when i load an instrument into the kontakt player, there is a red box that wasn't there before, right underneath the word purge, for every instrument, to the left of the mute button. it is the furthest left of the three boxes. when a note is played, a red exclamation mark comes overtop of it?

does anyone know what this means?

Most likely, it means your instruments are loading in ";purged mode."; Basically what this means is that you're loading the instrument, but not the samples. Occasionally people might do this to conserve memory, however I presume it means you probably aren't hearing any sounds either.

If this happens consistently, it probably means you've checked the ";load in purged mode"; checkbox in the OPTIONS window (under the ";Load"; tab). See attached screenshot. If you want to avoid this, be sure this box isn't checked.