Chessbase 11 Crashes?

Yes, almost every time I use it, the program crashes or some functions stop to work.

Chessbase is the buggiest program I have. Also the preivouse versions have lot of bugs.

For every new version of Chessbase they add new functions, but don't fix the basic platform flaws.

Weird, I haven't had any crashes at all, using Windows 7 x64.  Fritz 12 has crashed on me if I switch main engines a bunch of times, but ChessBase 11 not once.  I use it for maybe 4-5 hours at a time, doing database stuff and training videos.

OK, some are lucky!

Maybe something in the basic platform has changed with the 64 bit version.

I'm using Windows 7, 32 bit version and don't have problems with ANY other application. But I'm still using chessbase.

I have also tried SCID, but don't like it. Maybe because I'm so used to Chessbase, which I have used for many years, despite the flaws.

A new update came out yesterday, give it a try.  As I said, running Windows 7 64 bit with no crashes.  The only issue I have had is it randomly deactivated itself once and then wouldn't update from inside the app.  Here is the link to the update, I''ve heard other people say it fixed a lot of issues:

 http://www.fritzserver.org/updates/cb11.exe

And for the record, though I am running 64 bit Windows 7, ChessBase is still a 32bit app, which should make it more unstable on my system.  Maybe I am just lucky.  I also agree with you about SCID, ChessBase makes the basic record keeping and studying tasks I use it for so easy, not to mention the training videos.

Badly I saw this topic after I bought chessbase 11 yesterday.  It crashed or some functions missing every time I use it.  My money is gone.   

I use SCID extensively. It is just a matter of being used to it. Chessbase 11 is a very expensive software and it is a pity to Know that it crashes frequently. This clearly shouldn't happen. Personally I would ask for a full refund.

I use SCID before on my macbook pro, too.  But the font is too small to see so I decided to use a regular software to continue my study. 

Maybe I should give SCID on windows another try.  It actually is a good software. 

I do not have time to elaborate, but FYI, chessBase 11 is a nightmare.

If I could do it over again, I would go back to chessBase 9, which never failed me.

Thats the first thing.  The second thing is that I am an expert at chessBase.  This is not a joke.  A world top 100 player asks ME to send HIM his games in chessBase, long story, a brilliant man who has been world top 11, so when I say expert, I mean it.

All I want to do is get the word out.  I have had forty conversations with chessBase staff, about all kinds of things.  Kafka's Castle.

Some, a handful of things are better, but most of it is messed up, unstable, and you cannot do things you once could, cannot do them correctly, or things once perfect reasonable either hidden or darn near impossible to find.  I have thousands, thousands of hours on this program.  I am saddened.

Please don't write me for helpdesk stuff or hints, just take my word, thats it.  Got to have the program?  Yes.  But be warned, its big brother as far as I am concerned.

Don't worry, there's still hope...

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

After updating my CB11 with the November patch, opening random games locks the program up on my computer now. I can't determine any pattern to it, but I'd guess about 30 percent of my games can't be opened in CB11, and cause it to crash and burn if I try to open them. I've had to go back to using Chessbase 10 because of this. CB10 opens the games fine, and prior to the patch CB11 opened the games fine. I was finally able to get an email response from Chessbase support on this. They had me delete some files in the Appdata/Local/ChessBase/Cbase11 folder. That seemed to fixed it, but it was a mirage. CB11 is back to locking up again, when opening some games,  and deleting the same files does not correct the problem now.

The ribbon interface is the biggest cow I've ever seen. They tout this as a feature of the program, but all it does is take up a huge swath of space when I open a database. CB10 and CB9 minimilistic tab menus were far superior. You can right click on the ribbon menu and select minimize to make them only show up when you click a tab, but there's a number of bugs with the ribbon interface that make this partial cure worse than the disease. What's kind of odd, is if you open an opening book (.ctg file), the ribbon menus works just like in MS Office. But opening a database, there's quite a few problems that show up. Sometimes, for example, the ribbon menu becomes detached from the database window. You'll move the database window and the Ribbon menu stays, blocking whatever area of the desktop the database window originally occupied. Occasionally the ribbon menu will lay on top of the first 6 or 7 games in the database. The only way to access those games then, is to right click and select minimize to make the ribbon menu go away.

I've had other problems with the program too, some have been corrected with the patches. (You get these by clicking on the upper left icon, highlight Activation, and click on Update program in the drop down menu)

I get the impression there are no programmers that know how to fix these issues working at the company. Most the bugs I've found are easy to replicate. The issues with the ribbon menus have existed since the program was first released.

I've not had any problems with ChessBase 10 btw. ChessBase 9 was a bit of a nightmare for me though. The main issue I had with it, random games would get replaced with another game I was trying to save on occassion. Imagine my horror when opening a game I'd worked on for days, identifying lines and evaluations etc., only to find it had been replaced with some ICC game I'd looked at recently and saved. I started getting a bit more religous about my CB backups after that.

Yea, CB11 is a pile of garbage because of the bugs. CB10 is alright though.

Edit January 23, 2012: A patch/build was released today that appears to have fixed the problem with opening some games crashing CB11. About time. The ribbon menu bugs are still there however.

Now, that is a huge comment

Sounds like it could do with a complete re-write.

I almost always use ChessX and Hiarcs on my Macintosh rather than using Chessbase 11 on windows anymore.  Chessbase has a ton of features but the constant crashing on multiple machines is just too much to put up with. I suspect that the Chessbase codebase must be unmaintainable based on the fact they can't seem to fix their bugs. Windows software tends to be buggy anyway if only because the  various Microsoft development APIs tend to be buggy.

I find that hard to believe. Is this well documented?

Just go onto the windows development blogs and look at all the complaints we developers have about Windows APIs and you will see what I mean.

That said Chessbase needs to do a far better job of preventing crashes than they do.