Update from Cubase 11 to 14 and freezing on saves

Hi!

I’ve been having some issues with cubase freezing during saves(I’m working on Windows 10, and Cubase 11), and when I try to force quit the program when using Task Manager, it never usually works, and I have to do a hard shut down. The problem with the hard shut downs is that they sometimes cause damage to the disk when this happens. I already spoke to tech support, and they say Cubase 11 is no longer supported so they can’t be of much help. And so I guess the next question is, if I upgrade to Cubase 14 from 11, will my current Cubase 11 projects play? Any help is appreciated. I have a dump file, but it won’t let me attach links…not sure what to do about that.

Thanks

Hi and welcome,
Yes, all your previous Cubase projects will play in C14 (you might need to re-enable Vst2 support in the plugin manager). You might also need to update some of your plugins to their newest version.
I find it rather suspicious that you cannot even kill Cubase via the Task manager, I’ve never experienced that.
Have you tried starting Cubase in safe mode and see if that helps (Start Cubase in Safe mode / Temporarily disable preferences).
Does this happen with every project or might there be some problematic plugin involved? You could try updating your plugins to their newest version and see whether that helps.

(I think you can only attach links after a couple of posts here)

Ah I see. I’ll do some more posts and see if I can drop in the link. And yep I’ve updated my plugins just to make sure they’re up to date. I did run Cubase in safe mode, and it saved okay, but because it was in safe mode, I wasn’t connected to VEPro etc, so I couldn’t really do any work. The freezing save seems to happen after I’ve been running the project for a little while. It will usually save the first few times, which is odd. I will say though, that when I opened the dump file, it didn’t really point to any particular plugin that I could see, it just said “Cubase 11”. I’ll try and repost the dump file

Welp, still can’t do it, lol.

The problem with a freeze/hang is that doesn’t necessarily show easily a plugin as a culprit, as opposed to a crash, so a dump isn’t as helpful

So is there no real way to see what’s going on with a freeze/hang?

I’ve tried disabling the plugins/safe mode before, and while it works(as in the project opens), I really can’t test the system since it disables everything in VEPro as well, so all I can do is just sit there. It usually does the weird freeze/hang thing after I’ve been working for a little while(10-30 mins), regardless of the project.

Well, there are two scenarios for safe mode, one with preferences disable (which temporarily disables the current program preferences, e.g. some window setting etc), and the additional option to disable all third party plugins (which is usually helpful if the program crashes in a plugin while opening a project). Seems like you tried the latter one. What about the first one?
It might of course be that the hang is exactly caused by a plugin. Does the hang happen with all your projects? What is a common denominator of all those projects? VEPro? Could be that exactly this plugin is a problem.

You wrote that you have to do a “hard shutdown”… does that mean that you really reset the computer via the reset button? Or do you restart Windows?

It would usually do it in any project that I had worked in for around 10-15 minutes(not in safe mode, and with all plugins/preferences working). I had disabled plugins preferences before, and it started up fine, but I couldn’t really work in it and recreate the problem because it basically disabled my entire project. And in terms of hard shut downs, I usually have to reset the computer, as in, shut it down completely. BUT…I have an update…

I bit the bullet and bought Cubase 14 hoping that it would fix this problem, and it has! Normally I wouldn’t do an update while working on multiple projects, but in this case, it had to be done.

Things are working mostly smooth, but now my Arturia Keylab keyboard lost some of it’s functionality for some reason. I used to be able to right click on any knob in my Kontakt/VEPro and “learn automation”, twist any knob on my MIDI keyboard, and it would just work. Now, my MIDI keyboard has lost functionality in the regard. Do you have any suggestions as to why this has happened?

Thanks again for your help

Alright nevermind - spoke too soon :pensive_face:

Cubase 14 is now freezing. As you mentioned in your previous post, fese, VEPro is one common denominator, but the VEPro server project usually doesn’t freeze up, it’s always Cubase. When Cubase freezes, I disconnect VEPro from Cubase to prevent corruption of the VEPro server project, since I usually have to do a hard shut down when Cubase freezes.

Imho you should be able to kill Cubase via the windows task manager. If that doesn’t work and you really need to hard reset your system (that means that not even a windows reboot works?), there is something fishy going on with your system. Hard to tell from here, though…
Some ideas to narrow it down:

  • disconnecting all peripherals from your system that you don’t absolutely need.
  • you seem to rely very much on VEpro, but just for a test, create a project without that, loading all libraries directly and see if you can recreate the freeze.
  • try to create a crashdump of cubase in the case of freeze as described here How to get crash dump when Cubase freezes instead of crashes - #2 by Martin.Jirsak and upload a link (you should be able to do that by now…)

Okay this is great food for thought. I have a lot of extra drives(one is my backup drive) connected to my computer, and I didn’t realize this could affect the performance so drastically considering my computer is at least somewhat capable(i9-10850k, 128 gigs of RAM, all SSD drives, etc.).

When I run the test I’ll make sure to get a crash dump when/if it freezes and report back. Thanks for the help so far