Windows: Cubase 9.5 or newer does not start or crashes

Problem

Cubase 9.5 or newer does not start (not even the start screen is shown) or crashes while working (the crash dump files list a crash in the imagegenerator.dll). On the same system, Cubase 9.0 starts just fine.

Cause

A new graphics sub-system has been introduced in Cubase 9.5 that seems to show incompatibilities with certain NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPU) and driver versions.

Workarounds

We haven't found a solution to this issue yet as only few systems show this behavior and it is not reproducible on any system at Steinberg so far. However, there are currently three possible workarounds available:

• Roll back the GPU driver to the previous version. Is is done in the Windows device manager (right-click on the NVIDIA graphics device entry > Properties > "Driver" tab).
  
  
• Another option is to check for updates for your NVIDIA GPU.
  
  
• On systems with two separate GPUs (usually a combination of NVIDIA and Intel), it is often possible to select the GPU to be used with a certain application. Setting Cubase to run on the integrated (Intel) processor can address this issue as well.
  
  
  • Make sure the option is available in the Windows right-click context menu.
    To do so, open the Windows control panel, then open the "NVIDIA Control Panel".
    
  • Now select "Desktop" > "Add 'Run with graphics processor' to Context Menu".
    
  • Find the Cubase 9.5.exe or the alias for it and right-click on it. The context menu opens. Select "Run with graphics processor" > "Integrated graphics".
    
    Here, you can also change the default graphics processor to be used for Cubase (or other applications).