Cubase 12 on Windows hangs/freezes on startup and exit

Cubase
43

Hi,

Can we get the DMP file, please?

44

I will have to set this up might take me a week to get back to it. Have normal work to pay attention to this week. I will see what happens next. I did manage to reinstall Xpani2! to the C drive and now I get no gripes from Cubase this no D drive stuff is really limiting. I would ask your devs to try to install a VST instrument on the D drive and add the VST file location on D drive to your VST path list. You should be able to recreate the issue pretty quickly and perhaps even have them fix it.

45

After closing Cubase Element 12 it will hang when you start up for a new session i cubase. I use a win11 on a new i7 quad core probook with 16Gb memory.
When I tried to remove temporary files it seem to solve the problem.
I simply emty %temp% in path finder after i exit cubase.
/Ivan

46

The issue: Frequent, but random, crashes and freezes when starting up and closing Cubase 12, and occasionally when running.

My set up:

PC with Windows 10 x64 bit up-to-date with all patches/updates
Cubase Artist 12 v12.0.52 ā€“ (NB I upgraded from Elements 10.5 a month ago. This almost never crashed in two years)
Dual monitors using integrated graphics drivers
Steinberg UR44C audio interface
Yamaha Steinberg USB driver v2.1.4
dspMixFx v.2.0.

Iā€™m new to this world of forums, but this seems an appropriate thread to post in. Thanks to Bozo2. This is a long description to try and capture the essence of my problemā€¦I have already scoured the Steinberg forums and tried many fruitless ā€˜fixesā€™, such as reinstalling Cubase, or eLicenser, or Download Manager, or Activation Manager, restarting PC obviously (many times) etc etc.

Hereā€™s my typical scenario, blow-by blow, (but NB not strictly reproducible - thatā€™s what I mean by random):

  1. Double-click Cubase 12.exe

  2. Safe mode pop-up appears

  3. Try to start using my preferences

  4. Hub window and top menu bar appear ā€“ mouse does nothing anywhere

  5. Go to task manager: ā€œCubase not respondingā€ ā€“ end task

  6. Try again. Double-click Cubase 12.exe

  7. Safe mode pop-up appears

  8. Try to start after deactivating third-party plug-ins

  9. Hub window and top menu bar appear ā€“ mouse does nothing anywhere

  10. Go to task manager: ā€œCubase not respondingā€ ā€“ end task

  11. Try again. Double-click Cubase 12.exe

  12. Safe mode pop-up appears

  13. Try to start after deactivating plug-ins AND disabling my preferences

  14. Hub window and top menu bar appear ā€“ this time when I click ā€˜Open Otherā€™, the
    ā€˜Audio driver setupā€™ window appears.
    If I choose ā€˜Generic Low Latency ASIO Driverā€™ it seems to work each timeā€¦Windows ā€˜Open Fileā€™ dialogue appears; I can open a project and proceed to item 15) below. (Thanks to Peter_V for this suggestion earlier in this thread. It got me going again.)
    If I choose Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO, it might work, so I can open a project and start using Cubase. Go to item 16) below. Or it might freezeā€¦so go back to 10, or 6) or 11).

  15. Because I chose Generic driver, thereā€™s now no sound. I need to go into Studio Setup: Audio System: ASIO driver. There is only Generic driver available in the drop-down (the Yamaha USB driver is not appearing as it should, although the URC appears in the left-hand list of Devices). After clicking around everywhere in Audio setup to no avail, I separately opened the Yamaha USB driver and also the dspMixFx software, and closed them again. Then, miraculously, the Yamaha USB driver appears as an option in the ASIO driver selection dropdown. I still donā€™t know exactly what I did to cause this to appear.

But now I have sounds and can proceed to item 16) below.

  1. Start working at last with Cubase. Everything works more or less perfectly. I might get five minutes or I might get four hours before I get the freeze. Sometimes it freezes when I click ā€˜playā€™ or ā€˜stopā€™. Sometimes when I try to close a project it freezes. Sometimes if I try to save my preferences, it freezes. (NB these must be almost identical to the factory presets, as I have reverted to them at least twice over an extremely frustrating week). Sometimes it doesnā€™t freeze until I actual click ā€˜Quitā€™ In which case it hangs, or not. Time to go back to item 1 and try again. Or got to bed.)

