Initializing preferences
Corrupted program preference files can bring your Steinberg program into all kinds of troubles, particularly after installing an update.
Fortunately, refreshing the preferences is quite easy:
- Close all programs.
- Open the ‘Run’ command prompt by pressing the Windows logo key and R on the keyboard simultaneously. The Windows key is located between the keys Ctrl and alt.
(To open the command prompt on Windows XP select ‘Run’ from the Start menu.) - In the command line of the ‘Run’ window, enter this path: %appdata%/Steinberg
- Locate the folder which is named the same as your Steinberg program, for example ‘Cubase 8.5’.
- Rename it (for example, from ‘Cubase 8.5’ to ‘xCubase 8.5’) in order to hide it from your Steinberg software. The folder will only be hidden safely, if the change will be done before the original folder name.
- If you find folders of previous versions of your program, make sure to hide or remove them, too.
Next time you start your Steinberg program it will create a new folder with fresh preferences and default settings - which hopefully fixes the problem you’ve experienced.
Please note: Make sure to hide or remove preferences folders of all installations of your Steinberg program. Otherwise the program would try to comply with them when creating fresh preferences. And exactly this could be the source of errors.
Initialising the program’s preferences does not necessarily mean that you lose all settings. For example if you have defined your own set of key commands that you want to keep you can replace the corresponding file (Key Commands.xml) in the freshly created folder by a copy of the same file taken from the folder you’ve disabled by renaming.
Alternative ways: Instead of renaming it, you also can move the preferences folder of your program from Steinberg’s application data folder to another place, for example the Desktop. You even can simply trash it if you are sure that your user settings are not that hard to rebuild. Another approach: Since in many cases the file ‘Defaults.xml’ will be the trouble maker you also could try if renaming or deleting only this particular file already solves the problem.