Cubase 11/12 freezing intermittently when accessing a File Explorer dialog

Cubase
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1

Hey everyone,

Am at a bit of a loss from a troubleshooting standpoint, so am wondering if anyone else has experienced this at all.

I am on Windows 10, on a Ryzen machine. All software (and hardware) is original.
I use (and keep up to date): Waves plugs, Soundtoys, Izotope, Plugin Alliance, Valhalla etc. These aren’t in every session.
VST Instruments I use often: Vienna Ens Pro, Kontakt, Dune, Etc. These are all part of my template.

I am connected over the ethernet to VEPro servers.

the symptom can be described as:
On opening Cubase 11 or 12, and, once in a project… notably - on the first time of going to any kind of file explorer window, so it could be Export Audio mixdown, or export video - the file explorer window goes white and freezes. So the window pop up comes up, but everything is blank. Cubase locks up for a varying amount of time. So it is frozen. Everything else in the background is not frozen.

Then suddenly, usually within a few minutes, it unlocks itself, file explorer populates as normal and everything is well.

What I have also noticed is that, this doesn’t happen again as long as i don’t exit Cubase.

Also, this doesn’t seem to happen at all on an empty session. It almost always happens when in an existing fully loaded session or template. Meaning 1000s of tracks.

Has anyone experienced anything like this or have any tips?

I have updated or checked drivers of literally almost everything. Including GPU.

Also up to this point, i’ve done extensive troubleshooting, including replacing motherboard, cpu, buying new RAM that was on the QVL list of the new motherboard. System works great and is stable. But this symptom happened before the motherboard/cpu swap. It was worse actually, the lockups lasted longer. At least now they seem to be short…

Thanks!
J

1 Like
2

Hi,

Generate a DMP file and share it via Dropbox or similar service, please.

Use Microsoft ProcDump utility to generate a DMP file, please.

  1. Please download ProcDump64 from Microsoft (~650kB) and extract the archive to a local folder on your harddisk.

  2. Run Command Prompt (cmd) as administrator (right click and select “run as administrator”)

  3. Navigate (in the Command Prompt) to the folder with the extracted procdump file.
    For example:
    cd C:\ Users \ \ Downloads \ Procdump
    Note: the dmp file will be written into that folder.

  4. Launch Cubase/Nuendo. You can work as usual. At any time, change to the command prompt and start procdump, to monitor Cubase/Nuendo for unexpected behavior (see next step).

  5. Launch procdump64 via Command Prompt:
    Cubase 12:
    procdump64 -e -h -t Cubase12

Nuendo 11:
procdump64 -e -h -t Nuendo11

The -h option will write a dmp file in case of an application hang. This might kick in too early sometimes, in case some action takes a little longer. Feel free to skip the “-h” option, if you are only up for fetching crashes.
The option -e will catch exeptions and the option -t terminations of the application.

  1. Prodump is now monitoring the Cubase/Nuendo process and will write a crash log, in case Cubase/Nuendo crashes or hangs. Perform the action that causes Cubase/Nuendo to crash and send us the generated crash dmp.

ZIP and share the DMP file via Dropbox or similar service, please.

3

Hi Martin,
Thanks for the quick response! Also appreciate it because I’ve seen your name on so many other troubleshooting posts!

Okay, here is the Dropbox link to the 3 dump files i created

There was one dump file that i started just before the frozen window symptom, and it kept spitting out Exception: 80000004.SINGLE_STEP …

And then two dump files were done during the frozen window (which i saw it logged).

Let me know what you find!

Also, I decided to list my troubleshooting timeline here (it’s quite protracted) for ease of reference:

Starting on my old Motherboard/system drive/CPU/RAM
MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC/Samsung 850 EVO/Ryzen 7 2700x/Patriot Viper 64GB

  • The system drive was going bad, and there were a lot of random errors and crashes in Cubase etc.
  • Motherboard Wifi kept dropping connection to my router.

So i decided to do a fresh Windows 10 install on a new Drive, as the old system drive was 4-5 years old and had been upgraded from Win 7.

However, Cubase never displayed this freezing error ever, at this point in time.

Installed a brand new Samsung 980 SSD nvme
Fresh Windows 10 Install on 980 SSD nvme
Reinstalled all software, etc from scratch.

Good news: The random errors and crashes in Cubase went away, as well as the bad system drive issues .

but then, this freezing File Explorer window glitch started. Sometimes it would freeze for 10 minutes. Sometimes it wouldn’t unfreeze. Most of the time it would, and sometimes multiple sessions would freeze consecutively.

Windows (and Cubase) otherwise worked normally when i didn’t try to export something. In fact, it could export ‘blindly’ - say i already had a file path saved in Cubase. If i never opened up File Explorer from within Cubase, it could reexport the same file no problem!

Since then I have:

Replaced the motherboard with a new one
Upgraded the CPU
Replaced RAM with one that is officially compatible with the new motherboard
Removed (Cosmetic) Cable Extensions on my Power Supply
Reinstalled Cubase
Reinstalled RME Interface Drivers
Updated all plugins, including iLoks
Run Windows Memory Diagnostic Test, which passed
*Ran LatencyMon… which gave a lot of hard page faults

Current result is:
The freezing File Explorer glitch happens once per Cubase opening (an improvement) and then never happens again until i quit and restart cubase
Doesn’t freeze for more than 1 minute (also an improvement)

Ok, hope that gives some context to my frustrations!

Thanks in advance for your help!

4

Do you use folders on network storage?

5

Yes, i do actually. Do you think there is a network issue that it just stalls on until it resolves?
I have looked in event viewer while this was happening and there was a lot of network activity. I use vienna ensemble pro.

6

I have the same behavior when I try to access a network file system that is on power safe mode… explorer is waiting until it is fully functional again…

7

Oh really. How interesting. Let me do some digging into that. My network situation is complicated. Local servers and ones over the internet too.

What it doesn’t explain is how come the symptoms got better when i swapped the hardware components of the system.

8 
I have the same behavior when I try to access a network file system that is on power safe mode… explorer is waiting until it is fully functional again…

I disconnected from any internet servers, and focused on my local networked drives. I went into my own computers on my ethernet and disabled any windows power saving functions, especially the ones that are associated with the ethernet ports (not allowing windows to put them to sleep)

I was still getting that freeze issue. Like i mentioned it only happens once PER cubase startup.

When reconnecting back to some drives over the internet, the freeze happens but for longer, which i guess makes sense. But i am not an admin of those shares so i’ll have to ask about sleeping drives.

Also, another interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, well, one way to prevent this from happening altogether is, on Startup of Cubase, open a blank project, and then ‘pretend’ to export something in File Explorer.

File explorer opens, freezes but only for like 1 - 2 secs, and then it’s done. After that, it seems like any subsequent real project does not freeze anymore.

Do you have this experience as well?