Strange problem & I have no idea what is wrong.

all plugins from certain developers now freezing in all my DAW's.
They were all working fine before.
If I re-install any of them they cause a freeze upon scanning when launching any DAW I have.
Windows freezes completely so I have to kill power to PC and reboot.
it's both VST2 & VST3 for the affected developers.

have reset BIOS defaults, uninstalled/re-installed a few of the offenders, some of these had been working for a long time & only now cause this freezing.
And it's all plugins from the offending vendors.. an all or nothing situation.
Tried installing Plugin Doctor but it freezes as well when scanning the VST folders

Could it have anything to do with recent R2R Root Certificate which I've installed?
Unless it's a windows update issue I don't know what else would cause this?
I can't roll back to an earlier Windows release to confirm.. current version is Win11 24H2 with last cumulative update being (KB5065789)

Has anyone seen this before?

DAW's
Sequoia 17
Studio One 7.2.2.107056
Reaper 7.35
Plugin Doctor 2.3.8

Vendors (all plugins from these vendors cause freezing in the above DAW's)
Kush Audio
Empirical Labs
Kalifornia Dynamic
LiquidSonics
Matthew Lane
MIA Laboratories
Neural DSP
Softube
oeksound
SSL
Strymon

 

I don't know every single plugin in your problem list, but those I do know of are all iLok plugins. Are all of them formerly iLok protected, and do you have any iLok plugins which are still functional?

Otherwise, I would probably remove Plugin Doctor first. Then I would go to the easiest to reinstall DAW, and remove that one. Then the next. You probably have customizations done to Reaper so I would do that one last.

Or, I would backup the VST2 plugins and remove all of them. You have to figure out a way to work your problem methodically like that. Of course, if someone just says your R2R root certificate could be the problem, I would reinstall that first. Or some other "magic" Windows fix.

Make sure your firewall is blocking all the plugins that are problematic still. Figure out the way to troubleshoot that will be the least pain and suffering reinstalling stuff, if you have to go that route.

When is the last time they all worked? What did you do since then?