S-Gear v2.5 Update tried to Eat Reaper & Kill My PC

There have been one or two times in the past that an S-Gear update was released containing real bugs or issues, requiring a further update – a 'hotfix' of sorts – and released very soon after, but fortunately I never dealt with those problems face to face. However, in this most recent S-Gear v2.50 update, I had issues so serious I was close to uninstalling the entire thing and quitting any further use of S-Gear permanently. The install of update v2.50 was routine, and as well I haven't had any serious issues with anything to do with plugins or Reaper in at least 2 years. Never had a real problem with S-Gear before, and my PC specs are also very routine: Win 7 64-bit, SP-1 and all SSE instructions, 4GB of memory, half-full 500GB drive, 2.4GB dual core. I run all DAWs and plugins in 32-bit config., except standalone plugins such as S-Gear 2 which run as 64-bit. It was the standalone version of S-Gear 2.50 that nearly fried my PC, but the plugin loaded into Reaper was acting up too. After exiting S-Gear 2.50 in standalone mode I noticed almost instantly that S-Gear would not release my ASIO driver by Digitech. (I later tried another ASIO driver with the same results.) You sometimes hear about DAWs doing the same thing, resulting in a 'phantom' showing of the DAW program appearing in the 'Processes' tab of the Task Manager after the supposed exit. I recall Cubase 4 and 5 used to do this occasionally when I suffered through using that annoying DAW a few years ago. Different from Cubase's refusal to release the ASIO driver, S-Gear was also pegging my CPUs at 100%. Also, repeated attempts at clicking 'End Process' did absolutely nothing, and I couldn't shut down the laptop either – I was forced each time to pull the plug and remove the battery to cold crash the PC. Previous to trying S-Gear in standalone, I noticed something wasn't right when my MIDIGuitar plugin was unable to scan it properly, placing it on its excluded list. Also, running 'Clear Cache and Scan' in Reaper showed the DAW pausing on scan of S-Gear 2.50 for an extremely long time and also showing “(not responding)” above that window during the scan. The same thing happened on a plugin re-scan in Cantabile. Screw the new tuner in v2.50, but I wouldn't have minded using the new custom 2X12 cab & speaker IR just added, even though I would have had to spend hours loading that IR into about a third of my presets and then tweaking the results to get each preset to sound right. When I tried to roll back to S-Gear v2.42, the previous release, I got a “License Error, please contact Scuffham ...” which rendered the plugin no good (and wasted another hour-plus of a planned night of recording). And I hate doing a Restore operation, but it was the only way to fix this nasty mess. THAT took me back to v2.42 and ended this S-Gear Nightmare. What pissed me off the most was that S-Gear pegged my CPUs at 100%, and if I hadn't been actively paying attention … Also, I couldn't kill the stupid process and couldn't reboot the PC in any safe and normal way. No excuse for that! I suspect that this latest S-Gear behaviour may not happen with all ASIO drivers -- with hope not yours -- but it happened using both of mine, both of which normally function without any issues and have done so for years straight. I used to joke around that the S-Gear plugin was “on the edge of bloat” or at least was heading toward plugin bloat status. I don't know if that figures in here, and I don't know if or how much the addition of that sonuus tuner in v2.50 has anything to do with this, but this is the very last time I'm ever trying to update S-Gear. If this sim didn't sound pretty good and figure into about half my guitar projects, I'd uninstall and shred the damn thing right now and move on. Even freeware plugins aren't this unstable anymore; that era ended about 2 years ago (with the end of SynthEdit 1 use), but I won't tolerate this behaviour in a commercial plugin ($99-$129). So I'm holding at v2.42 permanently. Scuffham basically destroyed my faith in this plugin a lot like they destroyed the forum at their website over a year ago, causing me and two friends to quit posting on it. It used to be an extremely thoughtful and 'happening' guitarist forum. Not anymore. The few remaining members post basically zilch these days and are herded about by an overbearing monitor. And I figure, given enough time and user demands for more unneeded rubbish tacked on, that this S-gear plugin will become more and more bloated and screwed up, too, soon enough if not already. More than a few users have asked repeatedly, Let us remove the amps we don't use, let us use the FX section separately or remove it altogether if desired.... The goal? To trim this plugin down to size and make it leaner. It shouldn't require a quad or hex core PC just to run a stinking amp sim smoothly.

So far I've had no issues with 2.5 or previous versions. Its been rock solid. W7 SP1 x64 Every PC config is different though and endless hardware/software/driver interactions can be a bitch to account for.

I have S-Gear on 2 computers and have no issues at all with this update. I just fired up the stand-alone on my simple i3 Windows 7 64bit laptop and it's showing about 9% CPU useage..... Never had a problem with this one. In fact, in regards to removing amp-sims, S-Gear is the one I kept. Telenator; Are you still running XP? I am not being sarcastic, but I am wondering if more and more devs are starting to develop with modern OS's and architecture these days, and XP/32bit systems are probably getting left behind. Just a thought. Edit: oops, I see your specs...I got nuthin then.....

S-Gear 2.5 has worked flawlessly for me (love the new tuner, too)... Windows 8 64-bit, standalone and VST...

S-Gear v2.50 working just fine here, both standalone and plugin. W7 64-bit, SP1 as well.