Sudden Exits Becoming Quite Common

[Michael McBroom 28]

I don't really want to call them crashes, although I suppose one could. I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this. Here's the deal, with a bit of history:

I guess it started a month ago or maybe a little longer, where CW would suddenly exit to the OS. It wasn't a hard crash or anything, the sort of thing that might have required a system reboot. Nope, suddenly *boink* it would just drop out to the OS. I reloaded CW and everything was back to normal -- until it happened again. 

And then I noticed a trend. You know how, if you load a series of CW files, the previous one(s) don't exit, but just stay in the background? Well, I began to notice that if I had loaded a certain number of files, it was more prone to exiting. So I started keeping an eye on the number of files that had been loaded, and it doesn't seem to be a definite number -- probably has more to do with the amount of memory each uses?  But CW usually exits after 4 or 5 files have been loaded. And I can always tell when it will happen. After loading the last file, when I click on "Play" the transport icon turns amber and then stays that color for a half-second or so, with no sound being played, and then, poof, back to the OS. It got to be so regular that I got in the habit of clearing out the background files so this wouldn't happen. Until one time, and this has happened only once so far, the same thing happened to a file with none in the background.  After rebooting CW and reloading the same file, everything was fine. So it didn't have anything to do with the file, far as I could tell.

And in case you're wondering, the system is fairly new. It's running Win10 from a new SSD drive, and it has 16 GB of RAM. I have a couple of TBs of open drive space on the drive I use to store my music files.

Back when I was running Win7, this never happened. This machine has had Win10 since January, with none of this sort of behavior until relatively recently. I don't know if I should be pointing fingers at a recent update of Win10 or a recent update of CW or maybe both? Or something else, altogether?

This isn't really a pressing issue. Nothing's usually being harmed, since it happens when I first press "Play." It's just a matter of curiosity at this point, but of course, I wouldn't mind putting a stop to this behavior.

[bdickens 1,179]

What audio interface do you have and do you have the correct W10 drivers for it?

[John Vere 1,434]

Hey Michael, Just one thing comes to mind and this has happened to a few people due to adding the TTS-1 to a project later on in the game. I just had it happen to me a month or so a go. I got a toast message saying something fatal had happened and Cakewalk needed to close. But to verify that see if a mini dump was created. 

 https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013262/How-to-collect-a-Minidump-file-when-your-Cakewalk-program-crashes

 

 

[Michael McBroom 28]

Bdickens, I'm running a MOTU M4 and yes, I have Win10 drivers loaded for it. (I bought the MOTU after I switched over to Win10)

John, I've gotten those Cakewalk fatal error messages in the past, but it's been quite a while since I've seen one. And I'm not loading TTS-1 after anything. I use TTS-1 a lot and it's usually set up from the git-go. I'll check into the mini dump thing, although I suspect I won't find anything. Like I mentioned earlier, I hesitate to call it a crash. It's more a case of CW just deciding to shut down. I've found that if I just get into the habit of closing previous files now it rarely happens. So it has something to do with having several files open in the background. But I guess they're not really "open," are they.

[User 905133 920]

I had something similar a few years ago when I would have more than one project open at a time.  My solution was similar to yours if I understand you correctly: I work on one project at a time.  It seemed that sometimes the project-based settings of one project conflicted with the settings of a second or third project.

[Michael McBroom 28]

Hmm . . . that's interesting. I'll have to watch -- stack up a few files to see if I can trigger it, and then I can inspect them for similarities, I guess.

[David Baay 804]

There's an option to allow only one project open at a time (Preferences > File > Advanced), but it shouldn't be a problem to have a several open at once. I pretty regularly have two or three open, but not so often more than that. My guess would be it's project/plugin-specific. You might try raising the  ExceptionHandlingSeverity value in Preferences > File - Initialization File, and seeing if it helps intercept the 'crash to desktop' and provide more information:

 

 

[scook 4,208]

There may be some information about the crashes in the Windows Event logs.

[Michael McBroom 28]

David, under Preferences/File/Advanced, the box wasn't checked. And there's nothing at the File/Initialization file location, especially no "ExceptionHandlingSeverity value." It's just blank there.

[scook 4,208]

By default Preferences/File/Initialization File has no values set

Read the link above for details on setting ExceptionHandlingSeverity.

[Michael McBroom 28]

Welp, it's been a few days and I thought I should stop back by and let y'all know what I'm doing now.

I went to Preferences/Advanced and checked "Allow only one open project at a time." That took care of the problem. I almost never need more than one project open anyway, and for those rare instances when I need more than one, I can always uncheck the box.

I remain curious, though -- what's changed in CWbB, when I used to be able to have large numbers of projects open and now the software exits to the OS after I've typically loaded only three? My system has 16 GB of RAM too, so I know it's not a memory issue. I think. Maybe Windows 10 has recently decided to be a resource hog and it isn't CWbB at all?

[John Vere 1,434]

I’d be curious too. My workflow for recording live bands was to create a template with all the inputs, busses, pro channel set up, colours, effects etc and the use save as and name each project using the provided set list. I would open the whole set and minimize to the bottom. So there’s 12-15 projects open. This was on a laptop with 8 GB of ram. Always worked smoothly for me. 

[Michael McBroom 28]

I have a laptop with 8 GB of RAM also, and I've had lots of projects open with it. The biggest difference between it and my DAW is the DAW is running Win10 and the laptop is still running Win7.  This has gotten me curious. I have the laptop upstairs. When I retire to bed, I think that, before I drift off, I'll see how many projects I can load. Something tells me it'll be the same as before. Which would seem to indicate my system's Win10 install is most likely the problem.

[Michael McBroom 28]

An interesting update. I just tried to see what would happen with my laptop, which is running the current version of CWbB, but the Win7 OS. I was able to load 8 projects when finally I got the CW popup notifying me of a crash dump and asking if it should save my work -- a notice I've gotten numerous times in the past for unanticipated reasons.

So, it looks like the problem lies with my DAW or Win10 or both.

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Michael McBroom

[John Vere 1,434]

It’s nice to have more than one computer, audio interface etc when troubleshooting. 
I often fire up my laptop to see what people who never had Sonar see with CbC . It is Fresh install W10 OS and only free music software. 
I still have that old 2008 Sony laptop with windows 7 and it must have a pretty old version of CbB by now. Still working fine.