bapu


meat and potatoes?

Where'd the BECAN go?

Old55


Well done.  

arachnaut


Just to make you feel a little better, or perhaps not, I have a tale of woe as well. Here is a copy of a letter I just sent to Cakewalk Support today:

Ticket #117211

3:07 PM April 12, 2012


----- text follows:

On February 3rd, 2012, I had an installation error loading a Pro Channel module.
I fixed the issue and reported the error. It was assigned Case 21915.

The problem was minor, I mainly reported it to help others who might encounter
the problem. My Sonar Producer Expanded had been running fine with the new X1D
update and I had just installed the newest Pro Channel Limiter tool. I had no
error reports or issues of any kind other than that installation problem which
resulted in an odd path for Pro Channel tools in the Cakewalk folder.

On March 30, 2012 I got an email from Cakewalk Support saying that I should do a
complete clean install. Quite frankly, I had forgotten about the case - it was a
long time that had elapsed since I first reported it.

I wrote back with more information just to make sure that was really necessary
and on April 3 was told again to do the clean install.

I followed these instructions and now I cannot install Sonar Studio X1 at all.

I have written many emails about my attempts to do an install - I sent Memory
dumps, screen shots, detailed test cases, and so on.

I have not gotten any communication from Support since April 3 and my system -
which was working fine - now cannot install Sonar Studio X1 - let alone the
Producer upgrades, Expanded stuff, Pro Channel stuff, Zeta 2, Dimension Pro,
Rapture, etc., etc. Setting this stuff up take a long time, but that pales in
comparison to all this extremely frustrating installation work.

Every time I try to install, I get exactly the same situation - a blue screen
crash with an unhandled registry exception...

I have enumerated all my efforts to track this down, including downloading
WinDbg and running it during the install and trying to capture the system errors
with ProcMon from SysInternals Suite. Since this is a kernel error, it is
difficult to debug from user space and needs a separate debugging host. The
crash dumps and Memory dumps I sent should be enough for someone there with
access to source to track down what is going wrong.

This is really a nightmare of frustration for me and the total lack of response
from Cakewalk Support is incredibly rude. Even if you have no solution, just lie
to me and say you are looking into it and I will feel (a little) better.

I have downloaded the 5 GB Studio installer files twice and ran a binary compare
of the code against what I am using and it is identical. That takes a long time.

The installation itself takes a long time.

I have tried installing in Safe Mode; I've created a new Administrator account
and installed from there; every trick I can think of to change some install
circumstance. I've tried various install options - different paths, just the
program only and no plug-ins, etc. Every time it fails at exactly the same spot
just at the end of installation -  during registry updates.

Every time I get the blue screen crash I run CHKDSK on my 12 TB file system -
that takes a long time. And there's not much I can do with a computer while 
CHKDSK is running.

Since the installer crashes, there is no uninstall, so I have to manually delete
the Program Files, ProgramData, AppData, VST stuff, Sonar Content, etc.

Then I run registry scans to fix up the remaining mess from the botched install.

After 5 or 6 of these crashes I defragment the poor registry. These steps take a
long time. 

I've gone through these steps and many more such things ever since this happened
and it seems to be my whole life now.

I have just run CPU diagnostics, memory tests and overclocked stress tests,
getting  the CPU core temperature up to 70+C. I ran exhaustive ASUS and Windows
memory diagnostics.

I have not found any problems with my hardware and all my other software works
flawlessly. I have all the latest Windows Updates and Motherboard drivers. I
build this system from the ground up and it is in perfect shape  - but for Sonar
X1.

Live 8.3 runs fine and the audio programs I have from Native Instruments
(Reaktor, Kontakt, Absynth, Massive, FM8, Guitar Rig, Kore, Maschine, etc.) all
work very well. I do NI Beta testing and sound design so I am often installing
new products.

The  lists of things that work fine is very long, but the list of things that
do not is just one - Sonar X1 Studio. And I know that if I could just get past
this registration error the run-time software will work fine - it is just some
weird installer issue that is bollixing all this up.

My patience is wearing thin, can you tell me the refund policy for my various
purchases? This is just not worth it any more.