Ableton Forum

I have no idea what the problem is, last night a friend (who knows live much better but mac's much less) attempted to install some third party stuff and either moved a folder or told live to search the entire library for vst, now when I try to start up live it always, always freezes on the step scanning for vst plugins. please help

Disable your plug-ins to isolate the problem... one of your new installed plug-ins crashes Live!

try deleting your preferences file. this happened to me when i pointed the "custom vst" folder to the root or something. deleting the preferences file fixed the whole thing (though you'll have to probably re-choose your skin and such minor things)

Hi Soup,

there´s either a conflict with one of the installed plug-ins, or you might have accidentally set a wrong custom VST directory (i.e. your entire root directory) - both cases can lead to booting problems.
Either way, deleting the file preferences.cfg resets Live so it boots without scanning plug-ins.

Please use the Finder to browse to this directory:

user/library/preferences/ableton/live X.X.X (your version of Live)
Please delete the file preferences.cfg out of all Live subfolders in that directory.
It should start now.

Please contact [email protected] if you need further assistance.



Jörg Klußmann
Ableton Support

have the exact same problem tried uninstalling and installing a few times even deleted all my vsts and tried a different version of live and also deleted the preference.cfg and still having the same problem!

so frustrated!!!

help highly appreciated

I have same problem on my mac.

did you find any solution for this.

custom VSTs ????

abletonmeraklisi wrote:I have same problem on my mac.

did you find any solution for this.

custom VSTs ????

yea apparently when you intall vsts it makes folders in more than one place so just deleting the main files from application folder or whatever folder they're placed at doesn't do it what I did was I went through all my folders on my hard disc manually and deleted everything that I though was related to ableton and vsts (NI VSTs in particular) and deleted them. and then reinstalled ableton again and made sure I don't specify any custom folder for VSTs cos mac unlike PC finds every VSTs installed that works without having to identify it the live.. so if it doesn't recognize the VST then there is something else wrong with the plugin don't force live to see it coz it sees it just doesn't wanna talk to it... it was a pain in the ass but it finally worked. hope that helps

thank you
I will try this.

I wonder that how can I learn mac's folder system to uninstall any progrma completely.

Hello, im under live 8.1.1 and snow leopard.. and when i try to activate the vst ableton crashes... i delete the .cfg file and doesnt works.... any idea ? thanks

@abletonmeraklisi

This will help to delete programs completely, although I haven't tried it out yet myself

http://lifehacker.com/5547313/trashme-i ... ehacker%29

i had this problem and deleted the preferences folder and it worked cheers guys!!!