New online installer is a mess...

[audioscapist]

It's worse than I thought. Installing new stuff seems to uninstall stuff I've already installed.

I think you have to leave everything ticked when installing new products - not intuitive and not clear from the manual which I found at the top. Talking of which the manual should pop out automatically with an option to hide for first time users despite it being of little help in its current form.

[Lars XLN Audio]

Hi guys, sorry for the troubles!

1. Keep all items checked/ticked in the Online Installer. Unchecking mean uninstalling. We will make this more clear asap!

2. The online installer should not re-download existing products. It will however verify all existing files to make sure they are correct. The status fields says "Verifying xxx..."

3. After installing, if AD displays the Authorize screen something didn't work. Please check the version of AD (It should be 1.5.3 for VST and AU, and 1.5.2b for RTAS). If you still see an older version, a reason could be that you are using VST on PC and have manually moved the AD dll after installing in the past. Then the Online Installer will not find it and will not be bale to overwrite it. this is an ever ongoing issue with the way Steinberg decided to implemnt VST on Windows (on mac all paths are absolute). Search your systems for "Addictive Drums.dll". Delete any you find. Run the Online Installer again. Search again.. where was it installed (C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VST Plugins is the default) Please add this path in your hosts VST path prefs. A future verison of the installer will likely offer the opportunity to freely install/move the VST dll but for now the above is the simplest solution.

4. if none of the above works, please email support and we will try to sort it out!

[EvilDragon]

3. Wouldn't it be easier in fact to point the installer to the path where our Addictive Drums.dll is located? This makes a whole lot of more sense to me...

[Lars XLN Audio]

This is how it is supposed to work, we will look into it and test it even more if there are still glitches:
- It reads your VST path from the Registry, and if there is no registry entry it will use the default path provided by Steinberg. The old AD installer wrote the path to registry so it should work if you had a previous installation and never moved the dll.
- If the user has moved the dll, it becomes tricky.. it would mean searching through the whole computer which would also be frustrating..

We appreciate the feedback and we will try to make everything more clear and working better and better.

[Lars XLN Audio]

The free kitpieces are still available, like here:
http://www.xlnaudio.com/products/view/32

All free products are now handled like proper products, only with a price of 0. So you add them to your account and they are installed whenever you install, on a new computer etc.

This means you no longer have to keep track of which free products you actually had installed.

[audioscapist]

Thanks for joining in Lars. I've managed to get everything running again although it did take all morning.

Keep all items checked/ticked in the Online Installer. Unchecking mean uninstalling. We will make this more clear asap!

Yes this is very important. Worth making it clear without having to click on "manual" to find out.

please email support and we will try to sort it out!

Lars did respond very quickly to my email.
P.

[PerunZG]

This is how it is supposed to work, we will look into it and test it even more if there are still glitches:
- It reads your VST path from the Registry, and if there is no registry entry it will use the default path provided by Steinberg. The old AD installer wrote the path to registry so it should work if you had a previous installation and never moved the dll.
- If the user has moved the dll, it becomes tricky.. it would mean searching through the whole computer which would also be frustrating..

We appreciate the feedback and we will try to make everything more clear and working better and better.

You have two simple solutions already:

1. use of VST folder
a) Search the Registry for the root VST folder.
b) If root VST folder is found, *ask* the user to install the DLL there. If answer is Yes, do it. If answer is No, ask for the location and install the DLL there.
c) If root VST folder is not found, *ask* the user to install to the default location. If answer is Yes, create the Registry entry for root VST folder and istall the DLL there. If answer is No, ask for the location and install the DLL there.

2. use of AD's own Registry entry
a) search the Registry for previous AD DLL location.
b) If found, install the DLL there.
c) If not found, *ask* the user for the location, create the Registry entry for the chosen location and install the DLL there.

Should work for both 32 and 64 bit plugins.
Same principle can and should be used for Data folder as well. Simple.

Even better, you can avoid the Registry completely and use INI/config file instead.

[EvilDragon]

+1 on everything above said. User should point to the folder, installer should not try and be smarter than the user...

[Tilo]

Is there a way to do an offline installation if all the products already have been downloaded ?

[PerunZG]

Is there a way to do an offline installation if all the products already have been downloaded ?

You can use old installers for ADpaks and MIDIpaks, I guess. AD will have to be downloaded and reinstalled since it's a new version (1.53). Not 100% sure, though.

[korgscrew]

Well, ive just purchased Reel Machines and had to download the installer. It wont even get past the 1st tick! The box that says installer is greyed out so it has to install.

Now im getting an eorror when it gets to about 98% it says

XLN ONLINE INSTALLER - ASSERT SystemExecute ==errAuthorizationSuccess

Press OK Then....

XLN ONLINE INSTALLER - Caught exeption Execute Error = Cannot execute privilaged tool

So no installation of The New AD PAK

great stuff, let down again....

[proCoustic]

Hi,
this may help some of you:

I did a request to the XLN-support, because I want to do an offline-installation.
For offline installation it is still possible to use the old routine, and it is still possible to download your XLN-products as zip files like it used to be - see below:

-------------------------

1. You can download zipped installers for all products by adding 'offline to the My Products URL like this:
http://www.xlnaudio.com/en/myaccount-myproducts/offline

2. After installing, load up AD and it will ask you to authorize. click on any of the Authorize buttons to get to the screen where the Computer ID is displayed. Copy this (or write it down, it is made up of letters a-f and numbers 0-9)

3.
- Go to http://www.xlnaudio.com/myaccount-mycomputers/offline
- Click 'Add A Computer' and enter the info, along with the computer ID from AD you copied
- Go to http://www.xlnaudio.com/en/myaccount-my ... rs/offline again
- Click 'License File' and it will download an authorizer app, just run it on your music computer and all products should be authorized if you restart your host

----------------

Hope this helps,

Lars

[EvilDragon]

OK, that's more like it! Thanks for that, procoustic!

[Lars XLN Audio]

Just to let everyone using VST on Windows know:

The intended behaviour is that the Online Installer should reinstall all resources and plugins in the same locations as the existing install. However, we found an issue with reading the correct vst path from registry and are working on a fix.

In the registry, the relevant keys for where the Online Installer installs AD can be found here:
64 bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\XLN Audio\Addictive Drums
32 bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\XLN Audio\Addictive Drums

And the keys are:
InstallPath (the install path for the AD main resources, big sound files etc)
VSTPath (you guessed it, it's the VST install path)

Even though we aim to add the possibility to move/change these paths easily from within the Online Installer in a future version, the user can also change these keys as a workaround.

[PerunZG]

Just to let everyone using VST on Windows know...

Thank you very much, Lars. This helps a lot!