He’s saying Cubase 14 works, can’t be iLok or it would effect on that too. Speaking of VST and copy protection software, I would give a look to that waveshell (even if version 16) which could have a bad impact expecially with win 11. I’ve had that on my system (Cubase 15 crashing) when closing a project and opening a new immediately after. My dump file was pointing to an exception with waveshell. Here again why Cubase 14 works while 15 won’t?
That’s why I’ve suggested him to run a DISM online though. That would exclude corrupted system files if he had some and I bet he has. 
Hi Pete,
A couple of things here that I probably need to clarify with this. That dump file dates from November when I first intalled Cubase 15. I had some issues initially and had to contact Support who gave me a different link to download C15 from, after which it worked fine with W10. It was only when I installed W11 that it refused to open.
I have no crashdumps relating to C15 with W11 for the simple reason that it can’t crash if it hasn’t started. As the program never launches, it can’t very well crash.
I have tried all of the fixes suggested thus far with no luck. My own suspicion is that it is something that is blocking the launch process, otherwise the program would attempt to run, and I’d get a crash dump.
So you never even see Cubase show up in Task Manager?
If it has started and then hung, you can force a dump from task manager. (go to process tab, find Cubase15.exe, right-click, choose “create memory dump”)
If it never actually starts, you’ll usually see a failure logged in the event log. If this is what is happening, it has to be something really fundamental. In that case, I suggest, because I’ve seen some other plugin installers mess this up, reinstall the Visual C++ runtime (latest) from here.
https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.x64.exe
You’re presumably not on Arm given that you upgraded from Windows 10, but here’s the Arm link as well.
https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.arm64.exe
There’s no guarantee that’s it, but it’s not something that will hurt to install, regardless.
Pete
Microsoft
Could it be a licence issues with Steinberg Activation Manager? I´ve once had to deactive and reactive licence during update, though it didn´t crash then.
What it can block the launch could be some corrupted system file, did you run (as I suggested before) “DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth” properly?
I know this gets passed around a lot, and won’t hurt anything to run, but corrupted system files almost never actually happen.
Pete
Microsoft
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Highly unlikely. Licensing issues don’t match the described symptom.
??
I run sfc once a year or so on all of my machines and, more often than not, it will find a few files to replace. If it isn’t damage, what is it?
When sfc fix something is better to run dism online after that, least ScanHealth.
sfc is generally doing the same thing that Windows 10/11 do in real-time if a protected file is overwritten. It’s replacing files with the shadow copies we keep cached. It takes some extraordinary measures to be able to replace protected system files, and if you truly had corrupted system files, your PC likely would not boot.
I’d be curious to see the logs of what it found. If I were to find truly corrupted files in my install, without having had some Windows upgrade crash hard or something similar, then I would discard the drive and start over. File corruption isn’t a thing that just happens.
DISM is mostly for building images for deployment to other machines. (Think an OEM like Dell building images for all their PCs before they ship, or an enterprise standardizing images across all PCs, or an EDU that wipes and reinstalls shared images across PCs). It can work on an online image, but it’s intended more standardized images deployed to many machines (physical or virtual). Be careful with DISM because it’s a pretty big hammer.
FWIW, I just ran sfc for the first time in years.
Pete
Microsoft
Do you have a reason for that?
Pete
Microsoft
Wipe the C: drive and do a fresh install. Be quicker than trying fix it.
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There are also some other threads here where folks with both 14 and 15 installed had to go in and delete Cubase preferences files because there was some sort of conflict between them.
Pete
Microsoft
Experience. And if it was me having that problem after a run of dism online I would have wiped it all and made a fresh install. Best solution and less time lost before ending with that anyway. Also, before upgrading win 10 to 11, I would have performed the dism online and made a deep system cleaning even if system upgrades are not the best with all that software installed.
Hi to everyone who offered suggestions reagrding this.
Bizarely, I turned on the PC this morning and C15 booted up with no issues at all. I don’t know if this was a result of something one of you suggested, or the fact that there was a another W11 update that ran when I turned it off last night (although I had been religiously updating in case that was an issue).
Anyway, it all works fine now, so thanks for all the help, and I will now stop yearning for the good old days of 24 track tape…
2 Likes
Couple questions since this kind of thing has been popping up here. Asking only in case it can help others.
- Did you end up installing the latest VC runtime via the link from my post above? If not, then likely vc isn’t the cause.
- Did you end up deleting Cubase preferences?
- Do you recall anything else you did, while this is still fresh in your memory?
Pete
Microsoft
Hi Pete,
To be honest, i didn’t really do anything. I ran the DISM options Puli suggested, which flagged up and fixed a few errors, but C15 still wouldn’t load after that.
The only thing significant that happened was that W11 did an update when I closed the PC down at night, and next morning…C15 opening fine.
So I’m afraid in terms of what the problem was, I’m not much use in the final analysis. I was fairly sure that it had to be something to do with some anomally relating to C15 and W11 working together, as C14 ran fine, but beyond that, I’m afraid I have no more useful info.
Regards,
Billy
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