Thanks for your reply.

I will see what Tone2 support have got to say. I'm guessing a refund is out of the question.

 

the thing is, i used to love vanguard , still use it loads to this day, but the tone2 product is generally not that interesting, their stuff sounds 'canned' and very cheap and plastic.
fair enough if you are an armand bureau de change fan. hit the keys till your veins fill with ravey sound poisoning.
and your machine crashes, natch'

 

Contact Tone2 and they will take you off the blacklist. Make sure you remove any Tone2 cracked "demos" first. When you install the legit vst's they phone home and if they find cracked versions they assume your keys are illegal and blacklist them. I had this problem and they were very understanding.

 

Man, Tone2 is evil--pure and simple. Funny thing is, I actually like the Tone2 stuff a lot. I use electra2/saurus2 with some regularity. And I legitimize the plugins/software I use routinely.... It was my experience with AiR's cubase 5 and VTX's cubase 7 that made me purchase cubase pro 8 (a wonderful purchase btw).

BUT.....I won't ever buy anything Tone2. I just won't. I've read WAY too many horror stories like this one to ever do that--even though I would like to. So, Markus, enjoy your non-payment from me. I (and anyone I can convince) will never, ever, ever be buying your malware-ridden plugins.

Every time I use one of his cracked plugins, it's like a small victory for freedom. Put the plugins in their own folder and disconnect from the internet. Works for me. You could also try the "runasdate" method. I know of people still using the old DOA keys with this method.

/rant

 

There are no cracked demos only license files installer are the same as anyone can dl from there website i dont know as i dont own any Tone2 but my guess is that you dont get a different installer only a license file and some instructions.

 

You missed the implication of the "" quotes.

 

Weird situation... I bought Tone2 Gladiator 2 years ago, Warmverb Multi-Fx etc (all legit, of course) and my PC never stop working. Never. So it's hard to understand what really happened reading what the poster wrote. I repeat, weird situation...

 

I'm beginning to agree with you, I've sent Markus a message via his forum about my issue with Nemesis crashing with Ableton 9 and he's nowhere to be seen, I've had no feedback, just making me angry that he's had my £120. This has been my first purchase buying a plugin and I naively went for Tone2. How was I to know? The demo worked fine. Maybe it's and Ableton issue. But all this doesn't make me want to buy anything else legit. Where can I get one of his cracked plugins, to get my own back?

 

don't be discouraged to go legit.
just by all means avoid tone2. they're malware.
there are many good and decent plugin developers that deserve the money and don't engage in foul business practices.

 

That sucks you chose one of very few companies pulling this nonsense. My sympathies, fellow poor musician. I loathe wasting $$$ on bad politics.

Yes. Don't be afraid to go legit. There are a lot of great companies that want to earn your dollar/Euro. It just sucks you had to be burned like that.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I had only sent Markus message in Friday evening so you never know, I'm at least awaiting a response from his co-worker Troels who has been trying to help by sending me another zipped Nemesis file so he has been trying to do something but I'm guessing a refund is out of the question in this circumstance. I mean £120 is £120. It's frustrating that Nemesis is working independently on desktop but just not with Ableton. Can you suggest any other plugins?

 

Hi Markus,

I have been conversing with Troels about a issue I have trying to use Nemesis with Ableton and either Nemesis is crashing with Ableton or vice versa. I am quite happy to spend £120 on your products if it works for me but it's been two days now since purchasing Nemesis and it is still not working. I open it in Ableton only for it to crash and have this awful feedback noise and the only way to stop it is to shut it down. I tried the demo before buying Nemesis and it worked fine for about 30 minutes or so and then it crashed but I figured this was a time limit that was given to me for using the demo and just accepted this. I have written to Troels tonight about this matter stating I really wanted this to work and I would of been interested to buy more products from you but this software is not happening with my Ableton.
Can you advise what to do, if you have had this problem with anyone else?

 

Has anyone else had this same issue I have had with Live and Nemesis or similar? Is there a way of resolving this?

 

If you paid via paypal or credit card, just order your money back. It's a business after all and if you get a faulty product, you have every right to return it.

p.s.: please edit your postings if you want to add something.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 18, 2015

There has been some debate about this:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6190213
http://www.flstudio-forum.de/showthread.php?tid=28529
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=125289&hilit=Tone+2+malware
Hope you can work iy out with Tone2.

