Considering moving back to Windows 7 Please Help!!!

I picked up the 14.99 upgrade a few weeks back done an upgrade in place and things have not been so well. Normal use of the computer is fine i.e. surfing web, playing mp3s. But I get awful dropouts with sonar, more so audio glitching than anything else. It seems to be good except for not being able to record, mix, edit my music. Can anyone give some insight on this? Would a clean install have been better? I still have my windows 7 image and have of course the windows 8 install dvd. What should I do? I am off tomorrow and I have to take care of this. My interface is a Roland quad-capture using Sonar x2a and the laptop is a HP with an I5 and 8 gig of ram also I use an external drive for recording. 

Yeah I got the update for windows 8 and uninstalled the old and re installed the new. Nothing else external on this machine other than the usb hard drive. 

Are you using ASIO or WDM. I would try different driver types. I found the WASAPI drivers best for me.

I purchased upgrade licenses for all my Windows machines. ie 3 of them but have resisted installing the upgrades yet.
When my house is finished being built (by Easter I hope) and I can set everything back up then I'll setup a HDD for Win 8 to start looking at what it brings to the table and how best to migrate. all this done outside of any stable running systems so that I'm not caught out on the unknown. maybe my approach will help you too.

I wonder if I should have done a clean install? I done some searching and didn't find anyone complaining about the quad-capture and windows 8 having trouble. I done that before I upgraded. Honestly I like windows 8 except the fact of getting so many glitches while trying to record. The same machine with windows 7 I could run low latency with a lot of plugins and absolutely zero problems.

Its funny that JS dismisses those that actually run it yet take the advice of one that doesn't. I like Mike a lot. I listen to him as often as I can but here the idea is some how Win 8 is not ready yet when in fact it is. You have two posters with very different machines say essentially the same thing. That is rather confounding. 

I also offered a solution that might work again it is ignored. When did this sort of behavior become normal?

Go to the drivers profile (I think) and let it run self tests. I just finished my new computer and only have generic soundcard- I had clicks till I ran the self tests and it fixed itself. It will run tests if you attempt to change driver.

I've just done a clean install of Win 8 having had pops and clicks with my previous Win 8  installation (which was over the top of XP) and the problem is still there. I've spent days and days trying to sort it out and I'm still trying.

Latest drivers, bios etc.

Previous hardware fine on XP

I did several clean installs of 8 & ended up going back to Win7, first with X1 then Win7 X2a.
To me X2a is a bit quirky in general. It works pretty well but seems eccentric & prone to crash more than X1 did when doing the same type of normal  day to day tasks & editing.

I've got my system working much better now though I will need to do a whole project to be sure. Still some minor click and pop problems with Session Drummer 3 with some programs (it could .sfx issues)  but nothing compared to what I had before. Have yet to test Korg Legacy which was also a bit crackly. Using msconfig.exe to disable startup services revealed just how much is going on in the background normally.

Mute button in mute/solo group still doesn't work as in 8.53 - maybe it's not supposed to.
Matrix cells were working after record to TV which they weren't before.
I couldn't hear an audible bounce through the distortion before  though exported file was ok- have yet to test again.

make sure the windows sound settings are the same used for sonar: bit level, rate.

Uncheck the exclusive control setting.

I had to do this with windows 7 to be happier.


And: disable in bios the onboard sound while installing other drivers

after install, turn on onboard sound if ya wanna

Its recomended that you run windows compatabuility test on any pc prior to installing Windows 8. This will tell you of any incompatabilitie your PC may have, if you have any, then you will need to upgrade the pc befor installing the new opperating system.  If you dont then you will have problems. I ran the compatability utility n my laptop and recomended srveral upgrades, which i choes to ignor and installed Windows 8. I had load of problems aspecialwith sonar and drivers. However i also ran the compatability util on my studio PC which said everything was good to go apart from a couple of programs which needed updating, ie Nero and Soundfourge 10. After formating the heard drive and a clean install of Windows 8 and then my Audio drivers and sonar X2a everything is fine, infact its verystable quick to load, sonar runs like a dream.
A note about other drivers, ie video etc, i let windows 8 sort them out. I have not installd any other driver.
It may be that your PC are not compleatly ompatable with Windows 8.  

I ran the assistant and it said it was compatible, not sure what went wrong. The laptop was purchased just 6 months ago and I got the upgrade to windows 8 for 14.99. The only external things I use are the interface, a hard drive and a mouse lol. Maybe it is something to do with the integrated components? Anyway I am back on 7 and recorded for a few hours last night with no problems. Thanks again for all the help and suggestions.