Crash Dump File Viewer?

Has Steinberg (or a third-party) developed a crash dump file viewer available to end-users to analyze Cubase crashes?

I think many of us would find such a program very useful. :wink:

Hi,

Steinberg doesnā€™t, and 3rd party nether as far as I know.

+1 for Crash Dump File Viewer

4 Likes

+2

1 Like

If the .dmp files are normal MS Visual Studio dump files then WinDbg or any of the other debuggers may be the answer.
That is not something Steinberg would be able to provide.
And to be honest Iā€™m not sure it would be such a great idea, without some sort of training it might send the user on a wild goose chase.
OTOH any pointer to what could be the cause of the crash would be extremely helpful.
+1

All the crash dump files (e.g., Cubase 9.5.21.3 64bit 2018.4.14 4.59.dmp) have these common characters in the file header: ā€œMDMPā€œĀ§Ā±aā€. Does anyone recognize these?

In the past Iā€™ve used my hexeditor, UltraEdit, (switched into ASCII mode) to view the crash dumps. It can be helpful if you search for text like .dll, .exe, plugin, etc. But to peakaeā€™s point, it often is time consuming and yields no usable results in the end. The other technique I use is to make a guess as to which plugin is causing the problem and then (temporarily) zip-archive it and re-load the crashing project. Needless to say, neither of these methods are desirable.

If a crash dump file viewer is not available, then what about a debugger?

For example, using a command line switch or key modifier, Cubase would start in debug mode forcing it to load just one plugin at a time, and reporting the results to screen:

Loading ABC ā€¦ success
Loading DEF ā€¦ success
Loading GHI ā€¦ success
Loading JKL ā€¦ fail!

The readout would either pause after each plugin (requiring a key-press to continue), or scroll quickly and stop only when a failure occurs. If none occurs, it would load the project as usual and exit the debug mode. Ideally, the results would also be written to a file for subsequent viewing and analysis.

Cubase already reports some of this information in the initial splash screen, however it goes by so fast that you canā€™t see whatā€™s happening. If this information could be: 1) enhanced; 2) slowed-down; and 3) saved to file (as described above), it would be very useful!

Of course this doesnā€™t help if a project crashes on exit (or if Cubase itself crashes after closing a project), nor does it help if Cubase crashes in the middle of a session. However it would nonetheless be a welcomed addition because if the above scenarios are serious and cause a project to crash when next loaded, at least youā€™ll know what happened.

Would anyone else find this useful?

This post is extremely helpful to those who like to dig in the technical depths of software failure :slight_smile: Indeed the crash logs are regular dump files and WinDbg is the tool you might want to have a look at. Further itā€™s possible to use Visual Studio and open the dump file, then perform ā€œDebug with native onlyā€. You get information about the modules loaded and in which module the software crashed, this can be the application itself or any plugin and windows module.

You can still describe your problem in a thread here, and provide a download link (Dropbox, Google, etc) or attach the crash-dump to your post. So we have a chance to find it and look into it.

2 Likes

+1

+1

The OP question has been answered, please see the confirmation from Joerg above, one can use WinDbg for this.

thanks!!!

I found a Crashdump called:

Cubase9.5.exe.12312.dmp

that I found at: C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\CrashDumps

Could I send this heavy one to Steinberg Support?

Hi,

Cubase 9.5 is not in the development anymore. So the only one sense would be, if your Cubase crashes in any plug-in, the plug-in would be found. Or if it would be in a graphic card area, they would find it out and recommend some graphic card optimization.

I know but I was thinking it can help to found some kind of bug related to 10ā€¦

in any case the comments would be helpful to know what plugins are causing problemsā€¦

Windows Debug, great stuff! Making my Cubase life a bit easier, I have to say. Thanks for the tip.

Can someone interpret my *.dmp file please?

Cubase 11.0.10.321 64bit 2021.2.28 11.23.22.799.dmp (561.9 KB)

If someone could interpret yours, how about this?Sampler track crashing(doing it again) - #4 by Robert_Donithan

Hi,

Update to the latest Cubase 10.0.30, please. If itā€™s still crashing, create a new thread with the proper description, when the crash happened, please.

Hi,

I went to
WinDbg Preview - Official app in the Microsoft Store

and tried to d/l WinDbg but got the following error message (lower right corner of image):

Does anyone know how to actually obtain the file? I also tried sites like Download, but they all lead to the MS site.

Thanksā€¦

The installation worked for me, but when I open a cubase dump file, it loads for a long time and then nothing happens. Itā€™s a bit like freezing. I canā€™t even click on the menus after that. Has anyone experienced something similar? I agree with those who think it would be good to have an own program for reading the dump file, because I have had 2-3 crashes in the past 3 days and it would be good to know what exactly causes it. Writing to Steinberg support every time is not the best solution in my opinion.