# Stop Cubase Freezing at startup



## MoeWalsaad (Dec 18, 2017)

As an orchestral music composer who uses lots of Kontakt and Play sample libraries and complex routing, It keeps happening, that large Cubase projects crash or freezes at startup, most of the times I find a way to walk around these problems like:
1 - Restarting my machine
2 - Disable expensive Instrument tracks and plugins before I open the project
3 - Removing the VST plugins from the reading folder
4 - Use the "render in place" feature whenever I'm done with a line.
5 - If it was a personal work, sometimes I surrender, let go of that piece and invest my time doing a new composition because it's easier.

All these daily struggles are crazy, and adds too much stress, and frustration in my workflow, and eats almost the whole day.

I cannot believe that you all do this as well, if somebody is on a tight deadline, there is no room for these failures, there must be some practical ways to avoid these Cubase startup freezing and crashes, and be able to work on large projects smoothly with confidence.

*I wonder, will having supercomputer specs will solve these problems once and for all?

And if not, what's your approach to have a smooth workflow?

Also, do the orchestral composers using other DAWS face these problems as well (in other words, shall I consider immigrating to a new DAW)?*


Specs:
Windows10
Memory 32GB
CPU u7-3820 @ 3.60HZ GHz
Cubase 8 Pro
Audio interface: Lexicon Lambda
I use one SSD drive and one USB3 to read sample libraries


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## Jaap (Dec 18, 2017)

I had a lot of problems last year (was with version 8.5) with Cubase freezing, crashing and all that kind of things and in the end I narrowed it down to and solved it by identifying my external hard disk (also usb3) as the problem child. Streaming of samples from it was ok, but as soon as it read audio files or plugins it made my Cubase crash.
Maybe worth checking how it is if you disconnect your external HD?

Also check Cubase by starting in "safe mode" (all the preferences temporary reset) and if it is working then without a problem, it might be caused by some settings
https://www.steinberg.net/nc/nl/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/safe-start-mode-resetting-the-cubase-preferences.html

I am running a very big template here with loads of Kontakt and also PLAY instruments as well as heavy plugins and cpu hungry synths like Diva and Serum and things are running fine here (had some problems though with 9.5, but solved after the 9.5.1 update and not really like your problems).

Good luck and I really hope you find a fix for this and your specs sound fine and you should be able to run it without problems.


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## MoeWalsaad (Dec 18, 2017)

Jaap said:


> I had a lot of problems last year (was with version 8.5) with Cubase freezing, crashing and all that kind of things and in the end I narrowed it down to and solved it by identifying my external hard disk (also usb3) as the problem child. Streaming of samples from it was ok, but as soon as it read audio files or plugins it made my Cubase crash.
> Maybe worth checking how it is if you disconnect your external HD?
> 
> Also check Cubase by starting in "safe mode" (all the preferences temporary reset) and if it is working then without a problem, it might be caused by some settings
> ...



Thanks for the reply,
It's very likely the Hard disks are causing the problem, many essential libraries are on that external drive and has no space to fit these data in my internal drives, unfortunately, If I remove it, that will miss the point.


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