Sorry for a lack of response from the developer team. I'll be honest, it's a little difficult to fully understand what is causing the issue and what actions have been taken to narrow down the issue.
Normally, the first step would be to identify what "part" of Rainmeter is causing the issue (or even if it is Rainmeter). Basically, we need to narrow down the issue and determine if it is coming from the main Rainmeter application, a skin (or set of skins), or something loaded from a skin. Another cause could be a 3rd party application (or Windows itself).
However, in this case, the module
MMDevAPI.dll is where the fault is coming from. This file is part of the Windows operating system - BUT, it does not mean the "actual" problem is within that module. Let's try to fix this file if there is a problem with it.
The first thing I would try is to "repair" any of your Windows 11 system files. Run the following commands.
- Open an elevated command prompt. You need administrator rights to run the following commands.
- Run this command first: sfc /scannow You may need to reboot your machine after this command finishes.
- Then run this command: dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
- Reboot your machine.
That should fix any issues with
MMDevAPI.dll (if there are any). Try running Rainmeter normally and see if this fixes your issue.
If the problem persists, then we need to find out which skin (or skins) are at fault.
MMDevAPI.dll is loaded in two
default plugins related to audio (
Win7AudioPlugin and
AudioLevel), so let's start there.
The very first thing to do is turn on logging and debug mode.
https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/user-interface/manage/#Logging
Restart Rainmeter after checking both checkboxes, so we can start with a clean log.
The next thing to do is to make sure the default illustro skins run without any issue (assuming you didn't manually edit them). The best way to do this is to use
Rainmeter Safe Start. Just hold down the CTRL key down when starting Rainmeter. Your current layout will be saved as
@Backup (in case you want to load it later).
Let Rainmeter run for a while, and try to do all the things that made it crash before. At this point, if Rainmeter crashes with the
MMDevAPI.dll module, then the problem is most likely outside of Rainmeter. This could mean an underlying problem with that module, or worse, Windows 11 itself. The nuclear option of re-installing Windows 11 might be your best bet at this point.
If no crash happens with the default illustro skins, then I would suggest unloading everything again, and try loading one of your previous skins one at a time (no more than one skin loaded at a time) to try find the offending skin. Start with any skin that use any of the default plugins listed above. Then try any skin that uses a 3rd party plugin. This may take a lot of time to narrow down the issue since it isn't clear what exact actions cause the issue.
If a crash happens, please upload your log file and the skin itself (use the
rmskin packager so we all have access to any resources your skin uses).
-Brian