After updating my akai force doesn't remember any plugins ..

And always starts with 'welcome to force' and the nonsense that should only show once. Clicking the 'do not show again' button, doesn't work.

None of my plugins are remembered and have to be reactivated every single time the Akai is booted. If I were to play out at a location without internet, I'd be toast.

Has anyone else had these issues? Is there a fix for it? Work around?

Edit : Seems like a common issue. Any word on a fix from Akai? Having a hard time seeing this thing as anything other than a brick with this kind of functionality. Very disappointed with Akai.

Think my best solution is to revert to the previous firmware. This update is junk.

I only get plugins needing to be reactivated. This is something they need to fix. But this is still a beta OS, but it's far from trash.

Send a bug report & hope for the best!
https://support.akaipro.com/en/support/ ... al_support

Is there an official forum where these updates and news are released? Would appreciate a link so I can follow it directly.

Its my opinion they shouldn't be pushing beta versions to my Akai force and asking if I'd like to update it. If I had known it was a beta, I'd declined.

Just downgrading back to the version that worked. And for me, yes, having to click through and reactiviate everything completely messes with my creative flow and frustrating. When the idea is hot, the last thing I want to do is mess with their borked activation system.

My workflow is setup to GO when turned on, and I can instantly start creating, recording and sampling from the moment my gear is powered up. My ipad is always hot to trot, looopypro is the bomb.

To go from that to ... 'uh, i have to click this, and this, and setup wifi, and click these menus, and wait for the activation ...ok 10 minutes later its good to go! yaywoosomuchawesome...

I can not remember that I had to re-activate the plugins in 3.6 - and it is certainly no junk to me!

I have to say, my force is always connected with the world wide web, maybe that is your problem......

Miyaru wrote:I can not remember that I had to re-activate the plugins in 3.6 - and it is certainly no junk to me!

I have to say, my force is always connected with the world wide web, maybe that is your problem......

I keep it connected to wifi & it still deactivates plugins sometimes. Annoying but not a deal breaker. It still shouldn't be happening. Hopefully they drop some bug fixes at NAMM.

It's annoying enough to deal with this at home on wifi, but it's humiliating to tether the Force to my phone at my practice studio or, worse yet, a live gig just to satisfy janky DRM.

stereotypist wrote:It's annoying enough to deal with this at home on wifi, but it's humiliating to tether the Force to my phone at my practice studio or, worse yet, a live gig just to satisfy janky DRM.

It sucks & hopefully they'll fix. They just fix one of the bugs I reported, so there's hope!

They also fixed that welcome screen thing that will keep popping up even after you clicked on "don't show again".

I have spent hours diagnosing this issue (working with Akai Support). The only solution I have found is to disable Wifi (or disconnect the Ethernet cable) before booting your Force, and keep it that way while using it. If I enable Wifi after booting, or boot with Wifi enabled (or networking enabled using an Ethernet cable) it will deactivate my plugins.

The original poster said, I believe, that the network must remain active for the plugins to remain active. Is that the case, or is it that your plugins are deactivating when you boot the device. I am seeing the later.


The Details...

When I say connected to the Internet below, I mean either connected by WiFi (WiFi enabled), or using an Ethernet cord with Ethernet enabled. I tested both extensively and saw the same results using Wifi or the Ethernet port.

I also ruled out any issues with my network router, DNS, DHCP (obtaining an IP address and router/gateway info), etc. including wondering if my particular router might be slow, have a delay, or be blocking Akai's websites. For example, I did a lot of testing to confirm the Akai wasn't trying to confirm activation before the Force had obtained a working network connection and failing because of an Internet connection issue. As best I can tell, that is not the issue. I believe this is entirely a software issue either on the Force, Akai's servers, or both.

The bug I am seeing is if I boot my Akai Force while it is connected to the Internet, it will immediately deactivate my plugins. I re-activate them and all works fine. In fact, I can reboot or power cycle the Force and they remain activated. But, if I power my Force off for more than 10 minutes and then back on with Internet access enabled (e.g. Wifi enabled), it immediately deactivates my plugins again.

If I disconnect my Force from the Network, and power off for more than 10 minutes, then reboot (again network still off), they remain activated. If I then enable the Network, they are immediately deactivated.

To be clear, the only times my plugins get deactivated is if I boot with the network enabled, or if I enable the network after I have booted with networking disabled. I have never seen them deactivate randomly while using the Force as long as the Wifi or Network is disabled.

I have also booted with networking enabled, had to reactivate my plugins, but then as long as the Force is powered on, it will not deactivate them, allowing me to use the Force and networking without issues.

I did not have this problem with firmware v3.3, but it started when I installed v3.6. I went straight from v3.3 to v3.6. I did not install v3.4 or v3.5 in between. The v3.7 update did not change the behavior.

The last test Akai asked me to do is to run a procedure to back date to the old firmware and then update again to v3.6 (or v3.7), running some special procedure in between to more cleanly wipe my device (or something like that). I haven't had a chance to do that test as it is a little complicated and I haven't gone back to my Force for several weeks now.

