defragging?

Is there an update downloaded and pending reboot that you've been avoiding?

Hard to know where to start with a problem like this.

Maybe it's time for a system rebuild. PITA, but Windows is like that. Sometimes it just gets totally scrambled.

OTOH, I haven't rebuilt mine in years.

 

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My problems started from Deskew Gig Performer 3, it threw the "crash to desk" upon me when adding or switching to Softube Amp Room (VST3). I had a different rig in there with an ENGL E765RT, an SSL channel strip and a Lexicon MPX reverb running fine. The other rig was just the Helix Native, and it had no problems for at least a few days.

 

I have a crazy amount of plugins (good, paid for, and well known) that have run very nicely for most of 2 years now (on this build).

 

A home-built ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE workstation mb/Ryzen 7 3800X PC tower that has more power than I can currently use - for DAW/plugins, running solid as a rock. 64GB of 3200 Ballistix. 

 

I have 4 (2TB drives), 2 of those are old school spin drives that can be defragged. They are for installation programs/backup/miscellaneous use only.  No shortage of space on any, - fast Samsung 970 NVMe main drive, and an 860 EVO SATA.

 

I am NOT a slouch in updates & maintenance, quite the opposite actually.

 

Speaking of scrambled, Windows 11 just did exactly that today with a few updates at once. I was left with NO start menu, NO search ability, and NO Windows App store (don't really use it but...). Just weird, because it had me believing it was smooth as W10 was before that bs.

 

Luckily I have a full Windows 10 Pro drive/system image backup (if I need), and the old W7 System Restore points stills works well. I am probably going to be using the image back to W10 Pro, but I'll at least give this a bit longer to see if it was just a bum update.

 

Anyhow, the issues were from W10 Pro, and still present in W11 Pro. I have tried to uninstall/reinstall/different combos of VST2/VST3 (one, other, or both) and their folder locations. Nothing yet. I'd certainly try the last version of Helix if I had it, but nowhere to get it, Line 6 doesn't leave it up, after the new one comes out.

 

And yeah, my Helix Native worked just fine on my MSI DAW laptop too, before this. I can't just go for a reinstall for 1 plugin (Helix). Softube Amp Room works in everything else but GP3, perfectly.

 

I uninstalled Deskew GP3, so right now it is only Helix that is goofing up - out of probably close to 1000 plugins according to Studio One 4.5

Screenshot (7).png

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  • 4 months later...

Having no such problem.

Sounds like there's a configuration issue with your computer or Reaper itself.

Is everything (OS, Reaper, Native) running the latest versions?

Recent antivirus scans?

Are you running an ACTIVE antivirus program (don't).

Maybe if you provide some system information someone might be able to help?

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On 4/20/2022 at 6:29 AM, ronti4 said:

Same Problem here. Helix Native don´t work anymore in Reaper. Tried also some older versions but without success.

 

PLEASE HELP

 

Hi,

 

In order to be able to assist you with this issue, you really need to supply more information. What computer and operating system, versions of the software etc. Simply saying "Same problem" and "don't work anymore" is not helpful at all.

 

I guess from the "don't work anymore"comment, you previously must have had a fully functioning version of Helix Native running in Reaper. What changed?

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

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