Musescore 4 constantly crashing

• Dec 16, 2022 - 22:28

Hello,
I downloaded MS4 and the instruments today, and I must say something brilliant has been achieved.
I installed it on two machines: a PC running Windows 11 and a laptop running Windows 10 Pro.

On the PC everything seems to run fine, but on the laptop (Windows 10 Pro, 8 Gb RAM, 1 Tb HDD), MS crashes (it justcloses down) after every few bars I complete.

I know I am not giving you much to go by here, but that's all I know as I am totally new to version 4.

Has anyone had similar problems, or even better, found a solution to it?

Thank you in advance.


Comments

Having similar issue as well. Using a surface pro 6 with Win 10 and 8Gb ram and 128 SSD.
Musescore 4 is constantly crashing, while using interface or even just while leaving it idly running.

I am having the same kind of issue. I was in the middle of writing for maybe an hour and the window just closed (fortunately I was able to locate a backup since the program didn't automatically ask to restore it). Now it crashes every minute or so.

I've had MS4 on my Windows 10 laptop, co-installed with MS3. Entering fairly uncomplicated piano scores, it crashes about every 10 bars, sometimes more frequently.

I installed it on a brand new Win11 laptop which has never had MS on it. Same behaviour. Even saving frequently it seems that it's not even saving properly and I am losing more than two saves' worth of work from some crashes.

The crashes are 95% around keyboard note-entry and undo operations.

Parts of the UI are also maddeningly slow: the Style window can take up to 20 seconds to appear, even on the newer quite speedy laptop. In general everything is much slower than MS3. For comparison MS4 on my new laptop is slower than MS3 on my 6yr old laptop.

As impressive as the new update appears to be this is the most unstable released software I've worked with in >35yrs.

I'm running a decent rig on desktop and having crashes just from adding things like dynamics to instruments. . .
On Windows 11 with plenty of CPU power, ram, etc. I don't really know what's going on but it's rather disruptive to my workflow.

Update:

I now literally cannot open my current work file whatsoever. It crashes 100% of the time. This is ridiculous. I have seen home built appliances work smoother than this application.

You're not alone friend. Couple instances of it constantly crashing trying to export audio by way of publishing a score. For instance this score here. Many random times as well. Sometimes I can't select a specific note or measure, because it crashes.
Annoying, to say the least. Otherwise, great, great experience here on my Chromebook.

Attachment Size
Chromebook SQ 3rd mov.mscz 50.32 KB

Mine will just randomly close itself without a popup or anything. I just lost an hour and a half of work right before I showed it to someone :(

In reply to by laneviewbenf

You’re still using the original 4.0.0 release from last December? If so, please update and try again. If you continue to have problems, please start a new thread and be sure to attach the score that is giving you trouble, along with precise steps to reproduce the issue. Then we can understand and assist better.

Hello

I had the same problem yesterday, here's what solved it:

-Create a new score with the same instrument layout
-Copy everything from the old score to the new (Ctrl+A Ctrl+C Ctrl+V).

Then, it worked for me! :)

Happening to me since i downloaded running on a windows 11 16GB ram there is nothing on this machine brand new and still crashing every few bars. even tried starting fresh with new composition just freezes up and starts to crash. Bummer will continue to follow feed. right now im replying because the more of us who do the more likely to find solution from tech.

same here: win 11, 8gb ram, 456gb of space (135 free), AMD 4800H 2.90GHz
.
just happened to me today (and yesterday 05/01), never happened before... i try to write some bars and poof! it just crashes :( (sometimes i don't do more than play and stop)

edit: i think the main problem is the new soundfont, i changed it to the ms default and now it doesn't crash

Are people's files getting corrupted? Crashes for me are happening on retroactive time signature changes. When I load the file up again the measures have an incorrect amount of beats. This can only be fixed by actually deleting the measures, not just deleting the contents inside them.

I think things went off the rails for me when I added a multi-bar volta. What I did was to select the bars for the volta1 then selected the volta1 from the palette. I also noticed the voltas in the individual parts were wacky - like volta1 marking wasn't present in the clarinet or cello parts.

