Is it at all reasonable to think I can have all my NI software running?

[Ah_Dziz]

So I am a professional daily user of all types of music software. My job wouldn’t get done at all if it weren’t for Kontakt. Anyway, I have owned every version of Kontakt since the original, and I’ve been with komplete since version 3 I think. It turns out that keeping all my stuff working is trouble. I recently had to go reopen some very old material and even though Kontakt 2 will load in standalone and is marked as activated in both the service center and native access it won’t load as a plugin without bringing up the registration “launch service center “ dialogue. If I do launch the service center, then it tells me an older version of komplete is not activated.

Then I go and make sure that komplete gets activated in service center and native access (it lists the individual products but not which komplete version you’re running) when I do this it will kill another plugin/standalone.

So far I have been able to have various permutations of the following up and running: Kontakt 2, Kontakt 2 player, elektrik piano (only ever works standalone, acoustik piano, pro 53, spectral, delay, vokator (only ever works standalone), battery 3, and B4II (only ever works standalone), and then a stack of early Kontakt librarys like , ewqlso, ra, etc. They seem to follow some sort of pattern, but the steps I take to fix one inevitably break some others. It seems like I can have, at most, two of them working at once (aside from the libraries which all work besides electric piano 1.5 and acoustik piano which are only ever in demo mode).

With the way it all seems tied to komplete versions, I think I may have done something wrong during install. I installed only the programs I needed from each komplete installer so I wouldn’t be updating stuff as I went. Rather than install Kontakt 2 from both komplete 3&4 I skipped it in 3 and installed it from 4. So I only installed the stuff from the last komplete release it was included in. I think I may have confused my system/ registry by doing this.

I think the solution might be to clean out all the earlier software and install all of the kompletes up to 5 from scratch and just install everything.

My question (before I spend a day doing this) is, is it reasonable to expect this stuff to all get along with Windows 7? Does anybody else out there have everything up and running on Windows 7? If so are there any settings I need to play with (I run everything as admin) either during install or afterwards by fiddling with the registry. It’s odd to me that Kontakt 1still works flawlessly but the second wave on NI stuff and the bizarre relationship between access and service center seem to have made things weird.

Any help anybody could give me would be greatly appreciated. I have hundreds and hundreds of old projects that will be gone if I can’t at least get komplete 4+ all up and running. I’m willing to do anything including hacking my registry, reinstalling everything with different permissions and compatibility modes, etc.

I had planned on just calling US support, but that number is no longer listed on their site.

PS I noticed this earlier when I loaded a project that contained both Kontakt 2 and vokator. I fixed vokator, but Kontakt 2 broke in the process and while everything was reporting fine in access, service center said komplete 4 was not registered. At the same time this happened all my early east west Kontakt libraries came up listed “unregistered” but they were still available in Kontakt 5. And then it just went on and on.

Any help would be massively appreciated.

JJ

[Orbit-50]

I don't think Native Instruments paid close attention to making the newer stuff work very well with the older NI stuff as far as authorization goes, particularly on older operating systems. It seems as if you can't have your cake and eat it too. Hell, if that were the case, I'd still be using Intakt which was my favorite sampler of all time.

[planetearth]

I have a couple of projects with some Kontakt 3 instruments, and I haven't been able to use them in quite some time. I also have Komplete 6 and 11, running on Windows 7 (x64). Everything in Komplete 6 still works properly, and the EWQL SO Silver (which still uses Kompakt) works. I can't activate Kontakt 3 or Kompakt, though Kompakt still plays fine, where Kontakt 3 doesn't. I haven't had any problems with Battery 3 or 4.

From what I've seen and read, I believe NI simply turns off the activation servers for older products they no longer support. While this is a rather heavy-handed approach to getting people to upgrade, I haven't seen much of a hew and cry about it on NI's forums, so it will probably continue. NI was one of the first "big" instrument developers to ditch 32-bit OSes, so this doesn't really surprise me.

Have you tried to load the instruments from Kontakt 2 into a newer version of Kontakt? I finally had to switch to doing that, though it meant losing some of the settings I had in the project. I haven't seen anything about Registry hacks or any other way to get the software to work, though I didn't really look that deeply into it. I simply tried to recover what I could, and moved on where possible.

I'm sure NI could notify people that their older versions of instruments will soon be rendered obsolete, so that the users could either upgrade (if the instruments will be available in new versions), or gang together to file a class-action lawsuit over NI effectively de-activating software the users have paid good money for over the years. (I'm only half-joking about that.)

Also, have you asked about this on NI's forums? You'll probably have a better chance of getting support from NI if you mention a class-action lawsuit there. (Again, half-joking...kinda. ) I haven't found their forums to be any better at getting their developers or tech support involved, but there are some people there who've been using NI's stuff for years, and may have some work-arounds for you.

God help us all when Komplete 11 & 12 (which use the stupid Service Center a lot more now) are no longer supported.

