So I have been using Waves plugins for years now with only the occasional issue. However, yesterday I went to open a project in Reaper and it popped up a message that the Waves FX I was using were not found. There did not seem to be any reason for this to have happened and nothing new had been installed. So, I thought it would be as simple as reinstalling the app via Waves Central and running the patch again (this being the latest VR release btw). Nope. So, I checked it in Studio One and Reason - same thing. No Waves plugins. In Reason I can see them installed, but when I try to open one, I get a "hardware exception" and then the DAW crashes. So I have proceeded to follow every troubleshooting step I could find online including deep cleaning everything Waves-related from my system (Win11), reinstalling, fixing permissions, re-applying the VR patch, rescanning my VSTs in Reaper after every attempt... but still no go.

At this point I'm beyond frustrated and ready to forgo using Waves plugins ever again. The problem is that they are in several of my chains in very large Reaper projects and replacing them with other products at this point would be unbelievably challenging. Although, the past 4 hours I have wasted trying to remedy this issue could have been spent on something more productive.

If anyone has any experience with this particular issue - I will be forever grateful for anything that helps me get back to working.

Windows 11 x64, Waves Ultimate 14 v17.12.23 w/ V.R. Patch

 

Did you use Revo Uninstaller or not? Also, this version of Waves was released on 12/17.

With something as big and important as Waves may be to you, you should never update so soon. Every major release they put out has a follow-up release in about 2 days or so, where they fix all the problems found out in the wild; and without fail there are quite a few of them.

I would uninstall with Revo and downgrade back to your prior version, or I would wait to see if others run into it too.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2023

I did a full system cleanup, including using RegScan to remove those last few remnants. The perplexing thing about this all is that everything had been running perfectly up until last night. Sure, this version came out a few days prior - but all was well those first few days.

 

Update: I installed the last R2R release (v2023.03.26) and everything is working as it did before the issue. However, I lose out on the new Silk plugin - but that's a small sacrifice to be able to finish my projects. I haven't read of anyone else having this same issue with the latest VR release, but if you have any further advice - let me know.