There’s another long thread on this VST3 scanning problem, and a number of others are also having this problem (some more frequently than me – until today, I’d only had 3 occurrences the first week of use, and now the 2 today – but perhaps I tried restarting Cubase too soon after killing it or something now that I recognized that, once it hangs, it will hang forever without the kill/restart). There is also some recent update on the cause of it noted in that thread:
Bottom line is that the issue is with newer iLok plugins – i.e. those built with the latest iLok development kit. Thus, if you haven’t updated plugins that use iLok very recently, that could be a reason for not seeing it. Also, since it doesn’t happen every time Cubase starts – only a very small minority of times in my case (5 times in a little over 3 weeks, with plenty of Cubase starts over that period), the odds of seeing it are probably relatively slim to start.
There was another post earlier in the thread where I linked the update that suggested it could also relate to having a very large number of plugins that got authorized very quickly, and I definitely have a pretty large number of those (everything by PSP, among some others).
In terms of my 3 hangs in the first week after installation, everything on my system would have been newly installed, and, thus, if built recently enough by the developers, made with the applicable iLok development kit. I also have installed some additional plugins based on iLok this week that I know are extremely recent. Though those did not hang Cubase when first scanned (and some of the other past hangs also weren’t after installing new plugins), perhaps there is still some activity that happens on this front when there aren’t updates to plugins? (I do know one of the new ones only has an evaluation license, so perhaps that figures into things since the authorization status could change when the evaluation period expires.)
As for the Windows crash, that is the first instability I’ve seen on this system. I’ll definitely have to keep an eye out to see if there is anything further of that sort, and I can run memory tests at some point if/when I get a chance.