It's not possible to have a computer like yours. IMHO you are wasting time and energy AND music with it. My computer almost never goes over 30 percent cpu have not yet used all the 32g ram on a project. hp i7-8600 {Launch Date - Q4'17}, win 10 X-Lite, Reaper. brand name fx on every channel...Bewitched.
in one year Reaper has crashed a couple of times, probably because of bad plugins or plugins not compatible with Reaper.
The computer has never crashed. I use WiseCare365ProPort_7.2.2.695, Vit Registry Fix Professional, and Ashampoo UnInstaller 16.0.0.01 Portable frequently. I paid e350. It's a 9 year old refurbished from amazon. Easy 30 tracks full of vsts synths and sample based synths. even with 3 mix busses and a master buss with all their vsts and claps.
I never update the os. no internet connection. Exactly what computer do you have?

 

Yah the learning curve from ableton to reaper wasnt like super smooth for me. Id been using ableton 15 years when I switched. The major things I missed on ableton is the sampler and its clip mode function. Perhaps bit wig would be a smoother transition, iirc those are old ableton designers. If you use clip mode a lot to make stuff i might look there first.

Absolutely agree its a shame about ableton. Its $$$ (not that i ever paid for it) and youd think theyd at a certain point fix like common issues with it. Although reaper was a pain to transfer over too i will say now that ive adjusted ill NEVER go back to ableton. There are so many quality of life improvements reaper has over ableton that used to drive me crazy, beyond losing a set to a crash. Unlimited categories for your plugins. Its like 99% customizable, so i was able to replicate a lot of the key strokes id been using with ableton. It WAS a pain to set them all up but now that the settings are dialed in for me, its easy. Visually you can get a skin that resembles ableton.

Reaper you can dive into deep or just use its surface functions and be fine, imo. I dont miss any of abletons instruments (besides the sampler which I used a preset from live 8 all the time... I havent found a good replacement for that really)- with the help of the sister site and a job ive found replacements for everything pretty much. Drum rack? Replaced with tal drum. Synths? Replaced with serum, ostrirus, omnisphere. Etc etc.

But a daw is a daw pretty much, they all do the basically the same shit. I dont lose sets anymore. When it does crash its recoverable and it only crashes because im an idiot and use nebula. End of the day no one knows what daw was used if the song sounds good enoguh.

If I was doing live stuff.... then I might still be using ableton. That would be a hard switch. Still, personally id install another daw JUST to test whether you're dealing with an ablrton problem or if there is a bigger issue going on with your rig, might help inform your next decision and possibly save you some money.

Either way you're gonna be spending some time and money not making music, whether its learning a new daw or switching over to a new os. Is lame.

 

dunno man, i do a clean windows install every year, via chris titus and i optimize and clean my windows. it works perfectly. studio one user, no crashes, and i have over 1000 plugins scanning once a week when i install or remove something.

 

yeah idk. i may try reaper. i also want to get rid of this thing in general it weighs the same amount as a boulder. i told my mom the other day in passing that i may get another computer and she was like i dont blame u that things a dog.. she knows nothing. all she knows that is that its like this giant 50 lb box. I live in the city and move a lot so every time i move i have to like wrap the thing in blankets and throw my back out just for it to magically crash every 5 minutesso i may just get a mac and see how it goes

 

As I recall, 14th gen had some issue with degradation and whatnot, seems like instabilities, BSOD's and everything you have been exact symptoms of the same.

 

The MSI Z790 is apparently very sensitive to using compatible RAM - as in exactly what is on its compatible RAM list. Using RAM outside of that list can cause crashes.
- Make certain all RAM is reseated in their slots and run a RAM diag like MEMtest for at least 24 hours and check for errors.

Updating firmware to latest version is also a recommendation for a system that crashes.

Turning off XMP in the BIOS is another recommendation by the OEM for a crashing system.

Setting in BIOS (and gpu) for overclocking CPU and/or GPU should be reset to defaults.

There is obviously a reason why you are having issues and great numbers of others are not. If you do not take the time to troubleshoot you reap what you sow...

just sayin..

 

One set of plugins that will cause Ableton Live to crash is anything VST3 from PSPaudioware. Use VST2 instead or avoid anything PSPaudioware completely when using Ableton. Also stay away from TCD releases which are not always cracked properly.

I use Ableton Live 12(R2R version) on Windows 10 with all sorts of crack demanding plugins pushing 100% CPU and it's rock solid. I can keep it running for days with no issues. You likely have corrupted system files or some sort of hardware conflict.

