Hi, guys,
     I know that leaving old versions of Cakewalk products is a good idea and I know that the actual program itself takes little space on the hard drive. In light of that, I now have 8.5, X1, X1 Expanded, X2 and all those plugins. I wonder how many of you when you upgrade may consider cleaning all those versions off and clean install X3 if it works all right.
     It is really becoming a chore to keep up with all these versions and especially the plugins. I don't really use the older versions at all but you know as well as I do that if you uninstall one version it can cause chaos with your working version because of shared plugin locations between versions. I'm just interested to know if anyone recommends dumping these older versions off and doing a clean install of X3 after testing it to make sure it works. I have a pretty good idea of what the answers will be. Just would like to see what you all have to say.

I don't see a reason to remove older versions.  I delete the shortcut and then I forget they even exist.  They're not in my way and I'm unconcerned about the space they take up.
It's bad enough that I have to contend with it when I migrate to a new machine- I would NEVER bring it upon myself intentionally!

If plug-in clutter is the issue, create a custom layout. If a custom layout is not satisfactory exclude the plug-ins in the plug-in manager.
 

I'm about to reinstall X2 but also want to have X1 and some of it's components on board as well. I was kind of thinking that if I install X2 first then it will get a chance to set itself up better because that's the main program I'll be using THEN install X1. However I saw someone mention this may not be the greatest thing to do and it might actually make things worse.
 
I guess I just want to keep the X1 and X2 installs completely separate if at all possible so they aren't sharing any folders/registry or other stuff I don't fully understand yet. I'm probably being insane as usual but I'd really like to figure out if this is possible. Maybe with all the Bakers running around they can take a moment and offer some insight on this type of multi version install.

I share the same concerns of Sidroe.  I remember that the X2's clean install was very hard, specially when you have a lot of plugins, sound samples, etc...  I think that, this time, I'm gonna install X3 over X2 and have both in my machine, although I don't like the idea.

It just seems like my list of plugins grows longer with the third party plugs as well. It feels like I'm setting myself up for trouble down the line somewhere with having all these dlls spread everywhere. If I were the Plugin Manager in Sonar I would be saying what is this guy doing. LOL

Isn't there a way to create a parent folder for all that stuff that you can point the scanner to? I don't know if the scanner will dig down through a couple folder levels but I remember I got PO'd trying to get BFD to work and I think I created a new folder and just drug stuff into that. That was a long time ago though.

    I Did an experiment with UAD plugins that worked. I imagine it should work with any VST.
    I was tired of all the non-authorized UAD plugs showing up all the time and the plugin manager seemed tedious to me. 
    I copied all of my authorized plugins to a new folder and used that as the VST scan destination for the UAD stuff. It worked flawlessly.
   I recommend copying the dlls. to a new folder instead of moving them so if you have any issues you can always guide the VST scan back to the original folder.
 

Sidroe
It just seems like my list of plugins grows longer with the third party plugs as well. It feels like I'm setting myself up for trouble down the line somewhere with having all these dlls spread everywhere. If I were the Plugin Manager in Sonar I would be saying what is this guy doing. LOL

Don't install them. If installed, use the exclude feature in the plug-in manager, they simply won't be displayed. If not excluded, don't add them to the plug-in layout.
 
Moreover, practically every installer provides the ability to pick what is installed and where to install it.

Beepster
I'm about to reinstall X2 but also want to have X1 and some of it's components on board as well. I was kind of thinking that if I install X2 first then it will get a chance to set itself up better because that's the main program I'll be using THEN install X1. However I saw someone mention this may not be the greatest thing to do and it might actually make things worse.
 
I guess I just want to keep the X1 and X2 installs completely separate if at all possible so they aren't sharing any folders/registry or other stuff I don't fully understand yet. I'm probably being insane as usual but I'd really like to figure out if this is possible. Maybe with all the Bakers running around they can take a moment and offer some insight on this type of multi version install.

Beepster I have somewhat the same issue.
 
Because  of a major hard drive failure I lost both X1 and X2, s I had to re-download the files from Cake. But for whatever reason; I re-installed X2 and I guess forgot all about X1 and didn't re-load it.
 
Now I am kicking myself as there are parts of X1 that I want and am wondering if I re-load X1, it won't mess up the X2 setup and files.
 
 Thanks for any response that will help with this issue?