So tired of stupid installation procedures... Native Instruments, Waves, etc.

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i must admit to having been stumped by an NI reinstall recently. A product disappeared, and when i tried to reinstall using the latest installer (from backups) it complained that it was an update and needed to have the original installed. fair enough if the update was 2 meg and the original was 150, but the update was pretty much identical in size so its surely the full product and not a patch? why the need to install the original? stupid.

but hey-ho. the other 99% of the time i've had no issues with their stuff.
since then I archive the original installer, AND the latest update for every product.

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I've looked into this and spent my time researching once again and found that updating from 1.x to 2.0 has been an issue for many others on the NI forum. In some threads people are so confused and scattered on what to do. I get many of you guys have heard these swan songs before, but this is messed up if it's a common problem and NI can't fix it for their customers. Lots of people in the forums recommend the same thing, call support. Spend your time and effort to get something to work, that should just work right off the bat.

I should've mentioned that yes I did contact support and am waiting for their answer. But this is a common theme with Native Instruments. It never gets better. Do you think NI is improving their downloading procedures?? Seems like every time since my initial experience, NI upgrades/crossgrades just don't make it that easy. Waves I'm a first time customer and seeing that they use there own wrapper system and it's already being more difficult than it should to get there plugin working, is making me skeptical. Though I doubt Waves could be as difficult as NI.

I only mentioned Apple because their stuff is straight forward from downloading to using. Other companies (and there's many out there) like Spectrasonics have also been straight forward. I think initially I had to get myself on the same page as them, but it's been smooth ever since (Omni 1, Trillian, Omni 2). But NI in particular has always given me issues. Couldn't imagine Waves being as bad even though I'm hitting a rough time right now. I can see the fix must be something simple with Waves, but who the F knows with NI.

Looked at this 2.0 pdf and it doesn't work https://www.native-instruments.com/file ... nglish.pdf
Pyrotek45 wrote:I think ni has one of the best systems available.i download my shit.install my shit.activate my shit then use it.its so simple.how could it be easier?
Wish I could experience your enlightenment :) Seriously, when I bought Maschine 1, it was fairly painless. But since then I've bought many other NI products and being that they've been 'Crossgrades', 'Updates' or add on Reaktor ensembles, they seem to always have issues downloading and getting them to work.

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well perhaps their hardware is another story. but i have bought komplete 8 from GC when it was only 399$ and since then i have upgraded to K9 for 75$ on sale. it has all been very simple. one thing that i love is how i can see what needs to be updated and its all right there in their center control thingy lol. and i reformat my computer a lot and reinstalling is so easy. all i have to do is activate just one of my products with my k9 code and everything else is activated. thats it.
~Pyrotek45

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stikygum wrote:Do you think NI is improving their downloading procedures?? Seems like every time since my initial experience, NI upgrades/crossgrades just don't make it that easy.
actually they have improved slightly - used to be there was no easy way to download 'the original isntaller' from your account, they just emailed you links to the files (and those links expired in a week or so) and you were expected to make sure you had the installers backed up (or deal with support to get new links)

Now at least you can download the installers at any time from your account (they seeem to generally be crossplatform .iso images now too), which is great, but there's still the nonsense of 'update' installers that are just as big as the original installers (reaktor, absynth) - they need to either do 'updates' that really are just patches (and hence small), or do like most other devs and just have 'installers' not 'updates'

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You don't update Maschine 1.x to 2.x. You install Maschine 2 and import your 1.x data. They run next to each other.
Having a Maschine 2.x update will never work if you only have version 1 installed.
You have to install the full version of Maschine 2 first and then run the update.

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I find installers a pain in the ass too. There are so many updates at this point. Some products won't install without installing the original first. Not all updates are cumulative. Not all new updates will install over just any version, leading to various updates needed for one product (Cakewalk was shit with this). For a product that has had so many updates, it should just let you go with a most up-to-date version.

Every time I suffer a need to do a system reinstall, I go through this with various products, from various companies. It's always the worst on Windows, but it's not as simple as it should be on the Mac either (with no registry and other architectural BS, you should just be able to drag and drop things where you want them, but it's almost always a goddamned installer.