 

Dude.... Windows 10 Home !!!??? Theres your number one suspect for all the Ableton, Kontakt and all the other plugin and PC problems you are reporting this week. If youre keen on using old unsupported OS's with new brand spanking new software, this kind of behavior is to be expected and switching to Mac will only multiply your nightmare by a factor of 100%. Seriously, all this is down to USER ERROR.

I use all the same programs you do, but in Windows 11 Pro and crashes are extremely rare, like once in 6 months or something and its always because I overloaded a project with too many plugins using 16x oversampling to the point of it locking up a session. Its always because of my user error.

Upgrade your OS. Dont cross pollinate team cracks (eg,installing 10 versions of Live, Kontakt from VR+R2R+BobDule+VK etc) and always clean up your entire system beforehand, and I do mean COMPLETELY! If you dont do this, then you only have yourself to blame for these problems.

 

Ok so people telling me to turn off all updates and now you tell me i need windows 11 or everything will crash. yeah idk about that. Ive seen people complain about windows 11 left and right. the person who just commented above you said he uses windows 10 and everything works fine

 

Please don't take this the wrong way, but firstly are you certain all the ram in your PC is from the same manufacturer, model, speed etc?

I too think this could be a RAM issue and recommend you investigate the suggestions made by @saccamano - especially that the RAM model (and size) is listed on the motherboard manufacturers approved (i.e. tested) ram list, 'cos on some motherboards it really does matter.

I had a PC that was was working fine for the first few months after i'd built it, that suddenly started crashing with random blue screens etc. I tried every trick I knew trying to resolve the issue, all to no avail. Finally, I removed half the ram. Alas, the PC still occasionally crashed. I then switched the remaining ram out with the ram i'd removed initially and (hurrah) the PC suddenly stopped randomly crashing! So, just to check which ram stick was faulty i tested each one on it's own and all of them worked absolutely fine! So, finally i put all the ram back in, expecting the crash issue to return, but it never did... I can only conclude that one of the ram slots had somehow fractionally moved as the PC 'settled' or that some dust or something had somehow compromised one of the ram sticks connections to the board...

Note that RAM is generally installed in matched pairs. On most motherboards the first pair will be installed in slots 1 & 3, the second pair into slots 2 & 4 (and even onto slots 5 & 7 and slots 6-8 on more advanced boards).

 

My current system is competely legit and has been for quite some time now.. I swear, the last time I can ever recall a k'd plugin freaking out on me was back when there were Extensions involved with MacOS 9. But then again, back in like 2001-ish I had a shiny new RME Digi96/8 PST audio card and that thing would boot to a bomb error on my blue and white G3 if there was a certain extension installed, so it wasn't just the k's that had any issues hah.

 

My ram seems to be filling up awfully fast i posted something about it on reddit once and people were like blown away i was maxing out 64GB of RAM i got downvoted to oblivion. I had a project open that was sample based earlier with like a 6 instances of kontakt and it was at like 50% and i closed the project and it went back down to like 3%. I do use a decent amount of plugins but as far as i know they mostly use cpu

 

Live? It's not a piracy issue, it's simply that you've picked the most crashy DAW that exists and tbh the evidence of this is pretty overwhelming. I see this in every nook of the internet that discusses DAWs. Live is really unstable and has been since day one. How did you manage to dodge this info..

It is not piracy, it is not Win10, it is not Win11. It is Ableton Live and they can not seem to fix it.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2026 at 1:53 AM

I have the MSI z790 and the viper patriot elite DDR5 RAM 64GB. I didnt build it myself i bought it from xidax. its compatible as far as i know

 

THey should change it to Not Ableto do anything.. 12

 

The MSI website lists 34 Z790 motherboards! From the dataset readout you posted further up the page it looks like your actual motherboard is the MSI Z790 CARBON WIFI model.

Is your 64GB total ram configured 4 x 16gb sticks or 2 x 32Gb sticks? If it's the latter, that's very likely the problem.

BTW i would also recommend you install the latest BIOS for the motherboard

 

its 2x32GB and yeah i was going to update the bios a week ago but ive been putting it off. So youre saying having 2 32G sticks is making it unstable? smh I dont know that much about computers ill be honest. I think thats something they souldve told me when i was building this. like i said above the ram seems to be going real quick. I posted somewhere else and people were blown away i was using 64GB on every project. (Random fact: whenever i try and stem split with anything thats local like UVR5 or RX11 i get a blue screen/ Figured it was because my GPU wasnt the greatest but idk)

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2026 at 2:34 AM

Er, if you look on the MSI RAM compatibility list for this board they only list patriot 16gb & 24gb sticks... honestly, this could be the core problem.

If it were me i'd contact xidax, explain the situation and the possible 32gb patriot compatibility issue with this board and see what they say/suggest.