Playground Forums

Trying to start Playground Sessions, but it keeps loading Download manager forever.
Starting in offline does work, but don't have any content then.
Forum solution from May 2015 did not work.
Tried restart pc/program, uninstall/install, etc.
Is there any known workaround for this startup obstacle?

[SOLVED]
Andrew provided a solution as follows:
"1) Disconnect all MIDI devices.

2) Find the "Playground" folder. Delete it. You can accomplish this one of two ways:
A)
-open the Playground app
-click on the help tab
-click on "open Playground data folder" (NOTE: this is not the final destination. We want to get to the parent Playground folder.)
-Notice that you are in the Local store folder. Click "Playground" in the address bar to view that folder.
-Now you're in the Playground folder. However, to delete it, you need to backtrack one more to the Roaming folder (Click "Roaming")
-You should now be in the Roaming folder, and the Playground folder should be highlighted. Delete it.
OR
B)
-Click the Windows home button in the bottom left hand corner of your screen.
-type %AppData% in the search box, exactly. Press enter on your keyboard.
-You should now be in the Roaming folder. Scroll down until you find the Playground folder. Click it and delete it.

3) Uninstall Playground
4) Reinstall Playground from playgroundsessions.com/support/downloads. Build #582 will download."

[UPDATE]
There is some bug causing the download manager-problem to come back the next day.
But resetting on startup works every time and seems to function for a day, before it comes back.
It's a little buggy, but it works.

Having the exact same Problem, but the workaround does not help in my case. Still hangs indefinitely on "Loading Download Manager …".

I tried:

• Delete the folder: C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Roaming\Playground

• Disconnect MIDI device

• Uninstall Playground

• Install latest Playground (Build 582)

Same Problem, hangs indefinetly and is unusable.

Additional steps I tried without success:

• Explicitely permit Playground.exe through firewall

• Deactivate the install via the web site

Computer is a freshly installed Win 10 1909.

Note: I started Playground the first time from a local user and it did work. Then I joined a domain and used a domain user and since then it hangs.

Update: When I log into the old local user account Playground works nicely. But not with the domain user.
It's not a permission issue, both users are in the Admin group (for testing).

This might be better answered by tech support, but is it possible that Playground Sessions sees the domain user as different than the local user? In relation to software licensing that is.

I have had the "hang" problem when installing PGS on a new system without deleting the old install from The PGS website. You get 2 and that's it.

Maybe log into the website and check how many installs you have. A brute force check would be to delete the current installs and then rerun PGS as the domain user. Do not start PGS under a local user account. That might fix it.

Good luck and let us know.

Thanks @EFlatMajor for your thoughts!

Maybe log into the website and check how many installs you have

Only this 1 install is there.

A brute force check would be to delete the current installs and then rerun PGS as the domain user. Do not start PGS under a local user account.

That's exactly what I did. In addition I cleaned the file System from any PlaygroundSession remains (like %appdata%\Playground) and the registry (by searching for "playground").
Then, I deleted the install from the website and freshly installed with the domain user. So everything should be squeaky-clean.

Since there's no solution yet, I'm starting PlaygroundSessions from my Domain User with the "runas" command so that it runs in the local user context without requiring my to switch user in Windows.

This is my PlaygroundWorkaround.bat file:

Thanks for the update, @doublehelix. Sounds like a good workaround, and should last you until the new platform is done and the desktop version of PGS gets a well deserved facelift!