Cubase is hanging on “Initializing: Retrospective Record” when starting. I noticed once I reboot it fixes the problem, but today I returned to find the Cubase GUI frozen. I was able to save my project however, and start playback, but the GUI itself was frozen. After force quitting and reopening cubase I get the hanging on “Initializing: Retrospective Record”
Hi,
Do you mean while start of Cubase?
Did you try to restart your computer, please?
Yes ive have to restart 3 times today due to this issue with a client in the room with me 
Going back to 8.5
This is happening to me again today on Cubase 9.0.1. If I return to the PC and find that Cubase9.exe is not responding and I “end task”, when reloading Cubase it will freeze on “Initializing: Retrospective Record” every time.
Steinberg support has consistently said “You shouldn’t leave your computer on overnight and when the computer goes to sleep, we can’t guarantee anything will work anymore because the drivers can quit working etc etc.”, but it seems suspicious that this issue only happens in Cubase 9. I never have this issue in Cubase 8, which I have co-installed on the same system. I run sessions on both Cubase 8 an Cubase 9 regularly on this PC, and switch between the two apps for various reasons.
Are you saying that you are returning to the PC and it is in sleep mode? I have disabled sleep as I have been told elsewhere on this forum that USB drivers do not like sleep if you use a USB soundcard, and as I discovered, Cubase would be unresponsive.
Disabling sleep now. Hopefully this will fix. Just seems odd that it requires a reset of the OS. I was used to restarting Cubase after sleep but not needing to reboot the system.
I just downloaded cubase 9.5, updating from 8.5, and when I first time trying to open it, I also got stuck on “initializing retrospective record”. It’s 9.5.21(64 bit). Windows. I can’t even close with my task manager.
Did you follow the suggestions above?