Not really. I've opened several new and old projects and they all can potentially do the hanging VST thing. As long as they contain those VSTs, it has a chance of hanging on load.

It's funny, though. If I run ProcessMonitor and monitor Cubase4.exe specifically, it slows the loading down just enough to prevent the hanging VST issue. If I let the app load without this tracing application running, then it has the potential to hang. Because of this behavior with ProcessMonitor, to me it appears to be some kind of racing condition that leaves the app hanging waiting on something. I was running ProcessMonitor in hopes that I could get it to hang while tracing the application and then I could send the trace to you. But, I can't seem to get Cubase 4 to hang with ProcessMonitor running (as I explained above).

Also, when the app does hang, I found out that Cubase4.exe remains in the process list and cannot be killed even though the interface eventually goes way. I've tried killing it with Task Manager and Process Explorer (even trying to kill the hanging thread internally) and it doesn't go away. I have to reboot to clear this process out. This is likely why there's no sound after these hangs... because the app doesn't fully exit.