PG Music Home Forums FAQ and Knowledge Base Band-in-a-Box for Windows FAQ Error message when loading the program: "System cannot find file specified at..."

This is most likely a Windows error that occurs when Band-in-a-Box^® asks Windows to search for DirectX plugins on your computer. The problem is probably related to an incorrectly installed or corrupt DirectX Plugin.

To fix this, you should first eliminate the possibility that there is a problem with one of the Band-in-a-Box^® settings files, or one of the PG Music DirectX plugins. To do this, perform an install of the main program to a different folder than it's installed to now. This won't "mess up" your existing installation. Just choose a different Band-in-a-Box^® folder, for example C:\bb_test. You don't need to reinstall RealTracks files, but in the Setup wizard make sure that the PG DirectX plugins component is selected. Once it's finished, run Band-in-a-Box^® from the new folder and see if the same error occurs. If it doesn't, you could use your new installation, or you may be able to fix your old installation by returning the program to factory settings as in this FAQ topic (delete the dxplugin related files listed there).

If the error still occurs with the new installation, then here are some further tips.

• Try downloading the latest version of DirectX from Microsoft's website.

• Check your hard disk for errors. Right Click on your hard drive and select Properties. On the Tools tab - Error Checking, click the Check Now button. Check both boxes (Fix File System Errors and Scan/attempt recovery of bad sectors). You will need to reboot the computer to run this scan.

As mentioned, if none of those suggestions fixed the problem, there is most likely a third party (non-PG Music) DirectX plugin on your computer which was moved or deleted, or there is a problem with the plugin's registry entry. It is possible that just one corrupt DX plugin file somewhere on your computer is causing the problem

• If you have recently installed any third party DirectX plugins (or software that might have included DX plugins), try uninstalling/reinstalling this software.

• In the Band-in-a-Box^® folder (e.g. C:\bb\Data\Logs) you should find a file called PluginScanLog.log. This file can be opened with a text editor like NotePad. Since this file will be recently modified, if you sort the contents of the bb folder by date modified, you'll be able to find it easily. This file may tell you which plugin is causing the problem by seeing if there's a particular plugin that the log stops at. Then you can either try to fix the plugin (uninstall/reinstall/clean it out of registry) or add it to the Band-in-a-Box^® DX plugin exclude list.

  The exclude list is also found in the bb\Preferences folder - called "dxplugexclude.ini". This file can be edited with NotePad. Save a backup copy of the original "factory" file, so you can revert back to it if needed. If you add a plugin to the list, launch Band-in-a-Box^® and see if you still get the error. If you do, examine the PluginScanLog again, repeating this for any other plugins it stops at.

• You could try to track down and uninstall all of your plugins. You may also be able to find a utility that will check the registry and flag any DX plugin that has a registry entry which no longer points to a valid file.