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Forum: VirtualDJ Technical Support

Topic: Recent Windows 11 (Feb 2026) Updates causes connectivity issues with Rane controllers. - Page: 2
Thanks PhantomDJ, mine was just a question. I never doubted the VDJ dev team or the community. I know you’re all working hard to keep this amazing software running smoothly, as always.

I’m not very technical, so when I read something that sounds quite impactful, it’s not always easy to fully understand. Sometimes it just takes a quick clarification to put things into perspective, like you just did.
 
Yes, I'm just doing a more detailed explanation, not just for you, but for everyone else that reads this topic as well! :)
 
That's right! well done!
 
Adion wrote :
So far it appears most Pioneer/AlphaTheta controllers are not affected and work fine with Midi 2.0
Most InMusic controllers (Denon/Rane/Numark) that require drivers appear to be affected.
There's also been reportrs of at least some Hercules controllers being affected.


I will verify that my Hercules classic RMX was affected. On the Hercules own forums I saw many others.

Even though I had "rigged" my Windows 11, I have now installed all the mandatory Windows updates, installed the EA Virtual DJ build, turned off MIDI 2.0, and now my RMX works again. The only thing that's weird is that I have to unplug it and plug it back in after launching VDJ.

I never tried my Traktor s3 mk4 to see if it had the problem.
 
DJNeidermeyer wrote :
Adion wrote :
So far it appears most Pioneer/AlphaTheta controllers are not affected and work fine with Midi 2.0
Most InMusic controllers (Denon/Rane/Numark) that require drivers appear to be affected.
There's also been reportrs of at least some Hercules controllers being affected.


I will verify that my Hercules classic RMX was affected. On the Hercules own forums I saw many others.

Even though I had "rigged" my Windows 11, I have now installed all the mandatory Windows updates, installed the EA Virtual DJ build, turned off MIDI 2.0, and now my RMX works again. The only thing that's weird is that I have to unplug it and plug it back in after launching VDJ.

I never tried my Traktor s3 mk4 to see if it had the problem.


You can add Hercules MK2 and Denon Prime 4 to that list of those affected... I suppose most if not all InMusic controllers are also affected and that includes the newest Rane System One controller.
 
Traktor Controllers operate via HID with VirtualDJ so there's no issue there.

For inMusic, Denon MC6000MK2 (as an example) has no issues with MIDI 2.0 while MC6000MK1 had.
So, it's quite unpredictable.
 
In all the research I did concerning this and learning what the issue was, I came across a comment by Pete Brown on how these drivers would always hang when shutting down VirtualDJ or Serato Pro. This was before the suspect updates (MIDI 2.0). I looked at my Event viewer and he was right they did hang for a bit. Going deeper down that rabbit hole I found that these drivers go back to 2010-2011 and haven't been updated much. Part of the issue is these drivers are described as 'Audio+USB' and are not class-compliant. In the Discord group, Pete had said that there was no way they could code the MIDI 2.0 stack around the InMusic drivers, they tried. So it leaves this up to InMusic, Hercules and any other brand affected to update their drivers to meet the MIDI 2.0/1.0 Windows service. I do know Pete has reached out to InMusic about their drivers and he expects a new driver 'later in the year', I would assume that driver will be compatible with MIDI 2.0... The dark-side of that is when they release those new drivers, how buggy will they be? Case in point: Rane System One has lots of issues they've yet to get right. Let hope they get the drivers right the first time.
 
My trip down the rabbit hole indicates that this is not a class compliance issue as Microsoft is claiming. Microsoft is well known for breaking industry standards to inject their own version and then claiming it is everyone else who's is responsible for complying with their newly created standard. I am reasonably certain that is the case here.

Rane Four was never supported as pure class compliant midi device. My Rane Four is designed to use the Rane Four ASIO/USB driver for full functionality and low latency.
The pattern we are seeing is consistent with Windows MIDI Services regression issue. Not a driver issue.

Those of us impacted by this problem need to go back at Microsoft and insist that this be investigated as a Windows MIDI Services regression problem, not a driver problem.

Thanks goes out to everyone who helped with this.
Especially the VDJ team for getting is back in action while this plays out.
Props to the VDJ team.
 
My 2 cents...

I rarely blame Developers (always appreciate their efforts on improving things), but will make an exception here, because the impact to the DJ community is huge.

I blame Microsoft 100% (sorry Pete). Assuming that this new MIDI 2.0 service is better than the 1.0, they should have secured backwards compatibilty.
MIDI 1.0 service is available almost since forever and you have no idea how many custom drivers have been written based on that.
If Microsoft wanted to bring their new achievement, they should have offered some kind of "switch" at least for the non-standard drivers, and later if developers decide to get some advantage of the MIDI 2.0 to have something like ... If (MIDI_1) do this ELSE do that.
They claimed that during their "beta" sessions, there was not much of participation from MIDI manufactures, but .. hey .. do you have any idea of how many Midi devices with custom drivers are out there ? And even if there was not much of interest from them, Microsoft should be worried on rolling out this update.

If Microsoft wants to bring peace back, they can roll out some temporary fix (asap). Surely you dont expect hundrends of Drivers to be re-written/fixed/updated in a short period of time.
Not to mention that some/several users might jump to the other side of the OS river ;)
 
Absolutely Babis, 100 percent agreed.
 
