Just wanted to share my "mello"(?) Saturday afternoon experience to give anyone else a heads up.
Had some extra time yesterday, so I thought I would download and install a couple of new libraries. Picked up a few Sampletekk instruments and found this link about the free Mello. Figured, "Why not give it a try?". Even though I have stayed away from iLok like the plague, due to the opinions of several well respected posters here. The Sampletekk stuff installed and worked well from the get go. Opened Kontakt, loaded the libraries, tested them, all was good.
I then moved on to Mello. Registered my serial number, created iLok account, activated serial number, installed iLok, transferred license, installed UVI player, added the demo and Mello libraries (all of this went surprisingly smooth), and tried to test them. That's where the fun(translated hell) begins.
I wasn't getting any MIDI input to UVI. Hmmm, that's strange, I was getting MIDI in Kontakt 10 minutes ago.
Nothing I tried worked. None of my MIDI devices could send a signal to UVI. Closed UVI, opened Kontakt, no MIDI there either. Opened Clockworks (MOTU MIDI control/routing software), NOTHING! And I mean NOTHING!
Turns out, the UVI/iLock/Pace install TOTALLY hosed my MOTU MIDI Express XT - USB interface.
The MOTU was sent into some bizarre state and would no longer communicate with ANYTHING. It would not even transmit MIDI in stand alone mode (disconnected from PC), so it wasn't a driver issue(entirely). The hardware was hosed. Factory reset didn't help. Power cycle nada. Multiple resets, multiple power cycles, nothing. It seemed dead. However, Windows would still recognize it, load drivers and tell me everything was working fine. It just couldn't transmit any MIDI. A minor problem. Spent the next 12 hours uninstalling, reinstalling, reverting back to older drivers, rebooting, restoring, updating, removing, repairing, well, I'm sure you get the picture. It's now 2AM and the MOTU is still not functional. Shut it all down and went to bed.
This morning I was ready to break out the CC and buy a new interface. Powered up the studio, did a system restore back to Friday. Windows found the MOTU and loaded the drivers.
Opened Clockworks and everything was working. No routes were established, but at least it was talking to the MOTU. Loaded my saved configuration file and all my routes were back. YEA! I have MIDI again.
Don't know who to blame. My old legacy MOTU Express XT USB, UVI or iLok. But you can bet I won't go near iLok again. My best guess is that iLok did a query of ALL connected USB devices looking for a dongle and the old MOTU freaked. Kind of like, "You can't talk to me like that, I'm out of here!"
Sorry for the long winded rant, I'm just trying to help stop someone else from falling down the same rabbit hole.