@&$*... At the worst possible time...

Man o man.  In the middle of producing for Las Vegas client Joel Cecil of Conscious Souls after fixing the failed fantom firmware update, resolving problems with the new driver installation and just over all having a crummy time, and BAM!  Goodbye 90% complete project.  Ironically, Sonar crashed once in the beginning of the session, only 1 hour into it.  I was able to remember most of the stuff we had done and redid it, and vigorously saved every 15 min, like I should have in the first place.  4 hours later, 1 guitar player and 1 bass player later, we are working out the bridge and outro.  I was in the process of pulling up any instruments, or doing anything critical at the moment, and it gives me the "Sonar has crashed, would you like to attempt to save your project" message.  I click yes, and in hind site, I had saved only 10 minutes prior and maybe should have clicked no.  In either case, when I open the project I get the same message.  I have tried restarting the computer, running 32 bit and 64 bit... everything.  I am SOL, my client is pissed and I am getting a little fed up myself.

I still love Sonar.  It out performs all other DAWs, in my opinion, but this is unacceptable.  Crashes are rare.  I could probably count them on one hand in the last 6 months, but that is still too much.  Maybe an autosave feature like PT has, would be nice.

If anyone knows how to fix this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me... I'll give you... love and affection

I cant open the project.  As soon as i open it, *poof* magic error message. 

Can you open a new project though?

Go to the folder your audio for the project was saved in the one thats not working grab it all  from inside the folder and drag it in to a new session that should get you running again

Its what I hadto do :)

Norrie

Sorry you're having problems. My advice knowing very little about the actual problem - you did mention it's all VST based so... Before you try loading the project again, have you tried rescanning all VST's in question? Just load Sonar, before loading your project go to "Tools / Plug-in Manager" click on "Options" check "Re-scan failed and existing plug-ins" click OK, and finally click "Scan VST Plug-ins".

Also,

If you hold down the shift key while selecting a project it doesn't automatically load VSTs involved in that project. If fact, it allows you to selectively decide. So you should be able to recover your MIDI info that way as a fail safe. That feature saved my butt at least once.

Good luck!

Dimaman from now on save your projects with a number system, Lets say the project was called My project, after every major edit, save as my project 1 then 2 , 3, and so on.. I have fallen into that dilemma too years ago, now all my projects are saved using a numbers system to prevent what just happened to you.. 
 Also I try what Chambana said holding down the shift while opening your project, which will enable you to open your project without starting the Vst's in the project , which you can load one at a time, to see if there was some conflict with the Vst. 

Back in action guys!

That shift thing worked like a  charm!  I dont know how, but some kind of "groove player" plugin was causing the crash.  I don't remember putting it in... weird. You guys are life and career savers!  Thanks!

So is there an autosave feature I am over looking?

Dimaman


Back in action guys!

That shift thing worked like a  charm!  I dont know how, but some kind of "groove player" plugin was causing the crash.  I don't remember putting it in... weird. You guys are life and career savers!  Thanks!

So is there an autosave feature I am over looking?

So what groove player was causing the crash? These details are important.

The lesson is that you can cause Sonar to crash by using plug-ins that have problems. Sonar can't protect you from everything and maintain highest multitrack audio performance at the same time. A plug-in is a piece of software running in the Sonar process space that can do anything. As cpu speeds increase this may change just as the C# language is relatively safe compared to C++.
The situation is similar to how people would install a flakey device driver causing Windows to crash when it wasn't the fault of the Windows software.
 

Dimaman


I dont know how, but some kind of "groove player" plugin was causing the crash.  I don't remember putting it in... weird. 

I think groove player in the Sonar metronome. There are some threads on the Sonar Studio and Producer forum on groove player triggered issues.

I had that cause a crash a def times and had to disable the dll file for some reason but after a fresh install it worked ok

Norrie