Unprecedented problems opening old projects in Cubase 15

Cubase
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1

I’m wondering if anyone out there has experienced anything similar to what I’ll describe below in far too many outraged sentences.

I’ve been a Cubase user for almost thirty years, so I’m definitely not a newbie. Not that I’m an all-knowing pro, far from it, but I certainly know a lot about Cubase, about plugins, how to install them, yadda yadda… And I’m not certainly not computer illiterate, as I’ve used them quite successfully and for some pretty complex things since Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. But I have NEVER before experienced problems even remotely similar to what I’ve seen recently, after changing both my computer and the Cubase version shortly after Cubase 15 came out. From Cubase 14 on the old machine, I updated to Cubase 15 on the new one and moved the internal hard drive with all the projects to the new machine… And now I can barely open even a single slightly more complex old project without problems.

Most often, Cubase will crash to desktop without any explanations or even a crash dump… Or sometimes, it’ll just freeze and has to be terminated using Task Manager. Normally, I’d expect it to spit out the window listing the potentially missing plugins, so I could identify them and install them and end of story… But no – instead it just hangs or, in most cases, crashes to desktop for no apparent reason. And it’ll usually do so at various points during project load, so staring at which tracks it’s attempting to open doesn’t help anything.

My initial theory was that one of the plugins was the culprit, which is probably the most frequent explanation… But no.

In one example, I had a roughly 60-track project that I couldn’t open. Cubase 15 ALWAYS crashed to desktop during load. Using safe mode, I deactivated all the plugins and opened the project without a problem, so that supported the theory. To find the offending plugin, I divided the project into three temporary projects with around 20 tracks each to narrow down the possibilities and track down the culprit causing the CTDs. Then I started Cubase with active plugins again, and – lo and behold – it opened ALL of the three new projects without a hitch. So there simply is NO SINGLE offending plugin. Instead, it seems that Cubase just crashes when there’s a certain (undetermined) combination of them in play.

Another example supporting this second theory: in one case, I opened a project with plugins deactivated and saved the track presets for each indiviadual track… Which is an infernal chore in itself. Then I threw out ALL the plugins (all of them on inserts on individual tracks and/or groups, in this case – thankfully we have the Q-LINK option, otherwise this would be another infernal chore). Then I saved the project, activated the plugins, and loaded the project devoid of any plugins. Then I loaded them back track by track using the track presets saved earlier (fortunately, saving track presets without active plugins DOES preserve their parameters, fortunately, which is extremely useful, at least). Finally, one of the track presets caused a CTD. A-HA!, I went, thinking that I’ll finally find a plugin causing this. So I opened a new, totally empty project, made an empty track, loaded the same track preset, actually HOPED for a CTD – but NO, it loaded perfectly… And, to boot, all the plugins on it were the same as those already used on the other tracks, so no new, different plugins, peculiar settings, routings, nothing. So what the hell? I go back to the previous project, try to load the same track plugin: BAM, crash to desktop, no crash log. WTF?!

But MOST often by far, the following is what happens when I use the same “trick” with track presets: after I open the plugin-free project and load all the plugins using track presets, Cubase will simply load all the plugins normally – EXCEPT some of them that it simply does NOT find and claims they’re not installed, although they ARE definitely installed and I can immediately load them manually during the very same session (but, of course, I thus lose their settings and so the mixes are then ruined to the degree where they need to be reworked at least partially). Even more idiotic: I even managed to identify a certain plugin (Softube Tape) that I haven’t even updated from the earlier machine: it’s the SAME EXACT PLUGIN as it was on the old machine; it’s a VST3 plugin, so it’s installed in precisely the same manner and in the very same location on both machines; and yet Cubase 15 claims that it doesn’t exist and lists it among the missing plugins! So I need to load it over the old one manually and, in doing so, lose the former parameters, of course.

These errors are so frequent and constant that almost ALL of my previous projects need to be at least partially remade and sometimes mixed again from scratch because almost all the mixes sound wrong and are simply useless due to the “missing” plugins (which aren’t missing at all – it’s just that Cubase can’t locate them for some reason).

Before writing this, I’ve been testing and trying to find solutions and/or workarounds for more than a month. A few weeks back, I was overjoyed when I saw something along the lines of my problem in the Cubase 15.0.6 update release notes (“We have improved stability in the following areas: - when loading projects with missing plug-ins”), so apparently Steinberg IS aware that something is wrong in this regard. But unfortunately, the update didn’t help. Nothing does… Except simply reworking everything from scratch using stupid and extremely time-consuming workarounds and manually replacing each and every plugin Cubase decides doesn’t exist (contrary to all evidence, as you can, as I’ve pointed out already, obviously just f**cking load them manually over the supposedly “non-existent” ones). Unfortunately, during the workaround process (which is extremely time-consuming and utterly infuriating), I always lose too many of the previous settings to be able to use the mix.