I hoped v3.7 might fix things since they completely revamped the activation page for v3.7, but that may have only been a cosmetic change. Too bad they didn't add an "activate all" button. It is getting really old having to tap "activate" for ever single plugin separately.

Thankfully, Akai Support has been very helpful offering suggestions and they did pass my notes to the engineering team.

3.6 was by far the most buggy OS. I had about 10 crashes & other problem like this active one. I just used 3.7 & had to active the plugs & I had another shutdown. GOOD LUCK!

Akai told me to get my force serviced to change my cmos battery. I just turned off WiFi and haven’t needed to activate again.

It’s irritating though and I’m kinda hesitant to update to 3.7.

64hz wrote:Akai told me to get my force serviced to change my cmos battery. I just turned off WiFi and haven’t needed to activate again.

It’s irritating though and I’m kinda hesitant to update to 3.7.

I think some said they replaced the battery themselves. Turning off the wifi is kinda a solution, but it will make the system date/time inaccurate which means the time/date of when you created & saved files will be inaccurate. You can manually reset the d/t info per session if that info is important to you.

B-Wise wrote:

64hz wrote:Akai told me to get my force serviced to change my cmos battery. I just turned off WiFi and haven’t needed to activate again.

It’s irritating though and I’m kinda hesitant to update to 3.7.

I think some said they replaced the battery themselves. Turning off the wifi is kinda a solution, but it will make the system date/time inaccurate which means the time/date of when you created & saved files will be inaccurate. You can manually reset the d/t info per session if that info is important to you.

This is the first thing Akai said to me also, and suggested using the time/date to confirm if the battery was OK.

I left it unplugged and turned off for a while and when I booted it back up, the time/date was not affected and still accurate. I forget if the Akai can set its date/time via the Network, but to be sure I booted it with the network turned off.

The other thing they had me try was to set the time zone to GMT. It did not fix the issue. They were suggesting it might be related, but it wasn't for me.

You may have to just replace the battery. This was the problem with my MIDI patchbay years ago. It wouldn't save the custom settings until I changed the CR2032 nickel looking battery.

If you have to open up the Force but want an idea of what that's like here's a Force Disassembly video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDNbWNK ... 43FBzwjyNm

I just updated to Force firmware v3.9 and I am no longer seeing this issue. My plugins stay registered between power cycles, and over night. I was on v3.7.1 previously. I never installed v3.8.

I did see in v3.8 (I believe) that it had some significant bug fixes related to the issue I was having (see my previous posts - but in summary, my plugins would de-authorize if I powered down my Force for more than about 30 minutes). Again, I never loaded v3.8, but v3.9 is working.

I notice there are some changes to how the plugin authorization page in Preferences works now. Under v3.9, when I go to the the plugin auth page the first time after I boot my Force, the WiFi shows disconnected (WiFi indicator is red). But going to the page causes the Force to connect to Wifi (indicator goes green), and then it refreshes the page. In the past, when I went to this page, all my plugins were de-authorized. Now when I go there, they are all still authorized (and Wifi shows red). Wifi goes green, and the page refreshes and maintains authorization.

Previously, I believe the auth page was trying to refresh the licenses before the Wifi (or Ethernet) was fully working, and hence causing the plugins to de-auth. I never knew for sure if that was the issue, but I note it here because now the auth page doesn't try to refresh until I go to the auth page, and it looks like it takes a moment to enable Wifi, make sure it is enabled and fully working, and then it refreshes the plugin page.

Anyway, not sure exactly what they did to fix it, but glad it is working. I did not have to replace my battery (that was never the issue). I did not need to use the GMT time zone (that never affected it), and I did not have to factory reset my Force and reinstall the firmware to fix this (i.e. resetting prefs and all licenses).

For some people, it could still be a failing backup battery, but you can tell if your battery is going by powering down, leaving it over night, and seeing if your time/date is retained when you power up the next day. If it is retained, but your plugins are still de-authorizing, that is not the battery. Upgrade to v3.8 or v3.9 firmware and see if the problem goes away.

I hope this works for the other people reporting issues here.

MLohmeyer wrote:Anyway, not sure exactly what they did to fix it, but glad it is working. I did not have to replace my battery (that was never the issue). I did not need to use the GMT time zone (that never affected it), and I did not have to factory reset my Force and reinstall the firmware to fix this (i.e. resetting prefs and all licenses).

For some people, it could still be a failing backup battery, but you can tell if your battery is going by powering down, leaving it over night, and seeing if your time/date is retained when you power up the next day. If it is retained, but your plugins are still de-authorizing, that is not the battery. Upgrade to v3.8 or v3.9 firmware and see if the problem goes away.

I hope this works for the other people reporting issues here.

Thanks for report!
I was having that issue, but I haven't had much time on 3.8 &.9 to know if it solved it, but I haven't to this problem yet. 3.7 was the most buggy OS ever for me - it crashed around 10x.