Hi All,
 
If you've recently updated your Waves plugins on a Windows PC and now Sonar can't find your Waves plugins or lists them twice and one works and one doesn't, here is the fix that worked for me (I have Win 7 Pro and use Sonar X2 Producer and X3 Producer).  BTW, This problem will affect you when you open old projects where you used Wave VST's because Sonar won't load them.
 
I spent an hour working with Waves Tech Support and they gave me most of how to do this before the call was suddenly lost... So I won't give them all the credit ;-)   The problem is that Sonar is still looking for the Waves Plugins under Waves Shell Version 9.2 but they've been deleted and replaced by the same plugins running under Waves Shell Version 9.3.  So you've just got to clear out all of the old Waves Shell 9.2 stuff.  Then Sonar will go back to recognizing your familiar Waves VST's just as it did before (installing the new Waves Shell Version 9.3 unfortunately does not do this).  All of the steps below may not be completely necessary depending on where your system is at, but they will make sure you get a clean Waves Plugin installation for just about any situation.
 
The Fix:
1) Uninstall all Waves software using Uninstall in the Waves Program folder (Start menu)
2) Edit and delete the Waves plugin paths from the Windows Registry.  It's a good idea to backup the registry before you edit it in case you make a mistake.  You can search Win Help for how to open/edit and backup the Registry (see Note below for how to do it in Windows 7).  Browse to... HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Cakewalk Music Software/SONAR Producer/Cakewalk VST X64/Inventory ...and delete all of the Waves keys.  BE CAREFUL TO ONLY DELETE THE KEYS THAT ARE WAVES, BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT WILL GET FIXED WHEN YOU REINSTALL YOUR WAVE PLUGINS.  The Waves keys will look similar to this:  'c:/program files/cakewalk/vstplugins/WaveShell-VST 9.2_x64.dll*1094988371 Reel ADT2V Stereo', with your Waves Plugins named at the end.
3) Search your hard drive and delete every instance of the Waves library and shell files.  For example 'WavesLib_9.3_Win32.dll' and 'WaveShell-VST 9.2_x64.dll'.  Substitute the appropriate version number (9.3, 9.2, etc.) and find all files for both versions.
4) Open Sonar and make sure it does not look for or load any Waves plug-ins.  If it still looks (queries for where are those 9.2 VST's, etc.), go back to step 3 and keep looking for Waves files.
5) Reboot.
6) Reinstall the Waves plugins and all should be fine.
 
Hope this helps and saves someone some time and hair-pulling because you can't get Waves VST's to work in that previous project file.
 
Best,
 
Neil
 
Note on opening the Win 7 Registry Editor
 -For Win 7 you can use the Command Prompt to start the Registry Editor.  The Command Prompt is found in the Start Menu in the Accessories folder.  Right click on the Command Prompt icon and select 'Run as administrator'.  In the Command Prompt window type 'regedit' and hit Enter.
 
 

Waves is quite helpful, albeit, they also cause issues they need to resolve...  WUP is worth something!

I love my Waves.  This seems to be an old issue that has never been resolved.  I'm not sure who is writing/updating the Windows registry and it may well be Sonar.  The Waves support guy said that X3 might not have this problem, but I still use X2 a lot even though I have X3.

Like Cakewalk products share the same utilities and VST Inventory in the registry. IOW, 64bit X2 Producer and 64bit X3 Producer use the same VST scanner "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\vstscan.exe" to write to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\Cakewalk VST X64\Inventory" which is read by both versions of SONAR.

HOW ABOUT VST3 Versions?? need help
 
Great post.
RegEdt32 is a drag for deleting entries but this tool is great to find and delete all at once: 
 
Regardless, the ONLY way I get Waves to magically read VST3's which is the only Waves I use in my 64bit setup is to Copy and Paste the Waveshell into the same directory.
Then it suddenly will see the COPY version.
This is a huge pain for updating waves when I buy a new plug-in and doesn't work all of the time.
Not I'm back to being totally busted. The new Waves Butch Vig never loaded for me.
 
With Izotope plugs I had to do this copy trick as well.
Any ideas with VST 3???
It's definitely a Sonar bug at this point.

You never mention which Sonar you run?

Update paths in Sonar to where they are instead of copying VSTs around.
 
Normal install path is c:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 which is listed in Sonar by default. I never put it there.
 
I have 9.3 waveshell in both a folder VstPlugin and the VST3 version as above.
Sonar scans both, and nicely hides VST2 versions.
 
So I don't think it's a Sonar issue.
 
 

I've never had any issues like this using and updating Waves 9, using Win7 x64, Sonar X2, X3 and Platinum x64 (VST 2 and 3).
If you're still covered by WUP, their support is great.