HELP! Audio engine eaten by mice?

Wierdest thing (S 5.01 PE)- initially, starting playback with the mouse to the transport started giving a pop, followed by normal playback - OK starting with space bar, then couldn't play back at all with mouse start. Now, audio engine dies after about a measure (you can see meters going on individual tracks, but not on master bus - then won't play back at all. Old projects, new - not something muted. If you exit Sonar and restart, it works fine as long as you start playback with spacebar, not mouse. However, if you don't use mouse for anything and just export a mix - it processes the tracks and generates a 45 mB wave file - but there is nothing there when you view with audio editor. When I bring up Sonar 4, everything is fine.

Sonar 5.01 - Win XP Compaq - Athlon 6 - 1 gB RAM - Interface: Yamaha i88x (mLAN)/Motif ES7 with mLAN16e
This has been a very stable productive system. I haven't a clue what's happening. Any help would be appreciated.

Ron

First things I would do is reinstall drivers (mouse, audio, etc).
Next I would check MIDI and sound port settings, since Sonar can get a little confused if you move/change them around.

Did you add ANYTHING on to your system lately (ie., new apps, or new devices such as USB or others)?

The only thing I can think of, is that I did switch to 24 bit recording under Global and this is the first project I have been using that in - the thing is this is several days into this project and it has gradually started doing this. It is a PS/1 mouse. I have an XV-2020 that connects by USB, that wasn't recognized a few weeks ago, so I reinstalled it's driver back then.

mLAN uses an ASIO driver by FW, I updated the mLAN driver several weeks back and I have been working several hours almost every day without difficulty. I guess I can re-install the mLAN drivers in the morning.

Thanks for your help - I'll see if that does anything.

have you tried increasing your latency? Perfect Space normally needs around 24ms or more to work properly

Thanks for your suggestions above - see my comments below - I now have one other piece of data. Not running Perfect Space, still at 24 bit, everything works and I'm finishing this project, BUT starting playback with a mouse click - as opposed to the space bar - not only gives an initial pop, it makes the audio output from the master bus significantly louder (and this is observable on the master bus meters. Any clue why/how this could be?

This is a classic example of running Sonar's audio engine close to the edge, probably. Your CPU, I'll bet, is quite high on the meter. Under these circumstances the engine will shut down erratically and it does seem to depend how you start the project.

My CPU meter was never running above 50%

Frankly, unless it really matters, I'd go back to 16 bit and see.

My plan exactly, except there seems to be a problem with projects that I started at 24 bit trying to open with S5 set to 16 bit. My immediate workaround has been just to use the Pantheon reverb - not ideal of course, but I hate to stop while the creative juices are flowing and I figure, with the great help I get here and systematic investigation, I'll eventually get it working right.

Again, thank you all for your continued help.

Ron

have you tried increasing your latency? Perfect Space normally needs around 24ms or more to work properly

I'll try that,