Ableton Forum

Ableton - what is going on with this problem? I've read many posts on it, and it is causing serious problems. My sessions lock up and are unable to be saved, then a force quite / ctrl-alt-del is required.

Live is pretty useless without being able to save.

Ableton will not admit that this is a problem,
I have spoken to support about this loads but they had a go at me saying well why dont you just delete it? Eh ? Whats that all about?..
I have been asking them for a fix since live 4 and so has my bandmate but all I get is delete the preferences...delete the undo.cfg yourself...delete the preferences
Whens it going to End?

I am Sick I thought at least in live 5 this would have been fixed by now.
Its not just me Im sitting next to my bandmate watching his computer bring up the same message all the time.

No, no, no!!!

This is not an acceptable error!!!

Anyways - I tried to delete the undo.cfg file and I still had a hard crash.

ABLETON - here is what happens:

1) Live Message : Error Closing: C:\Documents and Settings\Tim Arndt\Application Data\Ableton\Live 5.01\Preferences\Undo.cfg.

2) (a)I try to save the file anyway or (b) per what I read last night, I delete the undo.cfg file.

3) In either event, I get this message: A serious program error has occurred. You should save you work under a new name using the Save As command from the File Menu and restart the Application.

4) So, I have done this - saved as a new file. But everytime I try to exit the program from there, the message about a serious program error continues. I ultimately need to ctrl-alt-del to get out. THAT IS WHEN I LOSE ALL OF MY WORK!!!

This is COMPLETELY F'd up. Please let us know that it is officially on the bug list.

Tim.

Hi folks,

we are working to fix at least the symptoms of this problem. We know that this is most often related to some plug-ins doing doing some actions which may corrupt the Undo History. We also know that not all people having such a plug-in are having this Undo problem.

ntp,

the serious error message when you try to save does indicate a problem that can but not must be related to the undo.cfg issue.
Do you have any kind of pattern what to do before it happens? Or does it happen more or less randomly?



Please keep also in mind that the job of the support is to solve problems and not to fix bugs. So if you have the problem like this all they can do is to help

regards,
Alex

Thanks for the quick response. A few things:

You wrote "the serious error message when you try to save does indicate a problem that can but not must be related to the undo.cfg issue." I'm not trying to be smart, but I don't know what you are saying. Are you saying it is related or it isn't? I can tell you that this message only comes up after the undo.cfg message.

I can tell you that this does seem to be tied to Absynth 2.
It it NOT occurring randomly which almost more concerning. It seems to be happening every time - making working in Live pretty much not an option.

You also wrote "Please keep also in mind that the job of the support is to solve problems and not to fix bugs. So if you have the problem like this all they can do is to help". Are you saying that I need to talk to somebody else? Whether it is a "Problem" or a "Bug" - I need your help!

Now, on a single test that I performed this morning - uninstalling QuickTime and the DigiDesign WaveDriver - seemed to have an effect. I went in and edited a session and was able to Save and Close successfully. I did just install QuickTime recently, so it appears to be related, but I need to reinstall it for my other music Applications.

Does that shed any light? Again, I can't verify an 100% correlation yet - I only did one try this morning. I will test it further tonight and report back.

ntp (tim).

Hi ntp,

Are you saying it is related or it isn't?

That what I wrote :). It can be related or not. Let us assume we would (however) "fix" this undo.cfg problem. Is the "crash when saving" based on the Undo.cfg problem, everything is fine, you and we would be happy. But if it is not, the crash when saving problem would still persists and we "fixed" only the symptom of the real problem.

So therefore we would like to know how to reproduce this problem and therefore I asked if you have any kind of pattern to force this error.
If we can reproduce this here, we see at least the source of this problem.

It seems to be happening every time - making working in Live pretty much not an option.

The question is can you reproduce it with a number of certain steps?

Are you saying that I need to talk to somebody else? Whether it is a "Problem" or a "Bug"

No, all I want to say is that the support cannot really fix a problem when we do not know what the source of the problem itself is. So all they can say to you is something "try to delete it manually...." and say to us "There is a problem with undo.cfg....".


regards,
Alex

Thanks again - here is the detail.

I am running WinXp, Sony Vaio, 2.4 gighz, with 1 gig RAM. I have Live 5.01 and Absynth 2.

In the past three weeks I have run Live 5.01 with 2-3 instances of Absynth with no problems.

I installed QuickTime 6.5.2 and DigiDesign WaveDriver 6.1.1 yesterday.

Suddently every Live Set crashes.

To recreate - all I have to do is start a new session or open an existing one. It appears that a single instance of Absynth is all that is needed to create the problem. It's not the case that I need to add many effects or do anything in a specified order. It is just the fact that Absynth is in the session. I don't really have any other VST instruments - so I can't say that it would not happen with other instruments.

As I mentioned I uninstalled QT and the WaveDriver this morning, but it is not acceptable to me that this be the rememdy. If there is some kind of problem with Live and its interaction with these programs - I would hope it gets fixed.

So - you said that the undo.cfg problem itselt - not the crash problem - is on the list to get fixed? Will we see it in the next update? Will we get the next update soon????

Hello
I have as I said also been having this problem and as does my friend who uses live.
I am having the "unable to delete ...undo.cfg" either when loading a live set or also when closing live sets.For example I will open a song either listen to it without editing or for editing it makes no difference and when I close the file it trys to close and the spinning rainbow appears and then the set half closes down and I get the undo.cfg message etc.
When I say set half closes, I mean the clips all dissappear most of the time as do the instruments effects etc, but the Cpu still shows activity as if plugins are still running.So I have to then select close again to get it to normal.Sometimes live crashes most of the time live is still running but not loading sets first time because of this.
For example I could load live up choose a set load fails and the message unable to delete undo.cfg appears.Try it again and then usually works the second or third time.It will be great when this is found and fixed as it gets to you but also seems to happen on both platforms and all models.
I use a live 5.0.1 on a powerbook osx 10.4.2 pretty standard hardware as does my friend who has the same problem only his is a different apple and osx 10.3.9 with live 4.1.4.This bug has not gone since me and my friend first noticed it in live 4.
I cant remember it in live 3 but could not be sure.
It is definately in the software because my friend has a completly different set up to me and we both work together with live alot and witness it everysession. Could it be live is attempting to delete the file before some plugins have unloaded themselves from memory and it is causing some kind of permission error because of this?
Alex please let me know if you need any logs as I can also get my bandmate to send his 4.1.4 logs.

kineticUk - are you running NI plugins?

Alex, I can provide a log as well. What do we do next?

Rarely using NI plugins.I do have a couple but my bandmate doesnt and he too has the undo.cfg problem.