Hello everyone, 

I realize that this is more of an issue with Kontakt than with Sonar, but I'm in such a bind that I need to get some help as soon as I possibly can. I have sent a message to Native Instruments, but hopefully you all can give me some advice sooner than them. 

My issue is that Kontakt can not find ANY samples from ANY Kontakt instruments that I've used in my projects. I've double checked the file path and it is 100% accurate. Meaning that Kontakt is looking in the correct place, but it still can't find the samples. I haven't moved any folders, or moved samples to any new location on their current hard drive, nor have I moved anything to a new hard drive or location. Kontakt simply can't find the samples. 

When loading Kontakt standalone last night, all of the libraries on the left side (the "official" Kontakt libraries with their own graphic) were missing; again, Kontakt couldn't find them. I checked their file path and they were all set to look exactly where the libraries were located. I had to go through and manually "find" the location, even though I just clicked on the exact same location as their "assumed location". Doing this allowed me to use all of these libraries again. However, as mention in the above paragraph, when loading up actual projects in Sonar that I've used ANY Kontakt libraries in (which is all of them), absolutely none of the samples can be found. 

Do you guys have any suggestions for me as to how to fix this? I'm working on several game soundtracks for clients right now and it is impossible for me to work with this issue going on. 

Thank you so much!

One possibility is that Kontakt, or less likely Sonar,  is running with different permissions than it was previously, and can no longer access the sample library. Are you logging on to a different account now? You could try running Sonar as administrator. If that does not work, you can find out about permissions of your Kontakt library folders. By using the following procedure you can modify the permissions even if you do not currently have ownership of the folders. You would need at least read permission for "Everyone," to be sure that you can access them from any program on the computer from any account. Normally, you would need permissions at least for the account name you are running Kontakt/Sonar from. 
 
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/take-ownership-windows-8
 

Not in front of my music computer but Kontakt has a database. IIRC there is a reset and scan option.
 
Also make sure you don't have a stand-alone version open while using a plug-in version.

Thanks for your tips. Slartabarfast (nice Hitchhiker reference), I don't believe it was an issue with permissions since I'm logged in as administrator and have full control over the folders. Anderton, I'm hesitant to do a reset and scan since it says that will reset all of the user settings. But, I have some good news. While I still haven't discovered the exact cause of the issue, I have found a simple workaround that at least allows me to load up each project with all the samples and continue my work. I luckily have all of my Kontakt instruments on the same external drive, and even more luckily I have all of them in the same parent folder labeled "Virtual Instruments". So, upon loading my project and being prompted with the "Samples Missing" box from Kontakt, I can choose to manually find the samples, and by simply choosing the "Virtual Instruments" parent folder, it's able to find every sample that is used in that project, since I have all of my Kontakt libraries in that folder. It's going to be a bit of a pain to have to do that for every single work-in-progress project that I load from now on, but it finds all of the samples almost instantly after pressing OK. Once I've saved the project one more time with everything loaded correctly, the next time I open the project everything in place. 

I'm still curious about the cause of the issue though, so if anyone has any more suggestions or experience with this, I'm all ears :)

You might try getting into Kontakt and rebuilding its database.
 
And perhaps look for any maintenance you can apply to Kontakt - perhaps something in Windows Update has done something behind the scenes.  I use Kontakt all the time - it is my go to synth for sampled sounds.
 
In the missing samples message, it gives you the entire path it is expecting to find the samples in, so check it carefully against the actual path to the samples, any character change in any folder along the path will knock it silly, and can be easy to miss.
 
Bob Bone
 

If you load Kontakt in stand alone mode outside of Sonar, are the samples found? I'll guess that they are not, but if I'm wrong then try running Sonar as administrator. Running a program as administrator is not the same as logging in as administrator. 
 
I doubt it is privilege-based, but maybe I'm wrong. I *think* there is an option you can check when you are prompted to find samples that will do it for all libraries, but I'm not certain. 

Look at the path Kontakt lists for the missing samples - the hard drive specifically. Then look at what the hard disk containing your libraries is currently assigned to. What I've found in the past is that if I plug a different number USB drives into my laptop, or in a different order, the drive letter assignments could change, and the samples will not be found. To solve this I changed the letter designation of my library disk to something higher than the maximum number of disks I'll ever have connected; in my case "L" for library. Since I did that, the library external hard disk always comes up as "L", and samples are always found.

PeteL
Look at the path Kontakt lists for the missing samples - the hard drive specifically. Then look at what the hard disk containing your libraries is currently assigned to. What I've found in the past is that if I plug a different number USB drives into my laptop, or in a different order, the drive letter assignments could change, and the samples will not be found. To solve this I changed the letter designation of my library disk to something higher than the maximum number of disks I'll ever have connected; in my case "L" for library. Since I did that, the library external hard disk always comes up as "L", and samples are always found.

PeteL, you are right on the money! I just checked and my hard drive has indeed been renamed to a different letter. I loaded up a project that had some non-Kontakt libraries, but were still on the same hard drive, and those too couldn't be found. It's definitely an issue with the drive being renamed to a different letter.

Now, if I may ask, what's the best way to permanently rename that hard drive, to "L" (for example)? Also, after renaming it, how do I tell both Kontakt and Sonar to look for this newly named drive? 

Here's the quick answer ... I'm on an iPad now and I'll write the detailed answer when I'm on my PC later today. To change the drive letter, use the Disk Management utility. You can find that in the control panel, or by right-clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Manage" or something like that. (I'll write the exact steps in proper terms later). In the Disk Manager window, click on the disk with your libraries and somewhere in the menu up top is a drive letter assignment menu. Once I changed that to a letter high enough that it'll never be bumped, it has stayed there permanently.

You don't have to tell Sonar to look there (unless you have some Cakewalk components there), and to tell Kontakt, I think there is a setting in Kontakt for the path to the libraries. Hope this helps. I'll add more details when I'm at the PC.

Here's the details ...

To change the drive letter:

1. Right click "My Computer" or "This Computer"
2. Select "Manage"
3. Select "Disk Management" from the list on the left side of the window
4. In the list running down from the top middle of the window, right-click your library disk
5. Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths ..."
6. Click "Change" in the popup window
7. Select your new drive letter from the dropdown list
8. Press OK
9. Press OK to the warning popup (by later telling Kontakt about the drive letter change, it WILL run correctly)
10. Close the computer management window

To tell Kontakt where the libraries now are:

1. Launch Kontakt (I launched the standalone version)
2. Open Kontakt Options (the gear icon at the top of the window)
3. Click the database tab at the left side of the options window - you will see the currently incorrect library paths
4. Click "Remove" for all the existing paths, and then click "Add" to navigate and add in the new paths (now on "L" drive). Repeat for each library

If you have a large number of libraries, and you expect repeating step 4 above will be tedious, you can try the following instead. Press "Reset and Scan". I assume you'll be prompted to navigate to where you want Kontakt to look. If so, choose the L drive (or whatever you chose as a letter). Kontakt should now find all the Kontakt libraries on the disk. If you don't get a prompt to choose where to look (I don't recall ... it's been a while!) the worst thing it'll do is scan every connected disk, which will take longer. I would have suggested this paragraph as the first option if I remembered for sure that it asks you to choose where to look.

Good luck!
Pete