Steve

[JerGoertz]

I'm on Windows 7 64-bit, and often use 32-bit Cubase. I have Completed 2, 5, 6, and 10 installed, and everything seems to work fine. Well, everything I've tried running, at least!

I.e., Absynth 2, Vokator, Spektral Delay, Battery 1 and 2, etc., etc.

So I think it's possible to do what you want.

[Ah_Dziz]

I know it’s possible, I’m just curious what the proper way to do it is. Spektral delay is still a staple for me since it uses no memory at all basically. The strangest part of all of it is everything says it works in native access. All reads activated, full version.

[Ah_Dziz]

I’ll try the NI forum. Never had much luck with them except for over the phone.

[Ah_Dziz]

It just worries me that if old activations are going to just stop working then they could do that to literally anything I’ve bought from them. Like elektrik piano. I would still use that inside Kontakt. The standalone runs and says it’s activated. The library tab in Kontakt five says all is well, but when I load a patch it loads into demo mode.

[EvilDragon]

I don't have that many Kompletes active at the same time, but I had K8 and K10 installed simultaneously and it all worked. But this is all newer stuff.

You should be able to have everything authorized by simply entering all the various Komplete serials that you have. That means running every Komplete's installer, and installing at least one product from each. You should then be able to authorize every Komplete in SC with each one's serial number. In theory.

I am honestly not sure if anyone from NI support would be able to respond to this query, not sure if there are people manning that ship that still have memory of Komplete 3 times etc. I could be wrong, though.



That said, I don't think you "confused the registry". Kontakt 2 is Kontakt 2, it writes to the same registry keys no matter from which Komplete it was installed. Komplete itself is just another registry entry, alongside individual product entries.


And to conclude, yes, you should definitely be able to run all that stuff on W7. Even on W10, too (all old NI stuff still works here).

[sprnva]

If you contact NI support you should be able to get offline activation codes for any products that won't activate online.

[EvilDragon]

If you contact NI support you should be able to get offline activation codes for any products that won't activate online.

Well, there's that too.

[EvilDragon]

BTW regarding Elektrik Piano: https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... elp-en-us-

[Ah_Dziz]

I don't have that many Kompletes active at the same time, but I had K8 and K10 installed simultaneously and it all worked. But this is all newer stuff.

You should be able to have everything authorized by simply entering all the various Komplete serials that you have. That means running every Komplete's installer, and installing at least one product from each. You should then be able to authorize every Komplete in SC with each one's serial number. In theory.

I am honestly not sure if anyone from NI support would be able to respond to this query, not sure if there are people manning that ship that still have memory of Komplete 3 times etc. I could be wrong, though.



That said, I don't think you "confused the registry". Kontakt 2 is Kontakt 2, it writes to the same registry keys no matter from which Komplete it was installed. Komplete itself is just another registry entry, alongside individual product entries.


And to conclude, yes, you should definitely be able to run all that stuff on W7. Even on W10, too (all old NI stuff still works here).

Well I now officially have everything running in standalone. Pro 53, Vokator, B4 II, and most importantly Kontakt 2 still say they are not activated when I try to load them as plugins, or create a jbridge version of the plugin or anything else. I’m not sure, but should the versions of the plugin .dll files match the version of the software? If so, the install is choking somehow and isn’t overwriting the version that was there. If not then I’m at a wall and I may have to reinstall everything. One of the big issues was that the installer wanted me to restart windows, like back in the day, but it didn’t throw up the prompt.

Also, randomly, Kontakt 1.5 is working the smoothest of all, but I can’t find the update to 1.5.2 anywhere that will give me did streaming.

I’m thankful for all the help it was nice to see service center pop up with nothing needing to be registered but I’m still a couple steps from the finish line.

[Ah_Dziz]

If you contact NI support you should be able to get offline activation codes for any products that won't activate online.

Well, there's that too.

I’m gonna try that. Maybe they have the last versions of everything stockpiled somewhere as well. I’d love to have Kontakt 1 fully updated as well as intakt and kompakt just for completeness. Or kompleteness. Or whatever. Damn it’s been a long day to just be fiddling with my NI installs. I actually have a job relying on being able to get K2 running again inside cubase.

Thanks again for the help. I’ll hope NI gets back to me or someone knows why my plugin should act differently from my standalone. The paths are identical in the installer.

JJ

[EvilDragon]

The plugin should have the same version number as standalone, of course. If this isn't happening, then indeed something is up with the install somehow.

What's weird is that if standalone is not throwing demo mode, the plugin should behave the same. If they don't, that is REALLY weird, I haven't seen that happen ever...

You may have to bite the bullet and just uninstall everything completely and reinstall from scratch. Clear NI registry hives too (this will also null all your settings in each program, unfortunately).


But what I would actually try and spend time on is converting your old projects to load newer versions of Kontakt instead...

[EvilDragon]

You don't see K1.5.2 here in the list?

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... &t=updates

It may be time to really transfer those old projects to newer versions of Kontakt, then. Yes, I know it's painful since it has to be done manually in Cubase, because you don't really have human readable and editable project files...