Ultimately, this will end up costing me HOURS upon HOURS (actually, about a year and a half of work), as oll my old projects are useless from the get-go and call for many hours of painful reconstruction… And after thirty years, I admit that I am for the first time seriously considering jumping ship and never ever using Cubase again or spending a dime on another Steinberg product. This is absolutely deplorable and I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating this is. This must be the single worst outcome and largest motherf**king heap of utterly shi*ty and uncalled-for problems ever caused to me by any godd*mn stupid app update in my no longer very short life. :face_with_steam_from_nose:

Anyone experiencing ANYTHING remotely similar? Because I’m at my wit’s end here.

Regards

SPECS:
Windows 11 (unfortunately, but what to do)
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor, 64GB RAM
B850 GAMING X WIFI6E (AM5) board
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

Oh, and all the relevant plugins are VST3. I do have a couple of legacy VST2 plugins, but they’re not the culprit and are not used in the projects mentioned above.

2

I have no solution for your problem, sorry.

After seeing so many posts regarding Cubase 15 I have no intentions of upgrading, All my Cubase/Wavelab work is now done on a MacBook Pro M2 Max using Cubase 14 Pro and below. The PC DAW was using Win10 and according to MS I need to buy a new computer even though it is perfectly fine for running C14 Pro and everything I could throw at it.

This led me to changing to the Macbook, which has been fine but I have been slowly using Bitwig and Reaper under Ubuntu.

Like you I have over 30 yrs using Cubase and it is a challenge for me to change but I am doing it. I won’t be upgrading to Windows 11 so I am done with MIcrosoft.

I really hope you can get a solution to your problem.

I’m curious to know if you have tried installing Cubase 14 on your new computer to see if it works the same as it did on the old setup.

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3

The moved drive ONLY had cpr project files on it, right?

4

Not a solution (sorry), just an interesting aspect:

One reason for the report of missing plugins is a change in the CID of a supposedly identical plugin. The CID (Class ID) refers to the unique identifier of a VST3 plugin. It is defined during plugin programming (e.g. in frameworks like JUCE). It serves to uniquely identify the plugin within the VST3 interface to the DAW (e.g. Cubase). Cubase 15 automatically scans the default folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 on startup. The DAW reads the CID from the plugin file to register it in the VST Plugin Manager. When you load a plugin into a project, Cubase uses this CID to ensure that the same component is called again the next time the project is opened.

If a developer changes the CID of a plugin (for whatever reason), Cubase identifies it as a completely different product. Even if the name and user interface are identical, the DAW does not recognize any connection to the old version. If you open a project that used the old version (which has been replaced), Cubase will report that the plugin is “missing”, even if the new version is correctly installed. The settings (presets) and automation of the old instance are not automatically transferred to the new CID.

5

You should install C14 on your new computer before trying anything else. The content files are mostly the same so wont take up additional space. They can coexist together on same hard drive (I have every version installed back to SX3) and work just fine.

Your old projects made with C14 should open just fine. If not, then I would start testing in C14 the plugins you know you used in the project to see which one is culprit … and reinstall it. Then try again in C14.

Once working in C14 you should find no issues at all in C15.

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6

You certainly have my empathies. I also do not have an answer. But I would like to mention that I built a new machine earlier this week and took the two SSD drives out of my old machine and put it in the new one. I really had minimal problems but I would mention three areas to think about.

  1. Think about the various drivers and whether they are appropriate.
  2. Most importantly, maybe Windows 11 is not such a great idea. I stayed on Windows 10. If I need to go surf the internet to some unknown site I’ll go use another machine. I still have three machines on win7 and one on winXP, in addition to new ones. My understanding is about half of win10 users have not migrated, and I’m sure it is due to the many negatives we have heard about win11. It’s a different operating system this time. Not like the usual where there isn’t much of a change. Unfortunately, there aren’t any truly good options.
  3. I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but try to avoid running anything in the background upon startup. The only thing I have in the startup tab is Windows Security notification and NIHardwareAccessbilityHelper. The less that runs, the less chances for conflicts. Here is my machine right now:
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7

Ik agree with a previous poster, install C14 and C13! If C14 does work, you can stop troubleshooting since it is C15 then and Steinberg needs to fix it. Ik have also had a few crashes to the desktop upon loading with e recent project. Only here a second try does load then, but it was started in C15.

