Crazy idea, or could this work...?

Who hasn't opened an old Sonar song only to find there are missing plugins? You might no longer have those plugins installed. Or your new system doesn't have that plugin installed and you can no longer download it because the developer went out of business, or the new version isn't compatible with the old song. Whatever the reason, you no longer have the plugin and now you have a problem.
 
Since many plugins are portable, why not have an option to archive a song, including all of its plugins? Sonar would then save all those plugin DLLs into the project bundle so that years later when you unarchive it, it restores the plugins to some temp location and then re-scans them.
 
Of course there could be problems, not the least which are:

• Licensing and registration issues. Not sure plugin developers would allow something like that. The possibility exists that you can now give the song archive to someone else who then suddenly have plugins they did not pay for. Plugins that need to be registered/activated could revert to their trial state.
• Plugins often contain extra data stored in the registry or somewhere else. That will not be copied of course so will probably render the plugin unusable.
• Won't work with plugins that have more advanced installers that installs additional files. This includes samplers etc.

 
But even so, many plugins can be revived from the dead if it doesn't have any of those restrictions and consists of a single DLL. Maybe there should be some way for the plugin to have an "Archive Allowed" flag that indicates that the plugin can safely and legally be archived and then restored later. Most simple free plugins would work in this scenario.
 
Just a thought...

I think the easiest/direct way to save against this possibility is to freeze/convert to audio all tracks...although it does lock u in...

Anderton

Vastman
...although it does lock u in...

Just like tape
 
I've gotten into archiving to audio when a project is finished for two reasons. First, you avoid the "doesn't load later" problem. Second, I want to psychologically be able to say "That song's finished" and move on, not second-guess myself about "should I have used a different amp sim tone on the guitar?"
 
If all else fails, I figure I cut the track once before, I can probably cut it again.

Yup, this is good but if you have a song you have forgotten about or have only started working on a few small sections utilising vst's, it would be nice to be able to go back and avoid the issue of "plugin not found".
I've done it in the past when having written a few tracks and due to time constraints and work, was unable to crack on and finish them. Then having some issues with the hard drive I had done a clean install on a new one, only to find after installing all my plugins and updates, that the plugin could no longer be found, even though it was installed and worked perfectly.

Other than plugins included in Sonar, I think Cake should just keep the plugins from previous versions in the newer versions instead of replacing them with newer plugins. It's a real pain to have to install the plugins from earlier versions if it's even possible for some versions.

One thing I think people forget is that this isn't "Yesterday" this is "Today" lol. It's nice to reminisce back to the times when you had to just suck it up or search for miles around to find the effects units/mics/synths or whatever if you wanted to rework a project as faithfully (sounds wise) to the original as possible, but with the ability to add more or tweak it up.
But this is today, where we should be able to recall pretty much anything, we shouldn't be hitting stumbling blocks like "plugin not found" just because you've updated your system or the plugins have become outdated and now have superseding versions which sonar won't pick up on....hell, if it did pick up on it, then I'd bet there would be no need for this or many of the other threads relating to that pain in the backside of a message.

The OP's ideas are not bad at all, but I would rather they not bother.  Every time I open an old project and get the dreaded missing plugin message, it is a sign to me that I need to stop tinkering around with projects so long that multiple versions of Sonar make the plugin obsolete. In other words, I am dinking around for years and it will never be "done". I now make a habit of freezing tracks so that on the offbeat chance that i want to revisit something i recorded years ago, I have one less issue to deal with.

What I find is that the older plugs often sounded bad compared to what is available now.
 
For example, an old synth patch based piano plug in, no longer in the computer.... hey, I'll load up a new plug which uses sampled piano sounds..... waaa laaa, now the song parts sound so much better.....
 
hey no problem for me, let the past remain part of the past.
 
Normally when I listen to the old stuff, it's more of a case of, wow... I could make this sound so much better now with all I have learned since.... but the only question is, do I actually think the song is good enough to spend all the time that would be required to record it all again from scratch....? and the answer  to that is normally  "no", as my writing chops have also improved to the point where I don't wish to spend/waste the time on that old song.

I can live with missing effects in old projects, but missing softsynths is more serious.  My biggest headache here has been due to having used the now-defunct DXi versions of several different softsynths, particularly Rapture, Battery 3 and SampleTank.  I would be happy if there was a way of replacing a missing DXi softsynth with the equivalent VSTi version without losing the softsynth's program settings.

I too don't mind missing plugs or synths, I always have moved on to something better. I guess this is totally dependent on your music style however. Mine is traditional so I need not worry about some space fart analog synth emulation with just the right tweaks to the envelope filters... So I can see your point in that regaurd..  But I also agree with what a few have said about leaving too many half finished projects around, For me, if I didn't finish it, there was a good reason,,, like it was turning into a turkey anyhow. 
 
And Alex, I too am miffed that we don't yet have a hover car or better yet hover running shoes....what's with that?