Heh. Well it makes no sense. I have a 100 other VST3 plugins they all don't set the -s flag.

I found the issue, the installer does indeed set some attributes on the installed vst3 file, and I had completely forgotten about it.

The VST3 of Pianoteq 9 is now a vst3 "bundle": a folder that can hold binaries for multiple architectures. It also contains, per Steinberg specifications, a Plugin.ico and a desktop.ini file , that allow to specify an icon for the "Pianoteq 9.vst3" folder. But in order to get it to work you have to set some attributes  on the .ico,  the desktop.ini and the bundle folder. The icon is shown only if the bundle folder has the "system" attribute, or the "read-only" attribute. So we will use the read-only attribute instead of "system" and that should solve your issue.

Yeah this is completely unnecessary to do with VST3 fikes/folders.

Fully agree...

NotePerformer does this. Now you know for some trivia night

lp

Ummm ok, it's not removing itself. The VST3 folder makes itself HIDDEN after install. Why?

Seems like the installer adds 'S - system attribute' to the directory 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Pianoteq 9.vst3'

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3>dir /AS /B P*
Pianoteq 9.vst3

"System Attribute (S): This attribute indicates that a file is a critical part of the operating system. It helps protect important system files from being altered or removed by users."

To remove the S attribute:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3>attrib -S "Pianoteq 9.vst3"

Nope, nothing like that. I would've gotten a notification from Defender, but I am not getting anything. Logs don't show anything. My whole D: drive (where I install all the VST plugins) is excluded from scanning by Defender.

Even if you tell the installer to install it to D:\... , the .vst3 file will be on C:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Pianoteq 9.vst3\Contents\x86_64-win\Pianoteq 9.vst3
MD5 HASH - 6D45623AFB8248172561C8A84ED1934A

As soon as the Windows installer is finished, the installed VST3 file is somehow automatically removed from my system (latest W10 build). I am not sure what would cause this, but something is not right with the Pianoteq 9 installer on WIndows...

Anyone else had this happen?

Maybe Windows Defender is deleting/quarantining the file because it thinks it's suspicious. Check the defender logs.

Anyone else had this happen?