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8

Thank you very much for your information and ideas, kind people :slight_smile: Your input is much appreciated and has prompted me to investigate further. I considered installing ye olde Cubase 14 a while ago and testing that, but was so singularly focused on continuing my work on the new machine in the new version of Cubase as soon as possible that I decided against it because I didn’t want to complicate things further by installing the old version side by side, especially as it doesn’t make much sense paying for a new version only to keep using the old one :thinking:

I finally did so now simply for the sake of testing this, although I was pretty sure what would happen. And, yes indeed, as expected – the projects that make Cubase 15 crash DO open normally in Cubase 14. On opening one such old project on the new machine, Cubase 14 shows the list of missing plugins and opens the project, so you can either work with it or first install what’s missing and open it again – which is normal behaviour, of course, and which I had fully expected Cubase 15 to do, as this was what all Cubase versions before it had done. However, opening this same project in Cubase 15 results in a crash to desktop AFTER it displays a list of missing plugins (while in case of some other projects, it can also crash BEFORE displaying the list). So that’s one obvious proof that Cubase 15 is the real culprit here.

And now for the case of the staggering number of the impossibly “missing” plugins. I fully understand that major plugin version changes will sometimes result in Cubase not recognising the plugins, so you need to load them again – OR use the old versions, at least for a particular project. This can definitely be annoying, as we probably all know, but it’s also understandable and it has always been this way, so I’m used to it. However, the number of VST3 plugins that Cubase 15 claims are missing when they are in fact installed immediately seemed outrageous to me. During my 30 years with Cubase and various PCs, I would often migrate long-term projects, of course, and I don’t remember EVER experiencing such excruciating problems with the number of plugins that were supposedly “missing” when they were in fact installed. Now, after installing the old version of Cubase alongside the new one, I immediately managed to identify an example of a plugin that Cubase 14 DOES find and open with the project, while Cubase 15 claims that it is missing! I do not have the time or patience to investigate this further right now, as I’m falling seriously behind on some of my projects that I should have finished already… But I’m convinced that, as I keep working, I’ll identify many more, now that I know it is indeed happening and will be able to compare the Cubase 14 missing plugin lists with those that Cubase 15 spits out.

To boil down this tirade of mine a little:

  1. it is now an undisputable fact that, at least on my computer & setup, Cubase 15 will sometimes (actually, incredibly often in my case) crash to desktop while opening a particular project… While Cubase 14 will open that same project without any problems;
  2. it is also completely clear that when opening projects on my new machine, Cubase 15 will fail to find many VST3 plugins and will claim they’re missing when they’re in fact installed; while Cubase 14 will open the same projects with those same plugins just fine.

What’s really causing this is beyond me. I suspect that the reason why I might have been experiencing this behaviour much more often than other people is that, in most of the projects I created in earlier versions of Cubase during the last two years or so before upgrading to Cubase 15, I keep using certain track presets that I’ve been creating and perfecting for the multitrack live acoustic drums I keep recording… So similar combinations of plugins keep appearing in most of my projects created during this time – and most of these will now NOT load in Cubase 15 without it crashing. I suppose I might have somehow stumbled upon a combination of plugins that drives Cubase 15 nuts, and this combination keeps repeating in so many of my projects, hence so many occurrences of the same problem. What seems EXTREMELY interesting to me, however, is that once I manage to successfully recreate that identical combination of the same plugins in Cubase 15 and save the project, it will then open normally, without any problems! What this means, only Steinberg’s coders could possibly know, I suppose?!

That said… In my view – please correct me if I’m wrong – this is entirely Steinberg’s fault. SOMETHING in the way Cubase 15 treats VST3 plugins MUST have been changed from the previous version that is now causing all these problems with missing plugins and crashes to desktop.

Basically, I have two options now: either keep working much more smoothly in the old Cubase 14 while waiting for a fix (which, judging from my thirty-year experience with Steinberg, will probably never come or will be implemented in Cubase 19)… Or spend hours upon hours on somehow moving and manually reconstructing the projects in Cubase 15. But will this only be until the next time, when something similar happens again?! Besides, why did I just pay for a new version of Cubase if I can’t use it?!