According to youtube I should have dragged the volta1 from the palette to the first measure, then extend it by selecting and using shift-right-arrow.

I deleted my voltas and used that method. It seems stable now, and the individual parts are sane.

Hi, if you have Realtek installed might be the reason for the application to crash other audio sources like Voicemeeter or SteelSeries GG might also crash the application

Musescore 4 is quite buggy, as expected. I also have a lot of problems and it periodically crashes for no apparent reason.
My workaround is this: when you see it crashing more often or at a specific point, copy all the notes and paste them in a new file. It can be a hassle to add repetitions, voltas and a bunch of other stuff, but it can guarantee it working better for a few days. I think the problem lies in the amount of info in a sheet music. Maybe working too much on a piece makes overloads Musescore, but pasting everything in a new file clears the cache of something, I dunno. But it kinda works for me.

Hi Dudes,

I'm Mac OS 11.7 and MS4 is crashing a lot !!
Everytime I change indication of measure "bang" CRASH ....
Is it possible to send bug report to Musescore programmers ??
Thx for all

Same. every twenty to thirty minutes or when i do a certain thing like adding a note to a certain part/ changing the key signature in certain files it crashes. i have windows 10

Hey, same here. This started happening to me very recently. I mean, I am using a 2011 ThinkPad with Linux on it, but now that I see that even some more powerful laptops are having issues, it calms me down a little. Still, do you guys now of any fixes, or am I doomed? I updated MS to its newest version and it crashes still. I can only open the file and when I click on the score to change something it crashes immediately.

I've been annoyed by apparently random v4 crashes (most recently 4.0.2) since the start, but my workaround has been to hit ctrl-s very often--but now when I OPEN some files Musescore crashes with no message before the file is displayed. My main PC is a ThinkPad with 16GB RAM and Win11 Pro, but I also installed MuseScore on a desktop running Win10 Pro and got the same result. Then I installed it on my Chromebook (my first Linux app on it) and unfortunately got the same result. I saw online that uncompressing the file might be a workaround, so I unzipped the .mscz and extracted the .mscx version, but Musescore crashes with that too. I've seen the workaround of select all, copy, paste into new file, but since I can't open the file, that won't help me. The .mscx format looks like XML, but I don't know how to convert it to MusicXML without opening it in Musescore either! I've used other packages like NoteWorthy, Finale, Sibelius, and Myriad Harmony Assistant but prefer Musescore, so most of my files are .mscz. Fortunately many still open, but unfortunately the ones I'm working on now don't. Please help! I'm attaching two files that used to open but don't any more on any of the 3 machines. Thank you.

Attachment Size
MassOfAscentLS.mscz 37.54 KB
MassOfAscentKB.mscz 52.72 KB

In reply to by memeweaver

Amen. The files are in Microsoft OneDrive. I bit the bullet and went to Version history and restored successive previous versions till one opened. I have lots of editing to redo, but that's better than not having the option, and better than starting from what I got when opening it in v3 and clicking Ignore. Thank you.

In reply to by jrceloni

While redoing my edits, I discovered a few things (I won't call them patterns) about the crashes:

(1) Once I got a file old enough to open, I tried editing it, but if I ran into problems, I split it into (three) pieces then edited each piece. I still got crashes on some pieces, but I eventually got everything updated.

(2) Sometimes I'd get a crash when opening a file, then when trying a 2nd or 3rd time, it opened OK! Other times it always crashed.

(3) Though from #1 I assumed the file size triggered the problem, the largest file I worked with (30+ pages) didn't need to be split up once I started with an old enough version.

(4) When I was able to open a file but it crashed during editing, I noted the last thing I did before the crash. They were varied: adding section mark, inserting a measure, adding or removing a start-repeat or end-repeat mark...

I didn't add the above to my Github bug report because I'm not sure it would be helpful, but it helped me work around the problems.

BTW I'm glad OneDrive maintained so many back versions since I was saving the file after practically every change!

