What the heck happened to my ASIO driver?

I made a deal with the devil today.
 
I made a backup image of my system and then installed Cubase 7.5 and the 7.5.3 update. I haven't tried Cubase in 15+ years but I want to check out the Composition tools and the tempo mapping tools so I bought a license.
 
When I launched Cubase it asked "Do you want to run the Generic ASIO driver?". I didn't know I had a generic ASIO driver, and I have a MOTU hardware setup so I picked the MOTU ASIO option. Everything seemed ok, and I played back some demo projects from the Cubase website. I quickly formed an opinion that Cubase has a weird looking track view, which left me thinking "what was I thinking?".
 
Then I opened all my other DAWs, you know, just to make sure nothing unexpected had happened... and I guess I had expected it... but Pro Tools crashed, SONAR sort of worked, and Studio One seemed ok.
 
It turns out SONAR and Pro Tools had switched over to a "Generic ASIO driver" and so the MOTU gear was only running the 2 main outputs.
 
It took me while to figure it out but after I went through and reset the DAWs to use the MOTU ASIO driver everything got back to normal.
 
So I wonder, why would that happen? Did Steinberg install a "Generic ASIO driver" and then it somehow took a numbered list position in the registry, so to speak, in Windows so that the two DAWs loaded the driver from a list position rather than as an absolute specific driver?
 
Does any of that make sense?
 
 
 
As a final note: I hope to learn about the Cubase features I mentioned but it seems like it will be a cold day before I use it as an all a round DAW. Today was another, "gee whiz I really like SONAR 8.5 experience" for me.
 
 
 
 
edit spelling
 

Thanks Bob.
 
I'm wondering if there is a way to find the Generic ASIO driver and unistall it.
 
I am thinking about using a disc image to go back to yesterday morning pre install and try the install again, with the idea that I might ferret out the Generic ASIO driver before I launch any of the DAWs and have them aitomatically change my setups.
 
I'll go see what's on the DAW once the coffee kicks in.

Mike, I have no help other than that this is not the first thread about this. Sorry you had trouble.

Regarding midi and sonar, I don't know what I'm missing in other daws but Brock always helps me see a very distant horizon of amazing possibility in sonar midi.

If Brock likes sonar, it has to be good enough for me.

Just for the record, I solved my problem:
 
I used Acronis to restore back to yesterday just before installing Cubase 7.5.
 
I installed Cubase 7.5 and the 7.5.3 update.
 
I Backed up then deleted this folder C:\ProgramFiles\Steinberg\Asio which contained the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver.
Ran CCleaner to clean registry of the driver info.
 
I launched Cubase and selected the MOTU driver.
 
I launched SONAR and everything was perfect. My MOTU driver was in place and most importantly my custom manual latency input parameter was at the value I left it at rather than the "0" I was stuck with after the reset.
 
I launched Pro Tools and everything was perfect. My I/O setup was unchanged and I got right back to the project I was working on immediately before installing Cubase.
 
Now I can spend a couple of years getting used to Cubase without it messing with my fung shui.
 
 
 
Interestingly, Adobe Audition, Presonus Studio One 2, and Sound Forge had been uneffected by the problem I experienced yesterday. The way they see the drivers in Windows is evidently different then the way SONAR and Pro Tools does. It would be nice to think that SONAR and Pro Tools could be improved so as to be able to stick to the drivers you set them to until you choose to make a change. The willingness on the part of both of those apps to swap to the most recently installed ASIO driver seems to have been the cause of my problems. Some people responded to other people's observations of these issue by saying "just switch it back" but they did not address the issues like losing your latency compensation settings or ending up with persistent and meaningless warning dialogs.
 
I am glad to have actually fixed the issue so that it does not cause me any problems or inconvenience.
 
 
 
 

Hi Jim,
 I almost called you on the phone. :-)
 
 Thanks for the detailed info!!!