Force Rescan of VST Plugins

Hi I have been searching for this answer for the last 3 hours, it seems to be elusive.

I recently upgraded my PC with Windows 7; installed cubase but reused my shared VST plugins folder.

I then reinstalled my IK Multimedia plugins (Pihlharmonik, SampleTron, SampleMoog and SampleTank) and pointed the DLLs to the correct shared folder. However they must have been found before installation and blacklisted, although the dlls are visible, they are not on my instruments panel. Interestingly they are found if I rename the dlls (which I don’t really want). I suspect they are on a “blacklisted”.

How can I force a rescan? Is there a file or registry setting somewhere? I have looked everywhere including %appdata%\Steinberg\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase VST and C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\Cubase VST32 5.0 but I just cannot find anything suitable.

There were also some promising plugin specific settings in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST
and
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2037122594-1293871417-4034601380-1000\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST\Defaults
but they just seem to restore themselves once deleted. Please help!

I just don’t understand why this is not documented anywhere (nothing in troubleshooting, VST instruments, Getting into the Details documentation either). The only place I haven’t looked yet is the (German) paper manual…

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 7_64

Go here and delete the blacklist file and restart Cubase. It’s a hidden directory so you have to set it to show, first.

Thanks for the advice - I just tried this, and I found 2 files (enabling view hidden after going to)

%AppData%\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase VST

THe files were
Cubprefs.dat
Cubprefs (2).dat
(both 27kB)

Once I renamed my IK Multimedia dlls to their original names and started Cubase again
Cubprefs.dat
was recreated, but unfortunately no rescan happened. And no IK multimedia plugins showed up. Any other ideas? I still think it might be some registry setting as well? Sorry for having such an outdated version of Cubase but…

I managed it, by doing 2 things:

1.went to

%AppData%\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase VST

and deleted Cubprefs.dat

  1. went to registry editor and deleted the following branches:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST\Defaults\Sample Tank2.x
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST\Defaults\SampleMoog
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST\Defaults\SampleTron
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg\Cubase VST\Defaults\Philharmonik
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VST\VSTPlugins\SampleMoog 131782
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VST\VSTPlugins\SampleTank2.x 135286
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VST\VSTPlugins\SampleTron 131908
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VST\VSTPlugins\Philharmonik 134955

(I believe these numbers are unique to your installation and are regenerated afresh when installing)

Also note that I did not touch any of the more “eclectic” registry keys in HKEY_USERS this time round.

When I restarted Cubase it scanned all 4 instruments successfully. So I think it does not bother rescanning unless all registry settings specific to the plugin are scrubbed.
So your tip + my registry investigations finally did it ! here is to another 10 years with Cubase VST (32bit)!!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: (Until I install Windows 9, 128 bits)

Thanks for your help! (There should be a Cubase VST knowledgebase for this sort of thing, there is nothing in the manuals not even the paper copy)
Axel

An easier way to do this is from inside Cubase:

from the Devices menu, select Plug-in Information, then click the Update button.

Devices–>Plug-in Information–>Update

The Lord