Been testing the zom releases of FL21 but I’ve basically got things locked down with TinyWall which doesn’t let anything originating from my machine connect to the internet. Can any of you who have this running with perhaps a not so sledgehammer approach to their firewall settings advise on which exes your blocking? Not sure if flex packs that came with the release needs an internet connection to work. Currently since flex can’t connect I can’t tell if the flex packs actually work. Tried it briefly in a sandbox and I thought I saw a message that said “you own all packs” or something but then I can’t remember what I did as I was playing with my VPN and firewall at the time and just shut it down so I lost track of cause and effect.
Beside the flex thing I can’t get legit things to connect to the internet within fl studio like 3rd party VSTs like Arcade. Appears to be using the Fl64 exe to initiate a connection and currently everything is blocked with TinyWall which is a neat little firewall. I know people tend to stop their internet connections during install but what about after it’s installed? I’ve had earlier versions revert to demo version for all FL instruments after allowing the app to talk freely to the internet as I hadn’t blocked anything. These release came with zero instructions.

 

You should probably mention what specific release you are trying to use. People have different little issues/problems for some of the various build number releases. version # should be format like 21.x.x.xxxx. . The FL problem you are having may not have anything to do with your firewall settings.

 

Usually it works like this: an app acts like server (flex in this case) and your fl exe connects to flex to check the license thing blabla.
If you firewall all, it means that fl can't check the license within the same pc and won't work.

So you must create a custom rule for fl AND flex.
I can't go deep in details because I don't know the specific case nor I use tinywall but the rules are:

- allow fl loopback (127.0.0.1)
- allow fl lan only (example 192.168.1.0)
- (optional) allow flex broadcast
- allow flex lan only

I'm sure someone will give you more infos about this, in the meanwhile see tutorials how create the above rules for tinywall.

 

you can also just make a inbound and outbound rule on your computer and block the plugin data base i don't even block FL ex because that literally seems like it block everything thats active in it and i didn't like that i like to choose manually what to block which u should do so u wont runinto any more issues

now i do know this if u do block Imageline Flex from the internet it does not stop the extension pack from showing up ..it stays there all the packs and extension only thing is different is that ..it has a offline logo at the top of the vst but all the packs are still there

i been meaning to try that Tinywall app seems like a powerful great app maybe i watch some videos on how to do the same method i did with windows firewall


Another thing and u can add exclusion on Arcade to get the internet back working on that part something like if i remember correctly