I have not bothered with the VSTi for quite some, but now that I am - I am quite surprised to see how problematic it is. Am I alone in this

Did tests on my old Win7(32) & Cubase 8.5 - rendering is a hi&miss affair. Quite often the process starts, proceeds to 20% and then sits there... Cubase then becomes non-responsive, requiring a complete machine re-start.
Experienced the same issues on my Win8.1(64) & Cubase 9.5 & 10. It works fine enough until one attempts to either FREEZE or RENDER - then Cubase crashes.
My current workaround is to do a live export & then import... painful time waste
