made a broken preset, can't delete it or switch to another preset before crashing

[PeggleFrank]

had a shit ton of presets I've been working on over the years. they're still there, but I was working on a preset, and I guess I messed up somewhere. when I was working on it, it was running fine, but whenever I try to start AVS again, it loads that preset by default, and instantly crashes.

I tried quickly switching to another preset, but I just can't do it. I only have a fraction of a second to do anything with the AVS window before winamp crashes. as a last-ditch effort, I loaded up cheat engine, hooked it to winamp, and enabled the speedhack, setting it to a very low value. it had an effect when it was at 0%, but at that point I couldn't interact with the AVS window at all, so it didn't help.

I've searched far and wide and I can't find any info on where AVS presets are stored, so I can't even go in and delete the thing. there aren't any keyboard shortcuts that would make it possible to switch to another preset in time. if I try and make any changes to anything, they'll just be reverted when winamp crashes. if I could get in and delete that preset, that'd be perfect, but there just isn't any way to do that as far as I can tell.

I know AVS is dead, but I haven't found any good alternatives. vsxu's crazy ass pretentious interface is impossible to work with. I can make visualizers with after effects, but it's all pre-rendered, so I can't use it live. any suggestions would be much appreciated.

what do I do?

[Dr.Flay]

Are you saying that you never simply looked in the plugins folder ?
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\avs
C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins\avs
You make folders to group presets together

[PeggleFrank]

Are you saying that you never simply looked in the plugins folder ?
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\avs
C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins\avs
You make folders to group presets together

There isn't anything in there, besides various images, APEs, and preset packs. In explorer, I enabled hidden items, but I still can't see anything. Maybe there's just something I'm missing if they're supposed to be in that folder.

In the right-click menu on AVS, I had a list of the preset packs I had, and then "My Presets." Maybe there's a folder for it, but it's stored somewhere outside of program files (probably because of UAC)? I found a winamp folder in appdata/local/roaming, but it doesn't seem to have anything, and there isn't even a winamp folder under "my documents."

EDIT: I appreciate the quick response, by the way. I never really made anything worthy enough to be put up here, but visualizers have taught me a lot about the fields I never went into. I know these forums are pretty slow, so a response that quick means a lot.

[Dr.Flay]

OK. it does seem you have saved them elsewhere.
When you chose to save, it will have been somewhere else if you are not running as admin.

Open Winamp.ini (in the program folder) with notepad.
A programmers editor (eg. Notepad++) will show the sections as groups for easy navigation.

Or even more convenient is an actual ini editor
MiTeC INI Editor
http://www.mitec. cz/Data/XML/data_downloads.xmll
(remove the space to make the link function)

Look for the section "AVS" and in that section look for "last_preset_name"
Here you will see where the file is, and be able to remove the reference.

[PeggleFrank]

OK. it does seem you have saved them elsewhere.
When you chose to save, it will have been somewhere else if you are not running as admin.

Open Winamp.ini (in the program folder) with notepad.
A programmers editor (eg. Notepad++) will show the sections as groups for easy navigation.

Or even more convenient is an actual ini editor
MiTeC INI Editor
http://www.mitec. cz/Data/XML/data_downloads.xmll
(remove the space to make the link function)

Look for the section "AVS" and in that section look for "last_preset_name"
Here you will see where the file is, and be able to remove the reference.

Strange. I found the ini, and I changed the default to a preset that I remember the name of, but I'm getting the same crash. The path is apparently C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins\avs\My Presets, but the folder doesn't seem to exist. I tried deleting the whole reference, but that didn't seem to change anything, so I reverted it back to the way it was.

I guess I was mistaken. I'm not sure what the issue is, as the only thing that's changed between now and a few weeks ago was that I made a new preset.

I can't find any crash logs, but if they're stored somewhere, I'll go get them and paste them in here.

[Warrior of the Light]

I don't know how advanced your installation is, but I assume a clean install will fix it.

May seem a bit drastic but it's often faster than trying to find out what happened

[Dr.Flay]

Just a normal install (as admin).
I am guessing the visualiser window is stuck open or you are using the Bento skin.

To get Winamp running you can swap to another visualiser in the winamp config.
Edit the entry "visplugin_name=vis_avs.dll
swap it for vis_milk2.dll or vis_nsfs.dll

[Yathosho]

Have you tried deleting (or renaming) vis_avs.dat? That's the preset currently in use. Make sure that AVS isn't running while doing so.

[PeggleFrank]

I don't get it. I haven't launched Winamp ever since I posted this thread, but I booted it up a few days ago, and all my visualizers are working. I've gone through all of them and none of them are crashing anymore. Thank god.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

Have you tried deleting (or renaming) vis_avs.dat? That's the preset currently in use. Make sure that AVS isn't running while doing so.

That sounds good. I'll keep that in mind in case this ever happens again.