Am I dreaming or did Cubase 10 start up immediately without scanning all the plugins? I guess I am not. At last Steinberg. Thank you.
Yes, no more scanning for time changes. This was an improvement announced when Cubase 9.5.50 was released.
CAN-19854 Plug-ins: Plug-ins are no longer re-scanned due to time changes.
Regards 
They had to make this change because the EU have agreed to stop changing the clocks.
European Parliament votes by 410 to 192 in favor of ending the practice of seasonal time shifts
No, seriously – this is not an April Fool’s joke!
Whatever purpose the scanning served, it would no longer have worked past 2021.
Well I for one am pleased to see an end to it.
I don’t see the logic in making that connection.
Something in the code was able to detect whether a change to or from daylight savings time (DST) had occurred since the last time Cubase was started. If a change had occurred, all VST plugins were rescanned, which for some users with hundred of plugins, could take a very long time. If the clocks were to no longer change (as will be the case in the EU, home of Steinberg, after 2021), this rescanning would no longer be triggered.
None of us ever really knew the logic of doing this rescanning in the first place – why not just check the interval between Cubase restarts for example? Perhaps it was just “ancient” code that nobody wanted to touch, and the abolition of clock changes was the incentive to finally fix this.
But (annoyingly) in the USA they do switch the time twice a year…
That does not make any sense, if there is no more DST there is no reason to change it in the first place.
It was triggered on Windows computers with automatic DST, because Windows sets a file attribute making all files look new to Cubase and triggering a rescan. Manually setting the time did not.
Not the only program to do that btw, AutoCAD comes to mind.
So if anything they fixed something that, for us in Europe no longer is relevant.
Thank Good anyway 
Years ago I checked, and found that the plugins scanning was not only after DST changes, but after any manual system clock change instead. Just for the record…happy it’s forever gone anyway.
I’ll preface this by pointing out that none of us can really know as we don’t have access to the source code, but what the hey, it’s fun to speculate! So just my own idle speculation, and I’m quite happy to be wrong…
My point is, if the code was relying on the clock changes to know when to trigger the rescan (for whatever reason), that mechanism would no longer work past 2021 in the EU. The automatic clock change on an internet-connected computer is one reliable way for code to know whether the time set on the computer is accurate (and not artifically kept reset, for example as an attempt to prolong time-limited trial versions).
It was triggered on Windows computers with automatic DST, because Windows sets a file attribute making all files look new to Cubase and triggering a rescan
Doesn’t really make sense either, because changing the clock doesn’t change any file timestamps. What file attributes would be set? There is no file attribute that says “new”.
Manually setting the time did not
… which actually supports my theory that it was specifically DST changes that were detected.
Not the only program to do that btw, AutoCAD comes to mind
Also a heavily protected product, so perhaps it was something to do with anti-piracy measures.
Thank Good anyway >
Absolutely!
I think I remember reading something about it stemming form an old trick of changing the computer clock to get past copy protection.
I believe the EU will soon have a vacancy, if you guys are interested … 
Feels like a good time to apply. Can you put a word in? Gonna wait and see about brexit though- cause I like beans for breakfast.