How to disable VST scan at startup?

Ok, seems a feature request is in order then, thx for your help anyway.

Moving is not a pita, that's just a bigger job with possible headaches to missing this and that, the PITA is to have everything spread all over the disks. This i know from having like this in the past. A comparative example would be windows media player insisting your media files be in a certain folder (wouldn't surprise me if it did.. ;)), then using time automatically scanning them all for changes at startup without a way to switch off. Would u move all your media files and accept the delay and think it unreasonable to request an option?

this is the way i have it set up: d:\vst\fx d:\vst\vsti d:\vst\obsolete d:\vst\samples all the sample libraries go in d:\vst\samples. i back up the d:\vst folder, and tell reaper to scan d:\vst\fx and d:\vst\vsti folders. any plugins i want to stop using go in the d:\vst\obsolete folder which i add back to the scan path if i need to load an ancient project for some reason.

Where do u keep presets, data files etc etc? In program files? Application data? How about those that are both fx and vsti like Zebra, Predator, Z3ta etc? I like to have all in the same folder so if i ever need to find something i dont have to fuss for it, there's only one folder for everything connected to whatever vst and i know exactly where it is without thinking. Point is this ought to be my choice and remember there is already an option in Reaper to disable DX plugins from being scanned at startup, seems natural with a similar one for VST, especially in a super configurable and user friendly thing like Reaper.

d:\vst\presets If all plugin presets are in here then you always know where to look. Even if a plugin needs presets in the same folder I duplicate to the dedicated presets folder. Particularly useful way to backup my own patches too, which are still there even after a reinstall on the C drive.

Btw, just did a normal windows (xp 32) search for dll's in the plugin folder, took less than 15 seconds to get the full list.

My experience is that 1st startups take a while. After that, it varies for no reason that I can see. Sometimes it starts instantly, other times it can take 15-30 seconds (rough estimate).

Reaper 32 slow startup scan win7 

I'm having a similar problem. Reaper is taking 15 to 20 minutes to boot up. I tried this and it booted fast without the plugins the first time but went back to slow on subsequent bootups. >you could try going to this command: >find reaper-vstplugins.ini >rename it to reaper-vstplugins.ini.bak >and re-open reaper Any thoughts? Thanks, Bill

I trust Reaper to add the no-scan option switch sooner or later so will not bother to make triplicates and rearrange my folders as others use as a workaround. But 15-20 min startup is long.. Seems like there might be certain plugin(s) causing a hang, so try to find by using different paths (if necessary move vst folders to new separate). Type the different paths in Preferences > VST > VST plug-in paths