I think at this point a way to disable the new MIDI service permanently could be answer for us then? Kind of like a optional update or a toggle switch in windows settings?

Would latency be an issue with todays upper-end laptops?

I did test the Rane Four without drivers present and with MIDI service enabled. It did not show any devices at all.

Lastly, Will the VDJ MIDI checkbox continue to work or will it have to be adjusted over time to continue to function. I'm perfectly happy with that solution too.
 
@djdad anyone in Software development knows that they committed a cardinal sin by breaking backwards compatibility by prematurely updating such a crucial stack like that.
It seems that the entire DJ industry wasn't considered at all. Even if InMusic drivers are written improperly - the old MIDI stack worked well enough with the bad implementation to not cause issues and the new one doesn't work well at all - I don't think there is an excuse for that. As much as I appreciate the Microsoft dev taking responsibilty for the problems, it seems that they did not follow their own POM for this (find out out who all the stakeholders are and get their input/feedback before releasing such change).
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
@djdad anyone in Software development knows that they committed a cardinal sin by breaking such a crucial stack like that.
It seems that the entire DJ industry wasn't considered at all. Even if InMusic drivers are written improperly - the old MIDI stack worked well enough with the bad implementation to not cause issues and the new one doesn't work well at all - I don't think there is an excuse for that. As much as I appreciate the Microsoft dev taking responsibilty for the problems, it seems that they did not follow their own POM for this (find out out who all the stakeholders are and get their input/feedback before releasing such change).


I guess I got used to having to strip Windows 10/11 to a barebones OS despite Microsoft. You know, disabling features using Winhance, Chris Titus, and ViVeTool. All the advertising telemetry MS does including MS Store I strip as well. Not to mention Copilot and OneDrive (can't stand that one) as well as many others.

One thing I kept seeing is a lack of consulting DJ controller companies on MIDI 2.0 from the start. It seems this is all being geared for music producers. You and DJDAD are right... The controllers DID function prior to the update hence things like VDJ's MIDI & ViVeTool solutions restore that for us. What does disturb me is that if these controller companies don't change the driver then the drivers could be Blacklisted (whatever they mean by that) by Microsoft. I don't know if that's a scare-tactic but that raises some serious issues.

Before all this, I knew very little about MIDI other than how to map things on gear with DJ software...
 
Making the Windows machine performant by removing bloat is different from restoring a OS Protocol Stack. One is just optimization of the OS and removal of unnecessary things, the other is basiclaly reversing an OS implementation (which you can't normally do yourself). Like a comparison here would like rewriting the entire network stack to be faster, but not checking network application writers and hardware makers on it, then release it and finding those apps/network devices are failing, and you have to deal with the fallout of the internet accessibility on Windows machines and all applications that depend on that. Stripping bloat/optimizing performance wouldn't save you there - the implementer would have to bring back what worked (i.e. rush an update or tool to bring back the old stack) in the interim and solve the incompatibilities with the new stack to re-release it or the drivers that would use it. Could you imagine not being able to access the internet by just doing an update? That may seem exaggerated but that's essentially what happened here, just replace the Network stack with the MIDI stack.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
Making the Windows machine performant by removing bloat is different from restoring a OS Protocol Stack. One is just optimization of the OS and removal of unnecessary things, the other is basiclaly reversing an OS implementation (which you can't normally do yourself). Like a comparison here would like rewriting the entire network stack to be faster, but not checking network application writers and hardware makers on it, then release it and finding those apps/network devices are failing, and you have to deal with the fallout of the internet accessibility on Windows machines and all applications that depend on that. Stripping bloat/optimizing performance wouldn't save you there - the implementer would have to bring back what worked (i.e. rush an update or tool to bring back the old stack) in the interim and solve the incompatibilities with the new stack to re-release it. Could you imagine not being able to access the internet by just doing an update? That may seem exaggerated but that's essentially what happened here, just replace the Network stack with the MIDI stack.


I see your point. What we have seen out of Microsoft for years is 'test it live on the public'... A simple solution would have been to make MIDI 2.0 an optional update (not automatic install) and not just kill the old MIDI stack.

I can tell you that a lot of DJ's I know IRL, were mad as a hornet when they went to a gig and found their Rane controller wouldn't connect. Then I got the frantic phone call. One DJ I brought a SX3 to him so he could do the gig (wedding). That's why I stayed with this issue until solutions were found. I really feel bad for those of us that don't have IT knowledge to deal with this.
 
@VDJ DEV TEAM would it be possible to GA release only this to cope with the situation?

BUILD 9245 (2026-03-25)

- new disableMidi2 option (in "missing controller" tab and in options) to fix the problems from the latest Windows KB update
 
Probably better to cherry-pick this one switch change separately to its own build and GA that, given the extent of the issue.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
Probably better to cherry-pick this one switch change separately to its own build and GA that, given the extent of the issue.


That's what I meant ✌🏾
 
are there problems with the pioneer ddj FLX10 with windows?
 
We have the preview of the workaround for inMusic drivers (AKAI, m-audio, RANE, etc.) on our Discord server. It will go into Windows at the end of May.

Seems if I post a link to it, the post gets tossed away as spam.

Pete
Microsoft
 
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