CPU levels suddenly through the roof. Please help.

All of a sudden my computer has become extremely slow. Sonar 8 PE seems to suddenly take up all my CPU space. It keeps peaking out my CPU level. It's never done that before. I've never had this problem, and can't figure out why it's suddenly happening. I haven't downloaded any big files or programs. My Sonar program use to occasionally crash if I was doing too many things in Sonar at once, but now I have to wait like 2 minutes every time I record. I wait for the clip to load. When I normalize clips I have to wait 2 minutes for the clip to load. What could cause this to suddenly be happening?? I'm working with a Windows vista (64-bit) dual processor..

I looked in the processes tab in the Windows Task Manager to see what's using up the CPU cycles. The only program was Sonar. It happens every time it is loading the clips. For Example: If I just got done recording one, or if I hit normalize on a clip.. The clip turns fuzzy and says busy.. If I try to play the clip back when it is fuzzy occasionally a window will pop up saying: "unable to open audio playback device. Device may not support the current project's audio format or may be in use." The thing is that this has only started to happen in the last couple of days. I recorded about a week ago and had no trouble.

My sound card is an Edirol UA-25EX. No new programs. As I said I am running it on a Windows vista (64-bit) dual processor.. I'm pretty sure that I haven't had any new updates. It is effecting all projects. I'm using the 44.1 sample rate with and 24 bit depth.. What other info would you need to know??

I'm working on a desktop. HP Pavilion, AMD athlon X2 dual core processor 5000+ 2.60 GHz.
Windows Vista home premium 64-bit OS. RAM- 4.00 GB
No separate hard drive. When I hit ctl-alt-delete all I see that is open is Sonar. I hit the preformance tab and see the CPU graph peaking out.

Sonar:
audio driver bit depth=24
Sample rate=44100
Playback buffer size=256 kb
Stream 16 bit data as=32 bit, PCM, left justified

Mic plug-in is through Phantom +48

I tried restarting the computer but am clueless of where it start with this problem.


There are many programs on the process tab (of the task manager), but Sonar is the only one that has a high CPU % (98%). Only maybe 2 other programs are taking up CPU space and neither get above 2% or 3%.

Time ago I had the same problem with Project 5 v2. CPU capacity went from 25/45% to 100%, and I had to wait toooooo long for anything to happend. I find out that synth like Z3TA use too much of the CPU capacity, so if you are using to many synth for that recording, that maybe could be one reazon for your problem. I hope this help you...

Gus

One thing that has worked for me is to delete (or rename) the aud.ini file. When you start Sonar it will re-create the file. Don't know how/why it get's corrupted, but can cause weird performance issues when it does.