Trouble with the plug scanner

I've been on Sonar since it was released and this has never happened before, some plugs are scanned but not registered by the scanner. The scanner seems to take a brief look and move on. All Spectrasonics plugs are failing, Trilian, Omnisphere and Atmosphere and a few other synths.
The odd part is I can open an older file, before the problem existed and those plugs are available. 
Anyone got any suggestions?
 
Thanks - rev

>Often this points to a layout problem.
Thanks. What kind of layout problem?
 
More: The plugs all appear under their respective headings (Vsti, Vst3, etc) and I build a set of custom folders grouped by instrument but several plugs are still missing from the .pgl file - even though I've successfully added them. I can't find other versions of the .pgl file anywhere so I'm not accidentally calling the wrong one.
 
This seems to suggest that the system is unable to save changes the .pgl file?
 
 

One more thing, I recall some having problems with custom plug-in layouts in older versions of SONAR (I guess they are all old now). This may be one of those issues. It is one reason I avoided custom layouts until Cakewalk moved away from the "Default - All Plug-ins" layout to the current scheme. IOW, it may be the .pgl is bad. If this is case, try recreating the file from scratch.

I have no idea what SONAR version this thread is about or what software has been installed. If this is an issue with SONAR 8.5, my guess is the Shared Utilities are too new. Possibly from a trial version of Artist/Professional/ Platinum or CbB. The utitilies used to be backward compatible but that changed in early 2017. If this is the issue and the "Default - All Plug-ins" is not usable, options are limited. IIRC, the "Default - All Plug-ins" layout does not build a regular pgl instead it builds a tmp file called default.pgl.tmp (at least that is what it is called in X2, the oldest version I have installed). My guess is "All Plugs.pgl" is a user created file not the default. The default is not a custom layout and was listed above the custom layouts. However, if the default is not usable and utilities got updated in the last year, the only way to use SONAR 8.5 plug-in management is restore the old shared utilities. IOW, rename the folder and reinstall. Don't have to reinstall everything but the basic program. That or upgrade the rest from whatever version is running.

It may not need the updates, I am not sure what all will be overwritten. Worst case the re-install will need updating after re-install. Before re-install make sure to rename the "Shared Utilities" folder to insure it is recreated.

You may if you wish. Using the Windows uninstall process for SONAR (like most Windows uninstall processes) does not remove user created files.
 
That said, it is not necessary to fix this issue. Only you know what software has been installed. I am guessing that a newer version of the "Shared Utilities" was installed and based on that suggested a method of restoring the 8.5 version.