Cubase 8 hanging / freezing when not in focus in Windows 10

Cubase
,
#1

I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem or discovered any solutions. I’ve been trying different configurations to try and track down its source but with no luck.

Cubase 8.5.20 on my system very frequently hangs when doing anything outside Cubase in Windows 10 (opening a webpage in Chrome / folder / another app / help or update page linked from a plugin inside Cubase etc.) I’ve always experienced the ‘freeze on exit’ problem on other PCs and Macs, but never this. Sometimes Cubase will recover within 5-10 minutes, other times it needs to be shut down with the ‘three finger salute’ :imp: . It is not plugin related as it has been happening since I did a fresh install of Cubase with no 3rd party plugins. It happens with both the ‘Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver’ and the MOTU ASIO Driver for my interface enabled. The problem has persisted even after a fresh Cubase / eLicenser install (and I have run all the maintenance functions in the eLicenser software).

My system is fairly recent so if it is a hardware issue I’m likely to be one of the first to suffer it :neutral_face: . System info follows:

Intel 6800K CPU
Asus X99 Deluxe II MOBO
32GB DDR4 Ram
MOTU 828 MkIII Audio Interface running latest drivers and via Firewire adapter
OEM Windows 10 64-bit edition
1TB Samsung 850 SSD boot drive (also install drive for cubase)
2x1 TB Samsung 850 SSDs in RAID 0 for VSTi’s
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB

Any advice much appreciated. Thanks!

#2

I managed to solve this problem before the post went live. For other people who might be experiencing it, the culprit was Norton Internet Security 2016 - Cubase was the only app affected. I uninstalled Norton and it now works fine. Hoping now I’ll get away with Windows Defender, ad blocking and some vigilance…

I’ve just moved from a Mac-based system. With this one I’d found that (in my case), freezing / hanging on shutting down Cubase normally occurred on projects where memory was running low. I also found that there was generally less risk of projects crashing when opening if I avoided opening them from the Cubase ‘splash’ screen on startup, and instead waited for a minute or so for the HD to settle down and opened them from the file menu.