This is totally unacceptable. I haven’t seen Steinberg mentioning anything along the lines of “you can only use Cubase 15 for new projects, as it is not fully backwards compatible” – WHICH IT BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY ISN’T! :enraged_face:

For me, the sheer amount of problems involved in going from Cubase 14 to 15 and the consequent increases in my already suspicious blood pressure due to wasting so much time on infuriating and totally needless workarounds truly takes the cake, and I thought I’ve seen everything already, as far as Cubase is concerned. This, for me, is definitely the bottom (for now! :face_with_peeking_eye:) and might truly be the last straw for me. Unfortunately, I can’t walk away from Windows 11 because my paying job depends on that worthless piece of sh*t… But I can sure walk away from Cubase if I decide that the effort to do so might be worth it. And I will DEFINITELY do so if Steinberg (much like Windows 11) keeps focusing on fuc*ing AI gimmicks instead of stability, responsiveness, clarity, efficiency, and usability.

Again, I’d like to thank everyone for their input – now I am at least satisfied that I’m not going nuts here. Where do we go from here, I have no idea. Maybe someone from Steinberg could chime in on this? Just maybe?

9

I assume you have already performed this test:

  • Exit Cubase, delete the folder %APPDATA%\Steinberg\Cubase 15_64\Cubase Pro VST3 Cache and restart Cubase. This forces a new scan of the VST plugin paths

  • Check these files in the above folder: vstscannermaster.log (scan log), vst3plugins.xml (registered plugins) and vst3blocklist.xml (blocked plugins)

You might find some anomalies there.

You could also compare these files with those in the same folder under Cubase 14_64. This might also provide clues to the cause of the problem.

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10

Good work and thoughtful post! Ik agree 100%. Except about Steinberg not fixing things like this, there was a period in the sx3 period that random poofs and crashes happened really a lot and they did fix that within sx3.

So i have hope and bugs do happen. Ik will wait out the first 2 bug fixes before drawing conclusions.

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11

I actually haven’t. It’s a very cool idea, I did so now… But unfortunately, no change. Cubase 15 is still not seeing certain plugins… And it still crashes to desktop while opening certain old projects. The blocklist is empty. I can’t see anything aside from normal stuff in the scan log (“Initialising”, lots of “Scanning:…”, and the final few lines of the report, no errors, nothing stands out). Vst3plugins.xml is too convoluted to look through, it’s just an endless string of info on the plugins (cids, stuff in <> brackets), nothing else, nothing stands out.

However, in C14, the plot thickened a little.
At first, as I reported above, it properly saw and opened a certain plugin that I noticed C15 did not see and declared as “missing”. I couldn’t have imagined this because I actually saved the plugin’s settings as a custom preset just in case I might need it :slight_smile: Then I turned on VST2 plugins because I noticed a few in this particular project and wanted to activate them to get on with the project. C14 then properly opened the VST2 plugins – but now it no longer found the VST3 plugin that Cubase 15 doesn’t find, either!
I then deactivated VST2 plugins again, exited, deleted the plugin cache, restarted Cubase 14, and after scanning, it no longer opened the VST3 plugin in question – it ALSO declared it as “missing”. Now it behaved just as Cubase 15 does: the plugin is in fact installed and I can immediately replace the “missing” plugin placeholder with it (AND I can use the preset I stored earlier “just in case” :slight_smile: )… And after saving the “new” project with the identical plugin and identical settings, C14 now opens it normally – and so does C15, and it’s the same damn plugin with the very same settings, this is just crazy!

So, just to see what would happen, I uninstalled and then reinstalled the plugin in question… But this time, I installed both its VST2 AND VST3 version. And now BOTH Cubases see and open the plugin (even from the original old project that was problematic)… But now they open it as a VST2 (judging from the absence of the three diagonal lines next to the plugin name in the plugin selector). Unfortunately, its settings / parameters are not completely correct: I verified that by loading both the VST3 and VST2 versions of the plugin side by side and comparing the VST2 version with the VST3 preset I’d stored earlier.

What the hell is going on here? I absolutely do NOT understand this, it’s starting to border on comical :smiley:

The good news is that while Cubase 15 STILL crashes to desktop without fail when opening many of my old projects, Cubase 14 still opens them without any problem. The plugins that it might now not be seeing is something I can get around using various tricks, apparently… Or, if everything else fails, even by opening some of the projects on the old computer and then storing and moving the settings… Though all of this convoluted troubleshooting and incomprehensible problems will cost me far too much time and especially patience that I’m kind of running out of :roll_eyes:

All of what I’ve described must surely be due to something that’s gone SERIOUSLY wrong with the way in which Cubase 15 handles the plugins. Meanwhile, I don’t understand why Cubase 14 also suddenly STOPPED finding this one plugin it had previously found without problems. I also don’t understand how both Cubases then managed to replace the VST3 version of the plugin with its VST2 version and opened THAT once I installed it?! Is that a known functionality? Maybe it is, it’s just that I’ve never tried it until now. Not that it’s very useful, as, apparently, while the plugin does get replaced successfully, its previous settings do not seem to transfer properly.

