7 Replies Latest reply: Oct 23, 2014 3:38 AM by Jonathan Metsäsalo RSS

    Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system

    Jonathan Metsäsalo Community Member

      It seems that every time I try to scan for VST-effects, Adobe Audition either hangs at 0% or freezes my system by loading 6500+ processes and using 100% of my system memory (16Gb).

      As a result, it can't find any plugins.

      I have tried these solutions:

      • Moving VST folder to another drive and scanning it there
      • Trying to scan just one empty folder
      • Updating to the latest version of Audition (problem existed before and after huge Adobe update)
      • Tried to have only certain, guaranteed to work plugins in the folder
      • Running Audition as system admin and making sure that folder is readable

      However result is always the same: no progress or system slowdown leading to crash.

       

      My system is Win7 64-bit.

       

      Is there a fix or at least a theory what the problem might be?

        • 1. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
          Jonathan Metsäsalo Community Member

          Little update: reinstall did not fix the issue either.

          Managed to kill Audition before it filled the RAM memory. I did this as fast I could after I noticed that Windows started to slow down. Still Audition managed to start around 740 instances of conhost.exe and around same amount of dvaaudiofilterscan.exe processes.

          • 2. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
            _durin_ Employee Hosts

            Hi Jonathan,

             

            I haven't heard any reports of this behavior before, and a quick scan through our bug database doesn't show anything similar for Audition effects scanning, but I do some some mentions of conhost.exe involved in similar problems in other applications.  I hit the big search engine and found that conhost.exe, a Windows console manager process, can be a common target for malware or viruses and may introduce problems like you've described

             

            What is conhost.exe and Why Is It Running?

            Multiple instances (dozens) of conhost.exe running. Windows 7 - Microsoft Community

             

            I'd recommend updating your antivirus and malware scanners, and performing a deep scan.  If that looks good, make sure Windows is completely up-to-date as well.  If this still occurs, we can continue troubleshooting.

            • 3. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
              Jonathan Metsäsalo Community Member

              I tried the scan with antivirus and with spybot - both came up clean. I have latest updates on the windows. The problem is not new - I have had it ever since I got the production premiere package (over 2 years ago), it is just now that I am at the point where I should either fix the problem or get another audio editor.

               

              If the conhost is malware, why is Audition launching it? I can leave my computer on for hours and work for days without rebooting and the conhost progress won't appear in the task manager. It is only when Audition tries and fails to scan for VST-plugins this problem occurs (with dvaaudiofilterscan.exe). Also after killing the Audition program, no more instances of those processes appear - so they are not self replicating, Audition hast to launch them. 

               

              I should note that the freeze problem does not happen every time and is always preceded with scanning progress being stuck at 0%. In that case I have to cancel the scan (because it is stuck for hours/days) and when I retry the scan it has a chance to freeze in the way previously mentioned.

               

              There are some mentions here and there about similar problem but no solution. Crash/freeze is not really the problem - the problem is that scan fails at it's job: finding VTS plugins (or lack of them).- and that introduces the possibility of greater error.  

               

              I should add that the conhost is not really the big problem because it is the dvaaudiofilterscan.exe (Adobe Auditions own process) that eats more memory.

              audition_problem.jpg

               

              • 4. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
                _durin_ Employee Hosts

                I suggested we rule out conhost.exe because it appears to be commonly associated with these types of problems, and is susceptible to malware attacks.  t's purpose is to add support for command line operations, including those that are invoked by other applications.  In this case, Audition relies upon it when scanning VST effects - a separate process, dvaaudiofilterscan.exe, is launched to validate each plug-in found, in order to better prevent a bad plug-in from crashing Audition.

                 

                What should happen is dvaaudiofilterscan.exe is launched for a VST, it's tested, and then a response code is sent to Audition indicating whether it passed or failed.  That instance of dvaaudiofilterscan.exe is closed and a new instance is started for the next plug-in found.

                 

                Perhaps I misunderstood your first post, but there have been times when you've been able to scan for plug-ins without a problem?  How often does this behavior occur?  If you open Windows Event Viewer, located in the Administrative Tools Control Panel item, do you see any messages or errors that are related to the scanning failure?

                 

                Another thing that may help troubleshoot would be to capture a "dump file" from one of the locked dvaaudiofilterscan.exe processes.  Since you're running 64-bit Windows, you'll need to do the following:

                 

                  1.  Scan for effects and get into this situation

                  2.  Click Start and run the following command:  C:\Windows\SysWOW64\taskmgr.exe

                  3.  Under the Processes tab, locate a frozen instance of dvaaudiofilterscan.exe, right-click and choose "Create Dump File"

                  4.  Repeat step 3 for the Adobe Audition CS6.exe process as well.

                  5.  Send these files to me at audbugs@adobe.com

                 

                Thanks.

                • 5. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
                  Jonathan Metsäsalo Community Member

                  There has not been a time where the scan progress bar has moved past 0% (no scan has ended in any way).

                   

                  Files that I send will be from the 0% status, since the other failure type is unpredictable and there is too small of time window to kill Audition before system memory fills to the point that Task Manager can't function.

                  • 6. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
                    ryclark Community Member

                    Have you tried running the scan on another brand new folder with only one known to be good VST in it?

                    • 7. Re: Audition CS6 plugin scan freezes and/or crashes the system
                      Jonathan Metsäsalo Community Member

                      Yes. I have tried to make new folders and I tried to scan it. Result is the same as with the default folder. It does not matter if the test folder contains VST-files or is completely empty - scan will be stuck 0% in every case.

                       

                      I have also tried to scan folders separately and in batch - this has no result on the outcome.