How do I completely uninstall the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver from my Windows 10 workstation?
I recently performed a clean installation of Cubase on my Windows 10 workstation and immediately experienced failures. In particular:
Device Manager displays incorrect drivers for my audio devices (see image, below)
Cakewalk Sonar fails to load projects
With help from my audio card manufacturer’s (Lynx AES16) support, we discovered that the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver was responsible for at least some (and perhaps all) of the trouble. We followed recommendations in another forum to remove a couple of registry entries, and consequently fixed the Sonar problem. However, Device Manager still shows “Microsoft” drivers when, in fact, all of my AES16 audio ports use “Lynx” drivers. [Again, see image, below.] No doubt, other audio devices are incorrect too. There are many other references to the Generic driver in the registry, but I don’t dare touch them for fear of corrupting the registry and the OS.
How do I completely uninstall the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver? Can you supply an uninstaller? A list of keys to delete manually?
As long as you select the correct ASIO driver in “device setup>VST audio system” in Cubase or any DAW everything should just work. I don’t think you need to uninstall any of the drivers you do not use?
I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my question, but I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of my situation. The evidence I’ve shared suggests corruption of the Windows registry. That is almost certainly why Device Manager is displaying inaccurate information and is cause for serious concern. As an audio professional who relies on his workstation every day, I can’t afford to ignore this and simply hope things don’t fail later on.
If this can’t be fixed, my only option will be to reinstall the OS (or restore the disk image from backup). That’s how seriously I consider registry problems and overall system reliability.
So, again, if somebody could please help me to completely uninstall the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver, I would be very grateful.
You can “uninstall” the driver and check the box to also remove the files.
But what you see in windows device manager is related to the WDM driver (the one pulled from the windows driverstore) the generic low latency ASIO driver is a separate Steinberg driver and does not display itself here.
When you configure Cubase you should be able to select from 3 options:
WDM driver (windows driver model driver)
Generic asio (speudo asio wrapper from Steinberg to use WDM driver)
Vendor ASIO - you should see something called LYNX ASIO Driver, this is the one you want.
Also note that since the redstone 1607 update win10 no longer accepts unsigned drivers, you will need to enforce these manually, or download new updated Win10 drivers from the LynX website
I also noticed that the generic Steinberg ASIO driver and Sonar does not seem to like each other very well. It is very annoying, and I also was messing around until I found a simple solution.
In my case I use my device (Focusrite) ASIO driver, and prevent the use of the Steinberg generic ASIO driver completely with a very simple procedure. You can see if this works for you.
There is a directory named Asio in your C:\Program Files\Steinberg directory. Just make a back-up of this directory (very important - I will explain later why), and simply remove this directory from the given location.
Now restart windows, and you will notice Sonar no longer uses that generic ASIO driver. It makes no difference for Cubase, because you should use the device ASIO driver in stead of a generic driver anyway. Problem solved.
Now - Here is the reason you must make a back-up of that Asio directory. All version update programs from Steinberg expect that Asio directory to be in place. If it’s not there, the update will fail. So - Every time you do an update you have to copy that directory back in c:\Program Files\Steinberg , otherwise the update will fail. After doing the update, you make a fresh back-up of the Asio directory, and delete that directory again from the c:\Program Files\Steinberg directory.
I have used this procedure for more than a year now, without any ill side effects. No need to use any registery stuff at all.
That said, if you where doing some registery changes, it is possible it broke some things. If the above procedure does not work it could be that case. It could be possible you have to re-install Windows. That’s the reason I always back-up my registery settings, before changing anything. If it does not work, or causes problems I can always restore the original settings.
Do you mean uninstall the driver from within Device Manager? I don’t understand how that’s possible because Device Manager is displaying the wrong drivers. If I delete the AES16’s driver per the image I shared above, I would likely delete either the Microsoft driver (if that’s even possible) or the Lynx driver, but probably not the Generic ASIO driver.
Lynx support suggested that a list has somehow been modified without updating the indexes or some such thing, thereby shifting all of the names. Consequently, the backend is still working - my Lynx device is still producing audio - but Device Manager (and who knows what else) is out of whack. Moving forward without correction, things would only get more confused or broken.
Maybe not! This is not win7 where you see the audio card in device manager. These are the audio outputs for windows the wdm outputs. They should have MS drivers.
OMFG. That’s great news (if a bit embarrassing) if it’s true, but I wonder why the Lynx tech didn’t pick up on my mistake then. They have one of the best support teams (actually, I think it’s just one guy, but still) I’ve ever dealt with, so it’s a bit weird.
Was going to follow other advice above and install a driver management tool, but now this might not be necessary. I’ll confer with Lynx and proceed from there. Either way, I’ll post back with the results.
it’s indeed easy as just right click on the driver and select uninstall.
note you will not be able to use the Lynx as a WDM device from that moment onwards.
I would still like to see your sound card selection pull down in Cubase, As I’m pretty sure you have/had selected the wrong driver.
Big chance they tested their driver for working and never looked at device manager!
I have several audio interfaces but all on win7 64. It looks very different but for example my Tascam installs 2 drivers. One device (which is the asio part and the sub drivers are part tascam and part MS) and one WDM. The WDM is a pure microsoft driver, I checked! And don’t be embarrassed, I would have wondered the same as you.
When you say, just make a back-up of this directory, are you referring to simply moving that directory to somewhere else on the computer (as in cut and paste)? And in that case, is there no need to mess with the Windows Registry?
To my knowledge, that is correct. Moving the directory has the effect of disabling the driver, whereas registry updates are necessary only if you wish to completely uninstall the driver. I chose the latter because I was a bit panicked. I’ve no regrets but disabling the driver is safer and supposedly offers the same results.
I don’t understand anything
The generic ASIO driver does not mess with anything, and does not need to be uninstalled.
Just don’t select it as ASIO driver, and use a real ASIO driver.
WDM drivers and ASIO drivers are two separate things, they don’t know of each other and don’t share any settings between them.
The generic ASIO driver comes in play when there are no real ASIO driver ( onboard audio?), it wraps the wdm to use as ASIO.
Asio4all is another way of doing the same ( never use these hacks for any serious work)
In other words ASIO is a separate audio system that talks directly to the hardware.
Wdm drivers are system native drivers, on a virgin win10 install they can often be using a generic MS driver, when it can’t find native drivers. Installing drivers from the audio device manufacturer solves that (most of the time)
The Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver has well-documented problems with other applications (e.g., Sonar). As such, it might not be common knowledge in these forums, but a general Google search will reveal more, should anyone need it.
What peakae is telling you is that those documented problems are for when you using the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver. If you aren’t using it, you aren’t having problems caused by it. Just being installed isn’t a problem.
Prock, thanks, this link sorted the problem. (BTW, I’m on a Win10 PC.) What ppl her don’t realize is that Cubase can deal with the ASIO driver fairly easily, rarely does it opt for the Generic ASIO driver if an interface that has it’s own specific ASIO driver is available. Not so WaveLab Pro, which I realize is a diff Forum, but still a Steinberg product. Let me explain. I use two diff interfaces, one is a Mackie 1640i (16X16 firewire interface), the other a MOTU M4. If I use the MOTU M4 in WL, then close WL, turn off the M4, and then turn ON the Mackie, even after a reboot, the WL program will dig out the Generic ASIO driver and not choose the Mackie ASIO. In fact you may not even see it in it’s ASIO driver list until you close/open it again.
Anyway, deleting the Steinberg Generic ASIO driver is not enough, but, going into the Regedit program as described took care of my problem with WL - and for that I am very grateful to you and your post!! Thank you!!
