Audition CS5.5 constantly crashing during editing

Question

I am running Adobe Audition version 4.0 Build 1815 on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional edition.  Audtion used to run great for the last 12 months or so, but recently - during last 4 weeks or so - it crashes unexpectedly during an edit session.  While saving I also frequently see a warning that this file is being used by some other application (hence can't be saved).  I have turned off all backup software (Mozy, Dropbox etc.) wondering if they are somehow conflicting with Audtion.
Here's is a typical event log entry when it crashes:
Faulting application name: Adobe Audition.exe, version: 4.0.0.1815, time stamp: 0x4d8ba538
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17725, time stamp: 0x4ec49b8f
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0002e41b
Faulting process id: 0x1fec
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd97ea244e34f8
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Audition CS5.5\Adobe Audition.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 0356a428-03de-11e2-93eb-0025115f268c
Is this a known issue and is there a fix available?
regards,
Sudhanshu Thakur
Durham, NC

Answer 1

Hi Sudhanshu,
Unfortunately, that error doesn't tell us too much about why the crash occurs.  Are you typically working in Waveform view, or Multitrack View?  If you get the error that the file is currently in use, does it work if you uncheck the box labeled "Include markers and other metadata" in the Save As dialog?
Let's try forcing Audition to rebuild its preference files as a first step and see if this makes a difference.
1. Open Explorer and navigate to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Audition  (Note - you will probably need to type the "AppData" folder name manually into the address bar as it's hidden by Windows by default.)
2. Click on the "4.0" folder located there and rename it to "4.0_BACKUP"
3. Launch Audition
It will rebuild all of its preferences, so for now, any presets you had will not be available.  If we determine this change fixes the issue, you can move some of the files/folders from "4.0_BACKUP" into the new "4.0" folder to restore these.  Notably: "EffectPresets.xml", and "Favorites.xml"