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When launched, Finale scans your computer for audio-capable devices that it can use. If it finds a conflict with one of your devices, this conflict could cause Finale to hang when launched or the audio engine to fail to load. To determine if the freezing of the application is due to a conflict with an audio device, please follow the steps in this article to deactivate Windows Print Spooler and the Windows Audio service to isolate the cause.

 

If you have already taken these steps, and have determined that stopping the Windows Audio service allows Finale to launch, please follow the steps below to manage your audio devices and try to narrow down the possible problem devices...

  1. Close any open programs.
  2. Hold down the Windows key on your computer keyboard and press the letter R at the same time to open the Run dialog box.
  3. Type "devmgmt.msc" (without quotes) into the field of the Run dialog box.
  4. Click OK.
  5. In the Device Manager window expand the Sound, video and game controllers section.
  6. Try disabling all of the audio devices by right-clicking each device and choosing Disable.
  7. Enable one device at a time, launching Finale after each reactivation to see which audio hardware causes the issue.
  8. Once you have identified the problem device, please try reinstalling the latest drivers available for that device.

If you do not have an audio device that will work with Finale, you can try following the steps below to edit Finale's configuration files to tell Finale to ignore loading certain Audio Device APIs (leaving only DirectSound) and thereby decreasing the likelihood of a conflict between Finale and your audio hardware.

  1. Close Finale.
  2. Hold down your Windows key and press the letter R to open the Run dialog box.
  3. Type "%appdata%" (without quotation marks) and click OK.
  4. Navigate to MakeMusic\Finale [version number here if 2014.5 or earlier].
  5. In your Finale folder, find and open the file named FINMIDI.ini (the ".ini" extension may or may not be present depending on your operating system's configuration). It should open in a text editor such as Notepad.
  6. Near bottom of the file until you see a section that looks like this:

[AUDIOAPIPREFS]

EngineLoaded=1

ASIOEnabled=1

DirectSoundEnabled=1

WASAPIEnabled=1

  1. Change the ASIOEnabled value from 1 to 0, so that line should now read "ASIOEnabled=0".
  2. Change the WASAPIEnabled value from 1 to 0, so that line should now read "WASAPIEnabled=0".
  3. Save and close the file, then relaunch Finale to see if the issue has been resolved.

If at this point, you are unable to launch Finale with any of your available audio devices, please feel free to contact Customer Success.

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