Been using X3 Studio for a while now, and since installing it, I've had the occasional crash or hang, where the program either goes into "Not Responding" or just abruptly exits.  The last several days now, though, the Not Responding hangs are becoming increasingly frequent, and often with work being lost.  Auto-save and versioning helps a bit, but this really kills the momentum of working on a project.  Nothing else on my system has changed lately, but frankly, X2 was perfectly stable with no crashes on the same system.
 
I'm pretty good around Windows, but this is so vague I'm not really sure where to even start troubleshooting.  The hang happens when trying to save as... a file, when clicking something on a plug-in, or even during playback I think.  There's nothing really to suggest a pattern.
 
Any suggestions on where to start looking for issues and finding the source of the problem?  I messaged Cake support a few days ago, but haven't heard back yet.
 
Thanks
 
Neel

Maybe plugin related. What's the common thread through your projects. A little more info on your projects might be helpful in finding a solution.

Or your hard drive(s) are going bad - experiencing bad areas or of lesser concern, some corruption of the file system. chkdsk /r for bad area check and file system check or chkdsk /f for just file system check. This and malware are the first things I check for when things get like you have described.
 
 

My projects usually consist of several VST synths, mostly from Komplete 10 and more recently, synths that came bundled with my Akai Advanced keyboard, and vocal tracks with some Melodyne (which I always bounce down).  Effects are mostly ProChannel, Sonitus, or Native Instruments.  On my most recent project, an instance of Absynth was hanging Sonar whenever I tried to do anything with it after editing for a while.  So I reverted to an earlier copy of the Sonar file, and repeated the same changes in Absynth (the instance was the same all along) and it hasn't crashed Sonar yet.
 
As for disk errors, I tried to do a chkdsk on my C: drive, and it said it could only do it on a restart.  So I restarted, and CHKDSK reported it couldn't complete the scan due to an error with a "recently installed software package."  I have no idea what this software package might be.
 
That being said, I'm also running MS Office, Adobe CS6 suite, and Vegas Movie Studio on the same computer, and they crash extremely rarely, if at all.  Only Sonar is giving me regular grief.

MondoArt
 
As for disk errors, I tried to do a chkdsk on my C: drive, and it said it could only do it on a restart.  So I restarted, and CHKDSK reported it couldn't complete the scan due to an error with a "recently installed software package."  I have no idea what this software package might be.

Oh that's a pita error.I have seen it in my shop once in a while. I forgot how I over came that - likely googled it.
 
Just because everything else runs ok that does no mean you don't have disk issues, as a matter of fact it tends to point so just that as all it takes is a something wrong with one of the files X3 uses and there you go.
 

HDTune is free an useful for checking your disk when chkdsk is giving you trouble too.
 

bitman
HDTune is free an useful for checking your disk when chkdsk is giving you trouble too.
 

 
Thanks Bitman.  I gave HDTune a try, it returned no errors on the scan.  Maybe I'll try a full uninstall and re-install of X3.
 

Hi. Have you tried to open the project(s) in safe mode? Hold Shift down when opening. Could rule out plugins issues. If you use NI Replika (latest version), it is known to crash. 
Best of luck.

Hi Ken
 
Yes, I use Replika like crazy - multiple instances, just about every single project.  Just tried to open my latest project in safe mode, and excluded Replika - sure enough, it allowed me to do a save as... where it didn't before.  I think you've found the culprit!  Thank you so much!
 
Neel
 

You are welcome. Roll back to the previous version of Replika, and you will be good to go.