In the following days, I’ll try to reconstruct a particularly complicated project just to see what happens… And I might report back if I learn anything interesting.

In the meantime, it would be GRAND if Steinberg bothered to acknowledge that they’re aware this is a problem. If I at least knew that it’s a known bug, that someone might be out there working on it, and that I’m not going crazy here, that would be fabulous… :face_with_spiral_eyes:

12

What I can add is that the VST2 & VST3 Plugin Recognition is identical in C14 and C15. Logically, the files mentioned in the Cubase Pro VST3 Cache folder should also be identical in a direct comparison.

If this is the case, then any subsequent difference in plugin handling must be due to a difference in function within the respective Cubase executable itself.

If this difference leads to the expected result in one case (C14, plugins work in the project, no crash) and not in the other (C15, plugins don’t work in the project, crash of the application), then the only conclusion that there is a processing error in the latter program.

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13

Did you move the boot drive from your old computer to the new one without reformatting it and freshly installing Windows on it?

Installing Windows from scratch on the new machine means it can get all of its drivers, motherboard IDs etc. detected and sorted out for the new hardware, instead of running with drivers for the old hardware.

14

It’s a good question. The OP only made reference to “the internal harddrive” so is that just the data drive with Cubase projects on it or is it a partitioned drive with both boot and data partitions. Also, is the data drive letter the same as it was on the old machine?

@RayKosmick

Are there really no dumps at all in Documents\Steinberg\Crashdumps? Also, are there any entries in the Windows event log which correspond with the crashes to desktop?

15

To begin in Safe Mode, wouldn’t it had been better to uncheck user preferences as well, and start with default? Or maybe you did that, but didn’t mention it?

@ASM above suggests the traditional “trashing preferences” and a restart to let Cubase re-build. Also make sure your prior Cubase versions such as 14 do not get sucked into 15 upon that restart by temporarily re-naming them. This is something users often forget it seems. You want a C15 fresh version without any sucking.

16

Don’t we all? :laughing:

Sorry, I couldn’t resist!

Good night … :sleeping_face:

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17

Which plugin is it?

18

That wasn’t exactly my suggestion. :slightly_smiling_face: In this case, I was only referring to the VST3 cache folder, since it involved issues with plugins.

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19

Here is one more idea! Install C15 on the old machine and see what happens. It Will take only 15 min. If everthing there works, i am expecting one of the Neelie installeer plug-ins is A wrong version. Cold be onder on the nee machine or newer.

20

Here go today’s conclusions… With your help – thanks to the entire collection of some very shrewd suggestions and various approaches that all of you have encouraged me to take – I FINALLY managed to pinpoint the reason for one of the CTDs, at least!

I have now established, beyond any doubt, that at least in this one problematic project that I’m currently trying to reconstruct, the crash to desktop happens because it contains an old VST2 plugin that used to be part of some of my old multitrack drum track presets, so it very likely keeps repeating in many of my oldest projects. I’m not yet sure that this is the ONLY plugin that’s causing problems because I haven’t even identified all such projects yet, but it’s definitely one of them.

As soon as I determined this, I felt extremely embarrassed because, naturally, VST2 plugins should have been – and WERE! – the VERY FIRST thing I suspected, tested, and (wrongfully) discounted as a possibility – simply because my previous approach to checking their functionality failed to reveal the problem: I only have an extremely modest collection of VST2 plugins that I never upgraded but sometimes used for the sake of nostalgia or, well, because they were parts of old mixes and I tend to be lazy when possible… :slight_smile: And I checked that each and every one of those few worked after installing them. Because here’s the CRAZIEST thing, which is the main reason why I haven’t been able to spot this before: if I open the VST2 plugin in question in a new project or in an unproblematic old project, everything is OK and it works flawlessly (it’s an ancient version of Altiverb that I stopped using and upgrading a long time ago but installed it because of the old projects – ironically, to “save time”, the as*hole that I am). If I save that project and reopen it, it keeps working perfectly. No problems occur. On the other hand, for some reason beyond my comprehension, the problematic projects that DO cause crashes and which contain this plugin are different: if I remove it to be able to open them (they WILL open without problems as soon as the plugin is removed), and THEN try to add it again to THESE projects, Cubase will immediately crash.

