SOLVED: VST stopped working all of a sudden, but only in Ableton - Ableton Live 12 - Windows - BFD3 64-bit Plugin

[DirkDingleberry]

**SOLVED - See edit below**

Hey there, I'm just posting to see if anyone else has had weird issues with Ableton not properly scanning a plugin.

I use BFD3 for all my drums, and almost never have issues. I was working on a project last night and it was working fine. I started back up this morning and was greeted with the red banner at the bottom saying "Some plug-ins are disabled." I saw I was missing a bunch of plugins, but I rescanned and almost all of them were found again. But when I go to my drum track, the BFD3 plug-in is greyed out, saying "The VST2 plug-in could not be found."

I tried all of the normal tricks: verifying the VST2 .dll file is still in the same folder. Re-scanning plugins both normally and with the holding Alt while clicking re-scan trick to rebuild Ableton's VST database. Moving the .dll file to another folder and rescanning. Turning off custom VST directories and installing the .dll file to the default Windows path. Re-licensing the plugin with the manufacturer. Reinstalling the plugin completely (all 80+ GB of files). Starting a new project file. Updating and restarting the computer multiple times. It still won't recognize the plug-in.

Sometimes when it's scanning, the red status bar at the bottom of Ableton that show the list of plugins being scanned during that process will show the BFD3 plugin and even sometimes "BFD" will show up momentarily in the list of plugins in the browser, but it will quickly disappear. It's like Ableton can read the file and see it's there, but completely refuses to load it.

It's very frustrating because BFD3 works totally fine in the standalone app and I can load the plugin version just fine in both of my other DAW's (Reaper and Cubase).

I don't know how Ableton's plugin scanner process works, but I am wondering if there was an issue with the DRM for the plugin? When I was going through these steps, the BFD standalone app wasn't working at first until I relicensed it, so I'm wondering if Ableton's plugin scanner thought it was an unauthorized plugin at first and now it's intentionally preventing me from using the software I paid for? I just don't know if Ableton checks DRM on their side or not causing it to be fooled, but it's the only thing I can think of.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Edit: This has been solved, but I will leave this solution I found from deep in the BFD forums up for any future BFD Googler's, though I suspect #2 was the most important, so maybe try that first before the others:

1. Delete: C:\Users\ **USERNAME** \AppData\Roaming\BFD Drums\BFD License Manager
2. Delete: C:\Users\ **USERNAME** \AppData\Local\inMusicBrands\SoftwareUnlock
3. Open the Registry Editor and delete: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\BFD Drums\BFD License Manager
4. Delete: C:\Program Files\BFD Drums\BFD License Manager
5. Re-download BFD License Manager from [www.bfddrums.com/downloads.html](http://www.bfddrums.com/downloads.html)
6. Install it again with no BFD Drums software being open, and it should launch.