The developers most likely aren't doing the same stuff we are doing, and therefore have no complaints themselves. Or they're forgetting that we install more than one product.
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I've been suggested to contact NI support, which of course I figured I'd have to do. I contacted them a week ago and still haven't received a response. ... Guess I will have to send them another message again on their website.

NI really knows how to make things unbelievably tedious.

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I agree with the OP. I've been doing computer music since around 99. I'm getting sick of these convoluted installers and background programs that need to run in order for things to work.

I really love companies like u-he, ohm force, sk-note, sonimus, etc... These plugins just "work" on a new system. No need to jump through hoops. Just copy the folders onto the new drive, and everything's perfect.

I wish more plugin developers would follow suit. It's like they think their plugins are the only ones we have. It takes me about a day to authorize all my stuff, and that's when I don't run into snags like the OP. And yes, I've had my NI stuff down for days due to annoying things just like the OP experienced.
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^^^
I think that it will be better to send a reply to the email acknowledgement of the first message that you sent
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stikygum wrote: Bought Maschine when it first came out and just bought the Maschine 2.0 update along with Waves H Reverb during these sales. Bought Komplete 8 years ago. I always get the same messages that sh!t can't be installed for various reasons.
Are you sure that you bought a product you are eligible to? Since the installer says that you have not the original product, could it be that you just bought na update for a user that already has version2, and therefore cannot install?
I am just asking, because I also had many questions regarding the NI naming convention (update/upgrade/crossgrade), and in the end I just bought the "update" for Komplete 10 for users of Komplete 2-9, which happened to be what I usually would call an upgrade (but hey - thet can call it whatever they want).
Fernando (FMR)

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ATS wrote:
oxygenmask wrote:Maybe you dismissive twats should listen to the OP and several others that seem to come out of the woodwork to voice a supporting opinion. How about if you don't have the problem, move on. You know, like the advice you gave the OP. Let him talk. It's a forum.

thank you for your contribution to the thread, very helpful. :hihi:
I think it was very helpful.

I've stopped using software that is what I consider to difficult or bothersome to install. It's a fairly small list but NI is on it. Funny, but I don't miss the ones I've eliminated.

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I don't know about the progress of the thread, nor am I surprised at the responses for a user posting a point of view in a forum... Yeah imagine of all places to post a point of view.

I will say, that I definitely agree.

Wave's Installer is just shit.

In order to add a single plugin, I had to reinstall all the other version 9 plugins, or else the installer will erase the other plugins.

They don't even have a working installer for online installation. You have to download the off-line installer if you own any other of their plugins, plus you have download a Yosemite "fix" that doesn't explain what it is fixing.

What a headache.

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Since NI has one of if not the best installers AKA - The Service Center - this could be an I.D.10.T error

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Never had any issue with installing nor upgrading ANY Native or Waves products. NEVER!
And I never had trouble contacting the support of those companies. Always received help.

I feel you anger. I hate it too when stuff doesn't work you paid for. So I'd say you contact support immediately and stop blaming and whining here. For me it only shows a bad side of yourself.

Hardware and software companies just cannot foresee every possible configuration and system setups. So, yes, there will be customers that need support. Blaming the whole company because on a few problematic computer configurations is just boring.
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Ciberithm wrote:I love NI products, but whoever is responsible for their installers should be taken out back and beaten. By default, they dump (most) of their libraries into the root of "Public Documents". This just makes a mess in Windows. I can change the default path, which is much easier to do in Komplete than when installing individual packages, but the updaters often do not remember where I have the libraries installed, causing more problems. I really like the installers that suggest using "Public Documents\Some Library", and when I change the path to "NI Libraries\Some Library", it installs into "NI Libraries\Some Library\Some Library".

At least installation is a single day affair. I then get to use their product for a year until the next Komplete upgrade.
This :)
Not mentioning that ie. I have quite small SSD Disc as C:/ and quite often I really really LOVE to being able to install "presets / libraries" anywhere else but not C: , not /public documents. Yes, I can do this often but updaters often do not remember this.

Also, I always felt that installing plugins is waaay to complicated. Especially when my HD broken and I needed to rebuilt my studio :) Installers, keys, public documents, third party libraries etc. I understand that software gets pirated but somehow I have a feeling that installing vst plugins really went into the wrong way.

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