Comments
a) Following advice given to others in the forums, I obtained at two DMP files using ProcDump, and also sent many auto-generated files from within the Safe Startup window. A catch is that if you start ProcDump before Cubase, ProcDump sensibly gives an error message: ā€˜No Cubase12 process runningā€™. As the freeze usually happens within the first few seconds, this meant I had to start the command for Procdump as quickly as possible after starting Cubase ā€“ Iā€™m not sure if ProcDump got anything useful. But Iā€™ll happily send the files to Steinberg ā€“ itā€™s 40 MB in total. How to do that please?

b) For reasons of memory space I have all Windows files and Cubase12.exe on my SSD C: drive, but I keep my projects and audio on a separate SSD K drive. Earlier in this thread bacmallard suggests that Cubase needs to have all the files on the C: drive. Is this true? Iā€™m loath to completely reorganise all my storage just to test this idea.

Thanks for your time if you got this farā€¦

1 Like
47

So here I am finding this thread.

I have had Cubase 12 for some months now, and I still get this consistent CRASH ON EXIT, and then wont reload, have to ā€œLoad Current Settingsā€ all good. Then cycles every time.

I figured getting the latest update 12.0.70 would fix this, but to no avail. Still the same problem persists. Iā€™ve tried all ther suggested fixes in the thread, and I am still here doing the same thing. This is now costing me money, and I am seriously thinking of going to Logic on my Mac, and cutting my losses with the amount Iā€™ve invested into Cubase.

Fortunately, so far, it hasnā€™t crashed mid flow. Although this start-up/exit issue is a real pain. Rebooting the PC every time I want to start Cubase is painful, as after a reboot loading all the VSTs is a long process. This is really breaking my flow.

There is obviously a problem, so Steinberg, can you please address this?

Cubase 12 - v12.0.70
Windows 11 Pro, 32GB, i7-8700
PreSonus Studio 18/24 USB

48

I have same issue of hang/freeze on closing the program. This happens time to time randomly. No crash dump generated. Tried different things - nothing helped. I am on Win 11 CB 12.0.70.
I think unfortunately Steinberg will not help us as their rolled out last 0.70 update and there will no updates to 12 anymore. Only thing is to hope they will fix this in 13 haha.

49

Hi,

Attach the DMP file, please.

50

I am having the same crash on exit / export with no 3rd party plug-ins, new windows 11 and cubase 12 installs. So much time wasted. Stop buying time looking at .dmp files and try reproducing the problem yourselves - that might speed things up.
I have done a few things which looked like they solved the problem, but it always seems to creep back. Can I go back to using the USB key?

51

Hi,

Attach the DMP file for the exit and DMP file for the export, please.

52

Here are 4 of tthem. I have 4 or 5 empty ones too.
Cubase 12.0.70.464 64bit 2023.10.7 4.33.40.102-freezedump.dmp (918.5 KB)
Cubase 12.0.70.464 64bit 2023.10.7 6.00.18.587-freezedump.dmp (1.3 MB)
Cubase 12.0.70.464 64bit 2023.10.7 15.15.22.053-freezedump.dmp (1.0 MB)
Cubase 12.0.70.464 64bit 2023.10.8 1.21.02.265-freezedump.dmp (1.1 MB)

53

You said you do not have third paty plugins, but your problem is a plugin.

image
image1225Ɨ465 28 KB

So looking at a dmp file is helpful, not buying time. It definitely helps, because that is what these dumps are for.

1 Like
54

I had similar problem. My Cubase 12 stucked on starting or randomly on opening project or on creating new one. What helped me was this:

  1. I killed stucked Cubase using Ctrl+Alt+Del - Task Manager
  2. Ran Cubase again without restarting Windows - in the prompt I ticked ā€œprogram settings deactivateā€
  3. Closed Cubase.
  4. I ran sfc /scannow (I dont know if this helped, but just for sure)
  5. Restarted Windows
    Everything ok, Cubase works perfectly.
55

I donā€™t. This is the wrong installā€¦sorry. I have a clean install of windows 11 on a different drive and no 3rd party vstā€™s. I noticed there were a few others in the .dmpā€™s and after removing them there was no difference in the shutdown issues.
I did have an older UR28m driver which I updated and 2 other G-Sonique vst2ā€™s which I also removed. Again sorry for the confusion.
The freezing DOES look like it has gotten better. The real issue is that when it locks up it doesnā€™t write a .dmp file.
I did get a dump of the cubase process itself, but itā€™s over 2gb. Wanna look at that?
After tracing system activity using some sysinternals tools, it looks like it may be related to MediaBay but not sure yet.
Also, could it be something in the project I can look for?