Ableton Forum

I upgraded to Live 2.1.1 last Friday August 1. Have used it and saved with it and it has worked fine until tonight Saturday August 9. I had been working on a set all day today and was saving it intermittently without any problems. Then the last time I tried to "save live set" it froze as soon as I clicked on "save live set". A control/alt/delete wouldn't get me out of the crash; I had to turn off the computer. This was a couple of hours ago; now every time since then when I try to open Live 2.1.1, it will not let me open the program.

Instead, I get this error message:
'An error occured while reading "C:/Program Files/ableton/Live 2.1.1/preferences/preferences.cfg". Apparently the document was created by a more recent, and incompatible, version of Live than this. [unknown compound stream type]'

I did not change anything on my computer, and it was working fine until the last time I tried to save; now Live won't even open. I have tried it numerous times, restarting the computer, turning it off and back on again, leaving it off for a long time, etc; still no luck.

I am running Windows XP home edition on a Compaq PC Presario 700 laptop, 512mb ram, 20 g hard drive, only about 40% full, 1.33 G processor.

Any ideas?

Thank you. Andrew Duke

np Vita--Weiter (Mitek/Sweden) unreleased (from the audio section on the website)

Have you tried renaming the CFG file in the error message? The Live application should create a new preferences file after the file is renamed and you try opening Live again.

-Alex

goto add/remove programs.
ableton live gives you a choice to repair damaged files.
it worked for me.

Alex and rh:
Thanks for the tips. Will give them a try. Before I read your posts, I tried deleting all the preferences.cfg files and after that it would let me open 2.1.1 OK, but not my most recent set. An older set would open no problem, but the set I had been saving fine until yesterday afternoon before the problems started now gives me this error when I try to open it: 'Syntax error; expected a class id, found "WarpMark" instead.' I haven't seen this error before. Any ideas?

Another question: under program files>ableton i now have the following folders:
live
live 2.01
live 2.03
live 2.1
live 2.1.1
Is it safe for me to trash all of these except 2.1.1?

Thanks for your help. Andrew Duke