Success

 

There is a simple test to do (and Markus know it, that's why he closed Tone2 KVR forum ).
Download Gladiator demo, and use an installer scanner. You will see exactly what AiR said in their NFO : system scanning, registry keys dropping and more.
There is no "debate" : just ppl knowing what they speak about or not

When Gladiator trigger an administrative alert and shutdown your computer on Win XP, it is not a bug : it is on purpose because there is no bug in the whole world creating an admin alert.
And this is only an example

 

What a disgusting story: Shame and disgrace on this company!

I would advise two things :

1. If it's an option, reformat the whole computer and if it's out of question, use a Registry cleaner tool to see if it helps.

2. Simultaneously, you need to contact them but since I assume it will not help, you already need a plan B. Meaning that they need to know that you exist and most of all, they need to feel heat. You will have to contact as much media as possible (computer music, sound on sound...) and explain your story in details. The most important thing is that they need to understand how you were treated by these SOB.

 

I found the text of that AIR Release nfo on the Tone2 Malware issue. Maybe it helps identifying the Problem.

Pay Special attention to: "- ExitWindowsEx calls (causes machine to shutdown)".
I guess that's what happened: the legit Plugin brought that "malware" code along, ran a scan in the background, found warezed stuff and said 'so let's start the fuckery'…
WOW… I am glad this shit is not possible on macs, afaik. Getting punished for going legit? What a son of a bitch…

But back to the text:

"It's not everyday AiR feels the need to comment on a
release but we believe some issues about Markus Feil
need to be addressed for both legitimate users and
the warez community.

In our opinion Markus Feil's plugins are the
equivilent to MALWARE, it is with disgust we find the
elaborate (and futile!) measures he has taken within
his code.

When a developer starts dropping files and creating
empty BOGUS registry keys, writing to a users host
file etc. then they have crossed a line of ethics
that is inexcusable.

One could argue that warez users get what they
deserve, however... warez uses ALWAYS choose to take
a risk when they use warez. The legitimate user
however gets exactly the SAME codebase and IF things
go wrong they are subjected to the same MALWARE crap
undeservedly.

Furthermore, our release is BETTER than what legit
users are getting because we have disposed of the
MALWARE traps and HAVE ENABLED TWO EXTRA NEW HIDDEN
expansions that legit users DON'T have and probably
DON'T know about.

NOTE TO Markus: you are tool, ppl may debate our
ethics but WE DON'T infect and manipulate filesystems
or registries, you're no better than a virus
developer in our opinion.
Stick to what you know cause your protection schemes
are no match for us

Some warez users like to go legit, it's hard to see
them going legit with your plugins when the
experience you give them results in piss poor MALWARE
techniques. FUCK YOU!

Here are some of the techniques Markus infects your
machine with:

- Registry scanning
- Filesystem scanning
- Creating bogus registry keys
- File dropping
- Multiple \system32\drivers\etc\host file updates
- Deletion of files
- Phone home notification
- ExitWindowsEx calls (causes machine to shutdown)
- DLL unpacked checks

# Registry scanning...

Markus has coded his plugins to look for other Tone2
and reFX registry entries, if blacklisted serials are
found then his MALWARE is invoked. These include
Firebird, FilterBank, Warmverb, Gladiator, Vanguard

# Filesystem scanning...

Markus has coded his plugins to look for other
products keyfiles, if blacklisted keyfiles are found
then his MALWARE is invoked. This includes FireBird,
FilterBank, Warmverb, Gladiator

# Bogus registry entries...

Markus creates keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER

at least two NEW keys with no data (not disclosing to
protect privacy). if you have been subjected to the
MALWARE traps check your registry, the keys will be
obvious as the names are crap, make no sense and they
have no data under them.

# File dropping...

Markus creates:

twdef.sys

wvdriver.sys

r2._9X1.r

gldriver.sys

gsndrun.sys

+ about 4 other random file names (not disclosing to
protect privacy)

If your going to look for these files make sure you
have turned off 'Hide protected operating system
files' in explorer. Typically they are dropped in the
same location as the Gladiator2 dll.

# Update of hosts file...

Markus updates the users host file with a massive
list of warez, torrent and other site urls

# Deletion of files...

Markus deletes any blacklisted keyfiles from the
users machine"
​

 

Last edited: Oct 18, 2015

aww, that EPIC nfo

 

I stand by my last comment : The best line of defense is to attack them where it hurts the most : Money.

Once the media are aware of all this, his reputation will start to vanish and the Sales volume will follow soon enough, believe me.

Then and only then he will start to give a damn about all the pissed off legit users. For now, he couldn't care less.