I fired up my Cubase SX3 using Scope in XTC mode and it said device not available, error FF7-5-000C. Nothing seemed to help and my inputs were all "pending". I tried system restore, switched XTC mode on and off, refreshed plugins etc I found by searching the forums with no luck.
Well.. the problem was embarrasingly simpler than I thought. For some reason the Cubase had resetted the ASIO driver from Asio Scope to Asio multimedia driver using the windows drivers. So all I had to do was to go to Asio settings and switch it back to Asio Scope.
This was not a real problem as you can see but I managed to waste 3 hours of my precious composing time and lose my intuition for today So remember to check the basic settings first before trying to to anything more exotic.