To restate this differently because I’m not sure that I’m being clear: I can open the VST2 plugin in question in new (empty) projects or in old projects that never crash in the first place, and it will work flawlessly… But if I open one of these problematic old projects without it and THEN try to add it, this will 100 % result in a crash to desktop.

Obviously, my feeling that the reason for the crashes must be some infernal combination of plugins was correct. However, my approach to finding potentially problematic plugins in these projects by separating them into smaller groups of tracks and opening those new projects to see if they work was inappropriate: as the problematic combination, whatever it was, disappeared, ALL of the new projects and plugins they contained opened normally, including the VST2 ones… So I wrongfully concluded that no single plugin could be blamed for the crash. Instead, it now looks like they all actually work, but only until they appear in this specific combination, and then it IS ultimately just one of them that ends up causing the crash.

Apparently, I was also too hasty and wrong in my assumption that this must be due to something that’s different in Cubase 15 and therefore Steinberg’s fault, and I apologise for that – yes, it obviously IS something about the combination of plugins that causes Cubase to crash, but I can’t really blame Steinberg for problems, no matter how totally weird, with outdated software. Anyway, I’ve phased out most of these “legacy” VST2 plugins already, just like all the 32bit plugins before them that I used to cling to for a while a decade or more ago for the sake of nostalgia, and am in the process of removing them all from my old projects.

Just to make sure this is truly it, I have now also tested this on Cubase 14, and, yes, it’s the same. On my old computer, no such thing has ever occurred. So MAYBE it’s not even the plugin’s fault but could instead be caused by something that’s different on my current PC setup, which could include anything from the new hardware to Windows 11 (which are a total pest and I’ve seen Windows updates break things even far stranger than this). Probably I’ll never find out the exact reason, and I’ll now stop trying to – I’ll just avoid using any old VST2 plugins like the plague in the future and stop focusing on this because I’ve already spent far too much time on it as it is.

Meanwhile, the problem with the “missing” VST3 plugins that shouldn’t be missing because they’re definitely installed remains the same. Why Cubase 14 initially correctly opened one of these but also started declaring it as “missing” after I activated VST2 plugins for the first time is beyond me, and I’ll probably never figure that out, either. Throughout my troubleshooting process, I was under the impression that both symptoms (the crashes and the missing plugins) were part of the same frustrating problem with plugins. That could still be true, but how or why is definitely way over my head. I’ll just stop wasting time (mine and everyone else’s) obsessing over it: now that I’ve finally found a potential solution for the CTDs, which were the main problem, I intend to tackle the rest of the problems by simply restoring the “missing” plugins manually, on a case-to-case basis.

As for ASM’s observation… I found the idea of comparing Cubase caches for differences fascinating. According to Diffchecker, the ONLY differences in all the files in the cache directories are the exact miliseconds required to scan the plugins at the end of the reports. This might still come in handy if I encounter yet another VST3 plugin that Cubase 14 sees and which Cubase 15 doesn’t see… But for now, everything seems to be identical in both versions. Of course, I wondered what the results would have been in the moment when Cubase 14 was still finding and loading the particular VST3 plugin (Softube Tape) that Cubase 15 didn’t see – that was yesterday immediately after installing C14 for the first time, before I activated the accursed VST2s. Fortunately, I have backups of those initial caches, which I made at the point when C14 WAS still finding the particular VST3 which C15 wasn’t seeing. I compared those, too – and they, too, are completely identical. I definitely did not imagine the behaviour – and I know that because I stored the preset of the VST3 in question while C14 still opened it correctly. That MIGHT imply something, maybe…? But, unfortunately, I can’t duplicate the behaviour at this point, so I’ll just have to wait and see if I can find another example like that. In that case, I’ll report back because I’m still not completely over the nagging feeling that something else is going on here which I haven’t figured out yet.

As far as the other questions: the hard drive is, of course, not a system drive, it’s a large hard drive that mostly contains only Cubase projects. Neither C14 nor C15 makes a crash dump when they crash to desktop (there ARE some crash dumps in there, but none of them is recent)… And EventViewer only shows “Application Error” (wow, who would have thought! :smiley:) for the times in question – I can’t find anything else that could be meaningful.

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