Specific Cubase 9.5 project shutting down when pressing save

One of my Cubase 9.5 projects just shuts the whole program down when I hit Save. No other projects have this problem.

If it’s relevant, the first time I tried to open the project today before the issue arose, I did get the warning: “A backup project newer than this project exists!
Do you want to open this backup project?” which I get from time to time; it always puzzles me, and I can’t recall which I tend to select, but I said No, and then it asks if I want to Delete or Keep the backup, and I just said Keep, just to be safe, I guess. It then told me it had created some backup called [filename]-01, then I proceeded with the original. Then I get this problem of it shutting down Cubase when I hit Save.

I’ve tried opening that -01 backup project, ditto the subsequent -02 and -03 ones, which seem to have been created each time Cubase has shut down by itself, but they’re all 0KB, which explains why they can’t be opened. I have tried doing Save As, but after naming the new file and hitting Save, Cubase shuts down and the newly saved file is 0KB.

What I also notice is that Cubase creates .bak files for projects, and as with the other proejcts, there’s like a string of them relating to this project, with their ‘date modified’ dates being around May 2024 sorta time. They’re all named [filename] with ‘-01’, ‘-02’ etc sequentially.

So what do I do to salvage the project? I did do my periodical hard drive backup to my external HD a few weeks ago (in between last opening the project in question and experiencing this problem today), so would it possibly work if I were to say, delete all Cubase Project and .bak files relating to that project in my PC hard drive (which presumably doesn’t delete the raw audio) and then drag & drop the previously backed up Cubase Project & bak files for that project from my external HD to the respective folder on my PC? I guess that in part depends on whether whatever’s caused this corruption happened today or before the last backup.

If not, how do I go about doing a salvage job? We’re talking hours and hours of work, many stacked recordings that were subsequently painstakingly comped and micro-edited, etc.

Hi,

In Cubase 13, I would run into the Safe Start Mode, disable the 3rd party plug-ins and try to save the project with the plug-ins disabled. Then I would try to start this newly created project with plug-ins.

In Cubase 9.5 there is no this option, so the only way would be to move all plug-ins to another folder on the system level.

In Cubase 13, I would also try to Create an Empty project and import all tracks from the affected one. Unfortunately this feature is also not possible in Cubase 9.5.

You can also try to install Cubase Pro 13 Trial and open the project in Cubase 13.

Hi,

My issue was only specifically with one project, not Cubase as a whole or any plug-ins.

Luckily, Cubase 9.5 allows me to have 2 projects open at the same time (albeit with only one ‘Active’) so I created a new project, set up all my tracks, plugins, tempo/signature coordinates etc (a bit of work but better than starting completely from scratch). I then shut Cubase down again, re-opened it, opened the corrupt project, opened the new project (saying No to activating said new project), then copied & pasted all the audio/MIDI data. As the corruption presumably lies with the project and not the audio/MIDI information therein, hopefully I can carry on as normal with the new project file without issue. Fingers crossed, eh?