Hey guys!
I've tried everything I can think of and searched everywhere but after about 10h around this issue I can't figure it out for the life of me...

Here's what happens:
- I'm on Win 10 and had no issues with Ableton Live (AL) until now and it always ran without any issue.
- I'm not sure but I think the 1st time this happened was when I tried to run AL at the same time as Studio One for Rewire
- on AL startup I get an error "Failed to open the audio input device XXX", it doesn't really matter which soundcard it is as I'm quite sure this is not the main issue, just a preferences hickup
- after clicking ok to that message, AL proceeds with the startup process and opens a new project
- it is at this point that it crashes

Here's what I've done and keep having the same crash:
- Reinstalled AL (10.1.25)
- Uninstall AL and deleted all folders on ProgramData and USERS related to Ableton Live
- using Ultrasearch deleted anything AL
- Reinstalled AL
- tried to install an older version (10.1.14)
- Internet is disconnected
- deleted Blocked access to the Internet from Windows Defender Firewall and just kept Comodo to block all Ableton .exe files
- hold the [ALT] key, then launch Live to disable Live's initial plug-in scanning
- deleted Preferences.cfg, Undo folder and Template.als


Does anyone have any idea??
This is probably the kind of issue to contact Ableton support but ... you know ...

 

Try one of these:
1) Disable antivirus
2) remove plugins/vst folder. If DAW starts ok after that, it could be a vst causing the problem during scaning on start up (then you have to add one by one until you find the one to blame).

 

Did you restart your System?
Sounds like a hanging driver to me.

You also could try to open the Device Manager and disable one audio driver after another
and try running Ableton in between.

 

Restart pc.
Then move everything inside plugin folder to a folder on desktop.
Then try start Ableton, if it starts try adding a few plugins back to plugins folder then open Ableton again.
You will then be able to pin down what plugin is causing the crash

Also add Ableton Live 10 Suite.exe to defender exclusion. Add exclusion as Process:

 

Last edited: Jan 24, 2021

double click an old project, for opening with its old settings?
rename your vstplugin folder, like jennyblack sayd?
rename your private ableton folder, a la C:\Users\>>>you<<<\Documents\Ableton under win7? oh sorry, you removed it yet, i have red now.

it crashed, how? is there an error message? with some infos, after clicking details?

 

if it's a plugin, you probably can see it in the event viewer.
To open it, hit the 'Windows Key + R', type 'eventvwr.msc' and hit enter.



Now go to 'Custom Views -> Administrative Events' and take a look for errors like 'Application Hang' or 'Application Error'



If you click on them, you see a random error information or if it's a faulty plugin/dll, the plugin's name.

 

Woops, was a little late.

 

Thanks a lot for your help anyway ;)

 

Didn't understand what you meant exactly...

Comodo is not my AV, it's my Firewall.

 

This is almost the exact opposite to the problem I had with Ableton and firewalls. I was using Simplewall, and whenever it was running, Ableton (and Bitwig too) would crash on start-up. I switched over to Comodo and it ran perfectly.

I've dumped Comodo since then -- not because I was unhappy with it, I just thought it was resource heavy. Currently running Malwarebytes Windows Firewall Control. I think I decided the problem was less about the particular firewall I was using and more likely to be about running two firewalls simultaneously and that causing conflicts.

(Edit: could have been Tinywall. The two programs are very similar.)

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2021