Ableton Forum

Recently, one of my projects got somehow corrupted, and I cannot save it anymore. No matter what Save option I choose it crashes.
I have done some research and got to the point that )I think / hope) I identified the track causing the issues but I can neither delete that track or remove instrument (it is a midi track), because LIVE crashes with the same Error message.

Today, I opened another project with completely different tracks and instruments. Added new audio track and imported an audio file (WAV). I did some editing of the audio track and tired to save and then BOOOM! Live crashed with the same Error and now I cannot save it anymore ...

It seems like my second project got ruined. This is a total disaster and I am afraid to even open any other projects as they can end up the same way.
I was hoping to get some help from ABLETON, but this company provides no support anymore. While this could be justified year ago due to plandemic, it is not acceptable today and I can't imagine how Ableton can do the business without technical support. Their support has never been adequate, but recently it is just completely unacceptable.

I wonder if anybody has some resolution for this type of issues. I am sure I eliminated some causes (drive space, HD errors, RAM problem, MIDI driver problem). The interesting thing is that the first project causing the issue has the track with Ableton instrument grupped with another VST. I tried to ungroup it and remove either one and upon removal Live crashes, so no way to fix it that way.

I have seen lots of people reporting this and presenting all kinds of solutions, where some worked. I tried so far everything I could find and nothing works.

I have a few Live program backups which I could restore from the time when it worked fine, however I am not sure how it can affect present projects, so I appreciate if one could advise me on that. So far, I have never tried to restore Live installation from backup....

SYSTEM: Live11+Win10/64-Pro. Intel-i7/8core-RAM-64Gb, HD-40Tb.


Art


Any help appreciated.

Ouch.

I think deleting your preferences config file might get you rolling again. There’s a link for how to do that… I’ll try and find it for you…

Another thing that can choke Live to death is plugin folders, but that usually causes issues on launch, not Save. Still, you could try temporarily renaming your plugins folders so Live can’t find them and will skip them at launch. You’ll get plugin errors when you launch the set, but you can safely ignore them since you’ll be restoring the folder name *AFTER* you save a new version of the set so you have a back up… This would be more of a test than a solution, but if successful you can make sure you have a backup Live set.

Gonna look for the link… More soon…

Here you go:

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... eset-Live-

You can always rename the .cfg so that you still have it if this doesn’t help. Keep in mind that doing all the steps will cause things like Live’s indexer to have to add all your Libraries and such back. You’ll also lose custom changes you’ve made to Live… but that stuff is way easier to fix than lost music


Some other ideas…
Your hard drive might be full. Make space to save.
You could try deleting temp files on your PC…
Start > (type run to get the Run prompt) Run > (type) temp > Enter
Delete everything in that folder (ctrl + A to select all, then hold Shift + Delete to keep it from all going to the recycle bin - don’t worry, it’s all trash.

Same thing different folder
Start > (type run to get the Run prompt) Run > (type) %temp% > Enter
This will be your app data temps… You’ll probably catch a few ‘file in use’ type errors when you Delete… Just skip those files


If you do manage to get another set open, try ‘Collect All and Save’ instead. If your files/samples etc are on an external drive and the drive letter changed when you plugged it back in, this could be causing some errors/crashing

Hope this helps

I was trying to avoid the RESET, but finally decided to do this as there was no other choices. Thank you so much for suggesting this. I was aware of the procedure but was not aware something could get stored in the CFG and affect the project. After this reset at least I was able to remove the track in question and save it. Part of the problem still remains. Why stock Albeton VST grouped with some well known KONTAKT plugin crashes the project ?

One other question is this:
When the project crashes and I restart LIVE it asks if I want to restore the project that failed to open ?
If I answer NO (say by mistake) - how can I later re-=open it ? I tried this and after I say NO, I cannot locate the file which crashed anymore

I’m not sure if you can… but if so, I would assume it would be in a temp folder for Live. Maybe in C:\users\%profile%\appdata
That Run command for %temp% takes you straight there

I run a Mac, not Windows any more, so I cannot recall where the temps are, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out

Probably
C:\program files\Ableton\…

Of course, if you followed my cleanup advice, and it is in app data… then I owe you an apology…