Guitar Rig 5 and Sonar Platinum - VST Plugin main call error

Hi folks,

Frustration.  Enough said.  Here's the problem.  I've been using Sonar for years, easily over a decade.  Bought Sonar Platinum a few months ago and upgraded over X3.  Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 works fine in X3 and with the upgrade I did to move to Platinum.  I bought a new hard drive for my C: and O/S (Win7HomePremium), installed a fresh version of Platinum, all worked well.  Installed GR5 upgrade (latest update 5.2.2) and everytime the VST scan occurs it fails with a 'VST Plug-in error', 'Main call' on Guitar Rig 5.dll.

So here's what I've done:
- Made sure Windows was up-to-date with all security fixes, etc.
- Installed the latest driver for my Steinberg UR-22 audio interface.
- I made sure that GR5 VST is in the 64bit folder in \program files\cakewalk\vstplugins when I did the install, and the 32bit was pointed at the \Program Files(x86)\Cakewalk\vstplugins folder.
- installed GR5 from the Service Center, latest release (5.2.2 at this time).
- From a Native Instruments forum comment I made sure all of my sound devices were set in Advanced as 44100.
- I couldn't get it to stop failing, so uninstalled GR5, did a registry clean, made sure any remnants of GR5 were gone in folders.  I thought that maybe because GR5 was an upgrade based on GR4 (full) that I got with Sonar X1, I installed GR4.  I registered, activated GR4 and started the program to initialize the presets.
- set the driver settings in GR4 to ASIO for my audio interface.
- in both instances, for GR4 and GR5, they both work fine in stand-alone mode.
- Ran Sonar Platinum and it acknowledged the GR4 VST without issue.
- Installed GR5 again, registered, activated, set the driver settings to ASIO for my audio interface.  Ran Sonar Platinum and received (as usual) a 'VST Plug-in error', 'Main Call: Guitar Rig 5', it doesn't like the Guitar Rig 5.dll.
- started searching around, and tried some more extravagant angles.  set the permissions on the guitar rig 5.dll file to full control for me (user).
- uninstalled my anti-virus, just because you know how it can cause issues blocking stuff. 
- used the 'NI VST Tool' to ensure my VST paths were correct.
- followed their 'VST Plug-in Administration on Windows Computers' video instructions to ensure I was doing everything as per their recommendations.
- set GR5 to 'run as administrator' in its properties, as mentioned on a NI forum thread.  Didn't resolve the issue.
- removed all other VST plugins and paths in the Calkwalk Plug-in Manager to see if there were conflicts.  
- moved the guitar rig 5.dll VST plugin file to 1st a c:\vstplugins folder (out of protected \Program Files\ folder), added the folder to Plug-in manager, rescanned same resulting error.  moved the file to \users\me\vstplugins, changed the vst scan folder in Plug-in Manager  rescanned, same error.
- reinstalled Sonar Platinum by downloading the files instead of running install through Command Center.  Oddly enough installing through Command Center didn't register the program in Add/Remove Programs.  After doing the local install they were registered in Add/Remove programs.
 
I understand that this is not a Sonar issue per se, but I have to send this out to all of you to find an answer.  I will not uninstall Platinum and reinstall Sonar X3, that defeats the purpose.  New versions are about moving forward.  I have not had ANY issues with installing Sonar Platinum itself.  

I will post this to the Native Instruments forum as well, but want to take this from both angles, because I know both sides will blame the other.

To be honest I'm fed up with this.  I'm probably omitting some of the other tweaks I did to resolve this, but the above info is sufficient for now.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Frustrated Dave