When I bought Cubase Pro 9.5 it came with a free update. I installed the 9.5 and did not update it on my old computer because I was afraid that the computer would be too slow and take damage by the heavy system requirements of newer updates. Finally the computer gave up on me anyway , I bought a new computer, installed Cubase 11, and here we are.
I feel exactly the same way. I’ve probably spent 35 hours on this problem this weekend and still no solution whatsoever… hours I’ve could have put into making music.
I’m also thinking about uninstalling everything and redo it from scratch. I can’t help you with Mac though, I’m on PC/Windows.