In reply to by jrceloni

It can take a while to get a good repro, and because Musescore can take up to 20 seconds to crash after the triggering event, there's ample opportunity to do a lot of things in that time window. You have to slow right down and pause a lot to see what the exact trigger is.

I'm seeing more unexplained crashes and corruption in 4.0.2 than in the two prior releases.

Newly joined Musescore and decided to download the Windows desktop version.

My computer's 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, Windows 11.

It doesn't even get past the splash screen when I open it, as it crashes immediately.

Never used the software before, and since it doesn't even open, I haven't even had the chance to create a file.

I guess I'll stick to Noteworthy Composer.

In reply to by bobjp

Your post gave me hope, since I recently connected a MIDI keyboard to my home ThinkPad via USB MIDI interface. I just disconnected it. Unfortunately MuseScore still crashes when opening either of the two MassOfAscent files above before either file shows up. Fortunately many other files open fine. Thank you.

In reply to by jrceloni

@jrceloni.
I'm no expert, for sure. But I spent some time in one of your scores. I wish I had some idea of what is going wrong. I fixed the measures with too many beats. Deleted the spaces between sections. And the resulting overlapping lyrics and titles. I reworked everything my limited knowledge could come up with that might cause a crash. I saved in a few different formats. Only uncompressed music.xml would open in MU4. Save As result would not reopen in MU4. And now the uncompressed xml won't open either.
FWIW, it really is possible to work in MU4 without problems. I run it on three under powered W10 devices. I write for medium sized orchestra and have never had a crash. (fingers crossed).

Come to think of it, I didn't check your repeat structure. This is also known to cause problems. You might double check.

In reply to by bobjp

Thank you for your efforts and suggestions. Repeat structure may be the issue. I thought it was right (begin/end, endings, properties reflecting repeat # and matching text...), but I might have missed it in one or more places. Fortunately I was able to revert to earlier file versions and fix everything. I've dealt with app crashes before, but I'd be so much happier if MuseScore dropped a clue before crashing and/or had a diagnostic/debug mode that would provide more info to users and/or developers. Thanks again.

In reply to by Fluoromaniac

I used NWC for years before MuseScore and have found it very good as far as it goes. It's never crashed on me, and output looks good (v2.75a). When MuseScore doesn't crash, I prefer its output, and I appreciate that it can import and export MusicXML. When I edit a file I originally notated in NWC, I used to use http://nwc2musicxml.appspot.com then edit it in MuseScore. Unfortunately, that hasn't been available for months, and https://www.niversoft.com/products/xml2nwc, though available, produces MusicXML needing more MuseScore editing to look like it used to. Myriad Harmony Assistant claims to import NWC (to export to MusicXML, but I haven't gotten it to work with NWC 2.x files. If I didn't have a history of years of crash-free MuseScore from v2, I too may be reverting to NWC now, or Finale (which has its own problems), but I have confidence in the developer and user community that v4 will become stable soon--or else I wouldn't have reported my crashes to this forum and Github. Thanks for your contribution.

My use MuseScore is pretty basic, so maybe there are advanced features that are an improvement. But from the fact you cannot open multiple documents in the same window to the painfully slow opening of Format>Style it has been a real letdown.

I guess I should be greatful it runs at all on my PC.

In reply to by fool4piano

I don't think I understand you. I use MuseScore for Windows and frequently open more than one score. I can see them all on my screen(s) and copy/paste between them.

BTW I now also have MuseScore on my Chromebook and am installing it on my Android tablet (in a Linux terminal). I am grateful.

In reply to by jrceloni

Let me clarify: I can indeed opening multiple scores, but not in the same window like in MS3. There are other strings where others have commented on it and the moderators have said elimination of this ability was necessary to accomodate other features.

And jus now it started crashing on me when I try to load a "style".

I don't have any problems at all with MS4 if the piece will not be in an orchestra, and yeah, I run it on Windows 10 on my laptop. But I managed to export a piece and it's really fun and games. But when I tried an orchestral arrangement, it will crash and only the previous instruments are saved. So, I was thinking "Maybe MS4 is not yet suited for Orchestral Arrangements".

