Dorico completely hangs, logging the same line over and over forever

I’m running into a bug in Dorico 4 where after I make various structural changes to my project (hard to reproduce, but e.g. adding a new player), the entire program stops responding and hangs forever. While this is happening, I have noticed that “[info] Process SetMIDIMonitorDestination” is printed to the application.log file thousands of times per second, leading to gigabyte-sized log files which essentially only contain this line repeated over an over. I can send a sample project where I can reproduce the problem consistently if you need; I tried to cut-down the size of the file but I found the the problem becomes harder to reproduce when I do this.

Does anyone know of this problem/how to fix it?

Welcome to the forum.

Does anything in this thread ring any bells? Help: Dorico 4 project not loading properly, VST Audio Engine Crashing - #2 by dyross

Hello!

Yes I think perhaps—not the plugin crashing stuff, but definitely it seems related to VSTs, e.g. at some point it would hang if I deleted all of the elements of the VST rack too quickly.

You know, I think maybe there could be a race condition going on, where really the problem is just that if I perform another action (maybe not literally any action) too quickly after e.g. deleting lots of VSTs or adding a new instrument, then everything locks up?—and the difficulty is that I don’t know how long to wait.

Best regards,
Keeley

That would also explain why the problem is harder to reproduce when I simplify my project.

I’m pretty sure that the first request from the development team (I’m just a user) will be to do Help → Create Diagnostic Report, which will leave a file called Dorico Diagnostics.zip on your desktop. Then upload that here.

No doubt someone more knowledgeable will be along sooner rather than later.

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Sure, I’ve done that, but I’m a little bit worried important information might be missing because I have to kill Dorico each time. (It’s too big to upload, and apparently links are banned, so you have to decode this: https:// drive dot google dot com/file/d/1eAkr9o-q8bKF2zlDpJuPlu_A19FDCJuv/view?usp=sharing)

The forum rules are pretty strict for new posters, but automatically ease off once you’ve been here a little while. I’m sure the relevant person will be able to unpick that link.

Thanks again for your help. On the bright side, I think I’ve made a consistent reproducer, which I’ve “linked” below. To reproduce open that file, then add a new “Viola” section instrument, then immediately try to save the file. Hopefully Dorico will hang (and in %APPDATA%/Steinberg/Dorico 4 you’ll see an ever expanding log file).

https:// drive dot google dot com/file/d/15HLnDaIMPNMPd9VlVJSmI9aXsqgIZ4d1/view?usp=sharing

Here is another even simpler reproducer; open this project and then just try to press the play button—everything should hang.

https:// drive dot google com/file/d/1lAMoh2wsHGsRqtR61xYcAScnqr6zR1UH/view?usp=sharing

Sorry to hear you’re running into these problems. The projects themselves that you’ve uploaded seem absolutely fine. Would you please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file here, or send it to me via WeTransfer to my email address (d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de)? My guess is that you’re running into the problem that a few other users have experienced where the application is hanging because it’s unable to successfully set the destination for MIDI monitoring, and it’s trying to do so in an infinite loop, which eventually hangs everything up.

Thanks for the reply! I actually did attach a diagnostic report above (except my account didn’t have permission, so I wrote a Google drive link instead).

Also after recreating my whole project and just making sure to not delete the default VST I have not run in to any further problems, so I think that’s a reliable fix.

For what it’s worth I downloaded both projects last night. The file with the instruction to add a section viola and then save was reproducible on my machine (post 8 - Dorico completely hangs, logging the same line over and over forever - #8 by khoek)

The file where the instruction was to hit play plays fine here.