If you have a Reaper project that won’t load or that makes the application crash, chances are that the cause is a brokenVST plugin. An example of a plugin that often causes problems is LePou’s otherwise excellent impulse loader LeCab2. If LeCab2 can’t find its selected impulses it crashes Reaper on load. This is particularly common if you (like me) use Reaper on multiple computers. The stable solution is to map a fake network drive to the path where you keep your stand-alone VSTs and impulses. But what to do if you can’t match the path stored in your project, either because you can’t match it on the current computer or because you can’t remember it?
Recovery mode to the rescue!
- Start Reaper without loading the faulty project. If you have the option “load last project” enabled and the broken project is the last one, you can start from the command line: “Reaper.exe -new”.
- Select “Open with FX offline (recovery mode)”
You can now remove the crashing VST. You will lose all the settings, but at least you can save your project. When you are done you can re-enable the rest of the VSTs.
