Ableton Forum

does anyone know why i cannot open live anymore? i tried dl'ing some freeware plugins and now live crashes during startup. i erased all of the dl'ed plugins from my HD and still this is no help. i have even renamed and relocated my plugins folder to try to bypass them during startup. i'm really beginning to freak out. thx in advance. Maz.

Try switching the plugs off/on in Live's prefs, also try creating a new user and see if Live will open logged in there.

thx, i'll try the second suggestion, but live won't open past startup. i am unable to access the preferences.

mazmith wrote:does anyone know why i cannot open live anymore? i tried dl'ing some freeware plugins and now live crashes during startup. i erased all of the dl'ed plugins from my HD and still this is no help. i have even renamed and relocated my plugins folder to try to bypass them during startup. i'm really beginning to freak out. thx in advance. Maz.

With respect to relocating your plugins, don't forget that OS X uses 2 plugin locations, one in your user directory ("~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins") and one global one ("/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins"). If a plugin has an installer it usually puts itself in the global location. Also, you might check the end of the file "~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Live.crash.log" to see if you can identify the problem plugin.

Edit: where "~" means your home directory if you don't know that notation (unix).

mazmith wrote:thx, i'll try the second suggestion, but live won't open past startup. i am unable to access the preferences.

go delete the prefs file. On my system it's at
C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\Application Data\Ableton\*liveversion*\Preferences

what happens then?

instead of moving all your plugs you could just move the most recent additions to your plug folder, click the little bar on top that arranges files in order of date and you can move the last couple and try to open live until you figure out which one is causing the problem, then trash that one. I've had to do this on quite a few occasions.

Machinate wrote:

mazmith wrote:thx, i'll try the second suggestion, but live won't open past startup. i am unable to access the preferences.

go delete the prefs file. On my system it's at
C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\Application Data\Ableton\*liveversion*\Preferences

+1 try this first.

mikemc wrote:

Machinate wrote:

mazmith wrote:thx, i'll try the second suggestion, but live won't open past startup. i am unable to access the preferences.

go delete the prefs file. On my system it's at
C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\Application Data\Ableton\*liveversion*\Preferences

+1 try this first.

sure you could try that first, but if it's a vst that's causing the problem then you're still going to get the crash when you tell live to use your vst folder again, solving nothing. thats my experience anyway, I've had this problem on probably a dozen occasions as I used to have a habit of downloading every vst I could find.

Johnisfaster wrote:

mikemc wrote:

Machinate wrote:go delete the prefs file. On my system it's at
C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\Application Data\Ableton\*liveversion*\Preferences

+1 try this first.

sure you could try that first, but if it's a vst that's causing the problem then you're still going to get the crash when you tell live to use your vst folder again, solving nothing.

but he needs to be able to even get to the prefs to point them towards a stripped folder... right now nothing works, killing one file gets you access to fixing things. It's just one step in the right direction.

Not sure if this would help anything at all but if your sig is up to date and you are on OSX 10.4.8 you might want to update to 10.4.11.

I'm just saying that because I recently did it and it fixed a bunch of my music related issues.

Machinate wrote:

Johnisfaster wrote:

mikemc wrote: +1 try this first.

sure you could try that first, but if it's a vst that's causing the problem then you're still going to get the crash when you tell live to use your vst folder again, solving nothing.

but he needs to be able to even get to the prefs to point them towards a stripped folder... right now nothing works, killing one file gets you access to fixing things. It's just one step in the right direction.

understood, but in that past when I had this problem it was always associated with a recently installed plug, so I just opened the plug folder and clicked the date thing to make them in order of most recent, then drag a couple of the most recent ones out till you can get live to start, then feed a couple back in until you see that live doesn't start, then you know which one it is. deleted prefs will make live open and then you're likely to go back into live and point it at your plugs at which point it'll start crashing again no?

deleted prefs will make live open and then you're likely to go back into live and point it at your plugs at which point it'll start crashing again no?

the 'most proximate issue' is the inability to open live, which this will help with. The indication was that the offending plugin has already been removed, but yes-- your method will isolate the plugin that caused the problem to start with. If you have to try over and over, you at least have a method to get back into Live.

this has all helped and seems to have corrected my mistake. thank yo all for restoring Live on my comp. Maz.

glad it worked for you, maz.

I just wanted to say thank you all, same thing happened to me with a bunch of freeware, and this post helped me solve my problem!