Good morning.
Recently, more and more Cubase 12.0.7 hangs on startup (in about 70% of cases). In the task manager it shows “Checking licenses” and the status is “not responding”. Can I do something about this problem? Please help.
Regards from Poland,
Pawel
Are you connected to the internet? License needs to be checked once in a while. If so, what is your DNS provider? It may be blocking Steinberg’s licences server for some reason. Have you tried opening Steinberg Activation Manager and see what it says there?
to be clear, here’s the official word from Steinberg
Your computer only needs to be connected to the internet in order to sign in with your Steinberg ID and to obtain the initial activation. Thereafter your computer can remain disconnected from the internet, and your software will continue its normal operation. Running your Steinberg software does not require a constant internet connection.
In theory yes. But I found with updates of my computer and/or of Cubase itself it has logged out of Activation Manager and didn’t manage to find the license. My suggestions/questions were from personal hands on experience, bugs exist and manuals do not often account for them. That is why forums exist 
Hi. Sorry for late reply. Thank you for your help.
I ran the Procdump application as instructed. But my problem occurs when booting Cubase12. So the app shows that “No process matching the specified name can be found”. How to check what causes the license check to be blocked? On the previous protection (eLicencer USB) I never had this kind of problems.
I am connected to the Internet all the time. My provider is T-Mobile. “Steinberg Activation Manager” looks good ?
Regards,
Paul
Unfortunately the info in this topic has been incorrect.
This is not related to your internet connection, and Cubase is not crashing, but simply waiting for a response from the License Engine on your machine. The quote from the post about procdump was taken out of context. (I’ll remove it for that reason to avoid further confusion) If there was anything to run procdump on it would be the Licensing components. But I would not bother.
You should Run the Download Assistant which will update the licensing components.
See this post:
Also, I have seen this, though rarely. I might try the following:
Then one or both of these below:
Kill the Activation manager, and its sub-task the Licensing Engine. (this provides an equivalent result to restarting the machine)
You can also remove the User Settings Folder for the Activation Manager at %appdata%\Steinberg\ (paste path into Run or Start Menu).
This will log you out in the Activation Manager and thus remove your activations, so you will have to log in and activate the licenses. (you can go to your account online to deactivate any zombie activations).
I have this same problem right now(stuck on “checking licenses” in task manager). Suddenly happened yesterday on cubase 13.0.20. (never happened to me before).
Installed the latest update, Cubase 13.0.30 and the problem is still there…
I removed the “Activation Manager” folder in appdata/Roaming/Steinberg. Then cubase activated the license. But STILL stuck on “Checking licenses”…
here is my diagnostic file from steinberg activation manager
Steinberg-Activation-Manager-Diagnostics_20240323T111409.zip (29.9 KB)
Thank you in advance!
Hi,
How does it look like in the Steinberg Activation Manager application, please?
Hi,
Does it mean none of the component has been loaded? Does it hand at the very beginning?
Steinberg Activation Manager looks OK.
Hi and thank you for helping. It started working again for no reason. So let´s hope it was a temporary bug.
Thanks!
Ok so problem´s still here. I´ll show you a video on what´s happening.
It always happen when “Global settings” is shown
Thanks
EDIT:
And now this happened:
Steinberg-Activation-Manager-Diagnostics_20240325T004313.zip (58.2 KB)
Hi,
Could you try in the Cubase Safe Start Mode [Disable preferences], please?
If this doesnæt work, could you try to rename all Cubase versions preferences folders, to get the factory settings, please?
Cubase Preferences folders are:
Mac: ~/Library/Preferences/Cubase X
Win: %appData% \Steinberg\Cubase X_64
Where the X is the Cubase version (for example 13).
I’m just wondering, if some corrupted prefereneces could cause this.
In any case, I would get in contact with the local Steinberg support.
Renaming/deleting the preferences folder worked. I only tried disabling the prefs that didnt work. Didnt know disabling the preferences didn´t actually disable preferences in cubase :/…
Now I have to redo alot of settings =(…
Well at least cubase starts now.
Thanks
Hi,
Disabling preferences removes the defaults.xml file only. It doesn’t reset all preferences to the factory settings.
SIGH…
Again, problem is back…
And this is with a new preference folder. I only made some small changes in cubase with some colors and keycommands.
If I delete the preference folder, it works again. But obviously I can´t delete it every single time I start Cubase…
Hi,
Do you have a backup of your old preferences folder? Are you willing to share it, please? I would like to try it on another system.
Ok here it is:
https://www.dropbox.com/t/mE0z3wcjG8cM1vAB
Thank you!
I did a clean new windows install. Installed everything from scratch. Didn´t use any old preference folder for Cubase. And it worked for a day. Still works, but now on startup I get the same “Checking licenses” not responding for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. After that it starts normally. Except it looks weird in task manager under Cubase 13, several “Microsoft Edge Webwiev2”. What´s that?
So still some problem with checking licenses on startup. But now at least Cubase starts up after a while. But something is obviously wrong taking Cubase 2 min and 20 sec to “checking licenses”…
Also, when Cubase is running, task manager shows this:
“checking licenses” is still there.
EDIT: “checking licenses” when Cubase is on went away after 15 minutes.
Hi,
Steinberg Hub is using the native system web-browser (on Windows, it’s Edge) to display the news. Could you try to disable the Hub’s News (left part) in the Preferences > General, please?
