I am having the same issue with multiple instances of Exhale in a cubase 8.0.35. I’m have a Mac OS X laptop with El Capitan.
I used to have this kind of issue all the time with C6 and 6.5. I seemed to be out of step with the thinking at the time that Cubase 6 was the best thing ever. I think I had about 6 projects that would not load up without taking the vst plugin folder out. I have not been having these issues with C8.5. I have even been buying a number of the more recent Waves plugins such as the Abbey Road Plates.
I have had one peculiar problem with the Scheps 1073 - a vibrating level faders when there was more than one instance visible. Even the support operative was puzzled when he investigated. I suspect there is some video card driver issues at work in this instance.
The Kontakt issue is a complicated one. It has long driven me mad that Kontakt seems to cause spiking issue when a number of instances are used in a project. I have made it a habit to render and turn off Kontakt when I have more than a couple running concurrently. I must say that I have had fewer/hardly any issues of this kind with 8.5. I always have the Kontakt multi-processor setting turned off.
My suspicion is that this complex issue is something to do with how some plugins work together - combinations of different plugins. I am not at all convinced that vst 3 is without blame.
PepeLogu I would be interested to know whether the issues that you are having relate to vst2 or vst 3 or both? Have you noticed any pattern in the combinations of plugins?
It’s particularly annoying that I can’t open older projects that worked in 6.5 or 7. Now I try and open them in those and they still don’t work…ugghhh
Troubleshooting in Cubase seems to be almost a requirement every couple of months. The amount of time we spend doing this and acvtually not working on stuff becomes infuriating.
While it isn’t Steinaha’s fault all the time, I just wish there was a DAW that had less downtime.
Hey guys I’m new to this!
Also having similar problems cept I’m going back to Cubase 5.
After upgrading my pc this year…new msi gaming mother board, amd fx 6300 3.5 ghz cpu, r9 380x radeon card, 2x 1033 8gb corsair ram. I would expect to be able to deck out the studio and have no troubleshooting to do (i suck at it) seeing as I can now run games at high spec with good frame rates. But no…sadly all these problems are inevitably taking control of me.
So started working on a brand new track 2 days ago…it’s not that big…maybe only 4-5 instruments (Serum, Nexus2,) about 8 audio channels, a group, fair few plugin’s loaded for eq’s and fx etc… and now when I try to open anything program related (open serum’s edit window, open proQ, or anything vst based) it pops up an error and crashes. No ram overloading, no overheating…it just crashes 
super frustrating as the load isn’t high at all. Monitoring the crash in task manager shows no signs of overheating anywhere.
So, is cubase 5 32 or 64 bit? I know all of my ram isn’t being used if it’s only 32bit, but still I’ve seen bigger projects before with out needing more than 4 gig ram.
I started thinking my card was buggy but it’s a brand new 380x
Can the sound card have any real impact on the crashing? My sound is sometimes buggy but I assume thats different problem to programs crashing. It’s a Ni Audio 4.
Thanks in advanced for any help…I know this board is a tad old.
Splunkd
Just adding the workaround I use in case it may be useful - I use this because I haven’t had much luck finding the cause and I despise spending hours working on this sort of stuff with nothing to show for it, when I want to be making music.
I generally create a lot of new versions of a track that I am working on as the work progresses. From time to time somewhere along the lines for certain tracks cubase starts crashing upon trying to open the track (perhaps because I add a new vst etc - not sure) so what I do is:
*open cubase
*open an earlier version of the track - even the very first one (one that will open)
*play the track for a few seconds
*then (without closing the earlier version) open the current version of the track (the one I want to be working on) BUT DO NOT activate it.
*then play the track that is currently active (an old one) for a few seconds
*then activate the new one that I want to work on.
I have absolutely no idea why this works, but it works for me almost every time cubase no longer opens a certain file without crashing, at least with my current setup.