How can I troubleshoot, what Im probably doing wrong if, I put an effect in the bin, and..

well, I think there is a 'global' fx bypass button on the control bar, and it may apply independently to tracks, folders,  busses, etc - meaning you might have more than one place to check if it is on. There is a keyboard shortcut for it too, but I don't remember. Anyway you could have either inadvertently hit the hotkey or the button. But this would quiet all the effects in the bin, not just a single one I think. Might also look and see if it has been clicked on a containing or related track  bus or folder - probably not how it is supposed to work, but given your comments about folders it could be a sort-of bug like that.

If not, can you clarify if it is a synth or an audio effect? Your post hints at both, maybe. 

sorry if all my advice is vague, I remember how things work in general a lot better than the details of working anything, which helps when figuring out how to troubleshoot, but always leaves me needing the manual, or the Garrigus book (which I kinda prefer but still have not found after my recent whisky fueled renovations), or the goodwill of people here to actually fix anything...


Edit: by 'global', I don't mean that it bypassess all fx in all bins on all tracks, just the ones on the current track, bus or whatever is in focus.

that one I do a lot, whether the right way or not I dunno, but at some point eventually all my synths go away and I just keep the audio to mix. Much cleaner that way for me, without the midi tracks and synths and stuff lurking around the workspace.

What I do is save my project, then bounce the audio to another (new) track, then delete the whole synth setup.  I usually don't put fx on the audio til then, myself, but I am a dinosaur that started back at Sonar 1 when the available computer power wasn't really sufficient to realize the full potential of a DAW program.  So I have this old habit of worrying about resources a lot and doing stuff that I really probably don't have to anymore.  But I seem to have less trouble than a lot of folks using Sonar, and that may have something to with it - the equation is always about as simple as I can make it at any given point in my workflow, with the side effect of lots of saved copies of my project under different names so I can restore things if need be.   Sonar can do versioning now, but I have yet to learn how....

Don't confuse freezing tracks with freezing synths.

These are 2 different actions with 2 very different outcomes.

If you freeze a track, all the Fx will be printed & the Fx bin will be disabled.

If you freeze the synth, none of your Fx are printed & the Fx bin remains live
If you freeze the synth you can, if you wish, delete it from the synth rack but with modern computers I struggle to see how this would benefit anyone.

Freezing it is enough to remove it from memory, so what's the point?

Also, a quick unfreeze will put you back in Midi-land if you want to edit anything, refreeze & you're back in audio.

All of this has no effect on the Fx bin (or Pro Channel)

Freezing tracks totally limits you from that point onward, unless you go though the hoops of dragging it down to another unfrozen track with a duplicated Fx chain.

Who wants to do that?