So I've found this annoying issue that is no fault of Sonar's where I will install a plugin and that install gives me no option of choice as to where the dll for the plugin gets installed. It also seems like there is no standard universal location for a lot of these plugins and they just install wherever they want without regards to the host DAW. This isn't as much of an issue if you're paying attention to every plugin you install one at a time but if you install everything right after formatting your computer like I did in January, it's very easy to miss a bunch of locations.
 
So my question is: what folders do you guys use on your systems to ensure you are getting all the plugins added to list?

Here's my list. I know some of these are incorrect but I've not uncovered which ones are unneeded at this point. I have a feeling I'm still missing one or two.

 
 

Here are a couple of issues the partial path shown image above.
1) Redundant folders - the plug-in scanner recursively searches folders in the path. In the image above shows both "c:\program files\common files" and "c:\program files\common files\vst3" in the path. In this case "c:\program files\common files\vst3" appears to be redundant however it is probably the better choice than "c:\program files\common files" because of #2.
 
2) Scanning to high in the directory tree - because the plug-in scanner recursively scans the folder path entries like "c:\program files\common files" will scan areas which do not contain plug-ins but can contain other dlls which can cause problems for the scanner. Try to specify paths which only contain valid plug-ins.
 
While I have hundreds of plug-ins, my config is much simpler managing to keep all the plug-ins in the default two scan paths "c:\program files\cakewalk\vstplugins" and "c:\program files\common files\vst3." All the third party plug-ins I use allow specifying the VST2 path although some installers are more difficult to work with than others and I do not have to contend with either Waves or UAD.

Thanks for pointing those out. I had a bit of a problem finding one of the newer ones I added so in my annoyance, I added the whole of common files to try and find it.
 
It's very annoying when an installer doesn't give me an option as to where I want to install the dll files and sadly, it has become more common with some plugins as of late. Even worse is that it doesn't tell you where it installed to so it starts either a directory hunt or a google hunt to try and find it.
 
Would manually moving dll files into the cakewalk folder so I can cut the extra directories cause a problem? I'm not quite sure if they have to be in the locations they are installed to.

wow... thanks, scook!  I gotta clean up my scan list!

TerraSin
Would manually moving dll files into the cakewalk folder so I can cut the extra directories cause a problem? I'm not quite sure if they have to be in the locations they are installed to.

It depends. Many plug-ins may be moved without problems. There are some though which have config files or registry entries with the dll path embedded in them. These can be a challenge to move. I must be fortunate, every 3rd party plug-in I have installed asked for the VST2 plug-in path.