I have the same issues but it happens specifically when i search for anything or attempt to edit the subtitles in anyway shape or form. If it is this buggy then why was it released in the first place. I am also ranting here as it took me a collective 20 minutes to remove the word "The" from my title

Here's an excerpt of an explanation of what I believe to be going on, made by someone infinitely smarter than I in this area.

Hopefully it provides insight both to all victims of this software issue, both on the MuseScore client side and the MuseScore team side:

"A program is something like a house of cards. It is a delicately organized structure which will continue to stand just so long as nothing unplanned occurs.
As an example, if the program planned for the necessity to replace a card at the bottom of the stack with a different card, then the program would have arrangements for temporary supports and so on to assure the rest of the structure is held up while the bottom card is replaced.
But if some weird circumstance arises that the programmers didn’t consider, and some instruction that wasn’t intended to do this happens to pull out a bottom card, then the program (house) is going to collapse. The OS knows there is nothing that can be done and shuts down the program.
The OS certainly doesn’t know how to stuff a support under the building and if the program knew how to do that, it would never have gotten into this mess.
It is entirely possible to write programs that try very hard to keep running, or at the very least try very hard to not lose your work. Usually this takes the form of two mechansims: a small reliable program whose only job is to monitor the big, less reliable, program and to restart it if necessary, and a logging mechanism that makes sure the big program records what it was trying to do and any work that has not yet been saved.
So imagine a document editor. It is huge and complex and not perfect, but it infuriates the users when it crashes and loses hours of their work. The programmers know they can’t make it perfect, but they can make sure it doesn’t lose work. All user events are written to a log file by part of the program that is so simple that it isn’t that buggy. If the big program then crashes, it is automatically restarted and can “play back the log” to completley restore its state to just before the crash.
This scheme almost works. The problem with it is that the crash is latent, the damage was done at step 10, but the crash doesn’t happen until step 15. Playing back the log will just cause a repetitive crash, which is even more infuriating than the first one. For this reason, programs which play back log files usually let the user step through the log so that they can find the last event that doesn’t lead to another crash.
Getting back to the original question, there is no known way for a program “to keep itself open” because there is no way to tell how much and where the damage is. You can write all the self-checking code you want, and that is a good thing to do, but when you find a self-check failure, you then have to figure out what to do about it. It is almost impossible to have contingency plans for every sort of failure. It is much easier to restart than to try and press on.
This is true even for things that are really important, like the control programs for spacecraft. They have all sorts of checking, but it is easier and more reliable to restart from a known correct starting place than to try and patch a running system."

Guys, I think we just need to let the MuseScore team have a chat with their developers to sort out their bugs. There are too many to be able to work with an individual coping mechanism for each one.

To the MUSESCORE team: Lemme know if you guys need a beta tester on the Apple side for the reworked version, as I trust you guys will sort this out. :)

In reply to by Amanda Quick

Thanks for the comments! The quoted text is indeed good advice, and it’s definitely something all programmers know and understand - including those working on MuseScore. The one thing that is needed to solve any one specific problem are precise steps to reproduce the bug. Once someone provides those precise steps, then the bug can be fixed. Bugs leading to crashes are always given the highest priority, and in general all such reported crashes are fixed before the next release. 4.2 is getting pretty close, so if anyone has a particular bug with reproducible steps you have not yet reported over on GitHub (the official tracking site for bugs in MuseScore and many other open source applications), be sure to do so ASAP.

If on the other hand you are experiencing a problem you aren’t sure how to reproduce, please start a new thread in the Support forum here in musescore.org and include as much info as you can to help others try to figure out exact steps to reproduce it.

I have a similar problem too, whenever I write for the flute or piccolo it completely crashes. I'm not sure why this keeps happening, however feel like this is a bug and needs to be fixed. Please fix it because I need a piccolo/flute part for one of my scores.

Just had the same experience. I use windows 11, 512gb ssd, and it’s been only 11 month since I started using my laptop. I’m so upset…

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