Joy and frustration with Sonar 7 Studio Edition

Welcome.
I'm not sure, what you want us to fire away with exactly. Wow Sonar 7. That was a long time ago, 6 versions in fact.

If you're having so much frustration why not go ahead and ask us some questions. Be as specific as you can.

Also, give us an idea about the equipment you use too, as that will help us help you. I'm using a portable device at the moment so can't see if you have that info in your signature but if not that's where most of us put it.

OK, it won't accept long posts or maybe big pastes. To give you the whole picture takes 573 words but only fragments and left-brackets show here. In essence, I use a Rodgers digital church organ or a Casio Privia keyboard to input great classical music into Sonar on a Windows 7 Toshiba P875 laptop via M-Audio Midisport USB interface. I own two of the latter because every 4 to 6 weeks the equipment stops communicating. Then i have to switch Midisports (I have two) and reboot. (Sometimes I can unplug the interface from the computer, plug it back in and proceed but most of the time doing so permanently loses the connection.)
 
But within each 4-6 week period it will only allow a total of about 5-10 hours' Sonar work before I have to remove and reinstall the program. Rebooting isn't normally required at such times. When the failures occur, first inputting will stop and then it won't do playback either. It has a mind of its own -- it won't recognize a second reinstall of Sonar a second time in the same work session. It's as if it hates me or is jinxed. I like to use a MIDI cable extender but sometimes have to take it out after an hour or two and connect the interface directly to the laptop for it to work. I seem to recall that it sometimes insists I do the reverse as well.
 
How to get it working consistently like most other things do? I have no idea whether it's the computer, Midisport or Sonar. it simply makes no sense. Any help you can give will be MOST appreciated. 

Good advice Alex.

If Windows update has been left for six months you should run it.

Did you click on the link for updated drivers and firmware?

Hello again, folks. Situation update...... Sunday morning my first act was to try playing a recent sequence (richter leuchtet for my reference) with the USB extender cord between the Roland UM1 and the computer -- UM1 is shorter than Midisport. Didn't work, just as it so often (but not always/reliably) was with the Midisport. Tried again (computer reboot) without the extender cord on an old Sonar track (peeters adagio) which it had played fine at home on Korg, and it worked fine now. Tried another reboot with the extender back in -- all was well. It has often taken playing an older track to get things communicating -- are you sure these components aren't human?
    One of the communication fails I've described previously would often happen after a long Sunday morning session, with the Midisport -- say 4 hours of sequencing, playing back, practicing generally, and playing the church service. Funnily enough, it generally happened a bit after (thank God) the postlude, signaled by a big discordant chord on the organ. To fix this and go on using the organ alone would only require rebooting the organ, which it did today too with the UM1.... except, again thank God, the equipment was still communicating fine even though Sonar's onscreen action indicators weren't both working by that point! In other words, the small problem signaling the big problem still went off without the big problem occurring. The weirdness never ends! Bottom line: will continue seeing how far UM1 will take us before any more Midisport-like trouble occurs, if it's planning to.
    Next quirk, unrelated: seeking to rejoin you here again this morning, went through hellish rigmarole trying to obey the command to get an SSO acct in addition to this Forum one. Finally just tried coming here directly by clicking this page's URL where I'd noted it in a document. This got me into the Forum just fine, signaling that either one of the dozen attempts to update the account and log in with it worked, or I'm permanently logged in anyway. It's all a blur to me now. (Example: I tried logging in with regular original password but it wouldn't recognize it. I clicked to be sent a new one but it wouldn't recognize it either, and sometimes told me my present screen name was already taken... LOL.) Maybe all I'll ever need to do is click that URL, but (bottom line:) In case I ever totally fail to enter, do you wonderful people know of any non-Cakewalk forums that cover Sonar use? 
    Thank you so much! 

Windows has this dumb issue where it can't recognize more than ten midi devices. It can lead to all sorts of nastiness like what you're describing. Because of another Windows stupidity, a new midi device is created everytime you put the same device into another port (and possibly your "extender"), so it's pretty easy to run into this limit. I have to manually manage my midi devices a lot.

You could try downloading and installing any Korg midi driver (e.g. the Kronos one) from their support site. It comes with a midi driver removal utility that lets you completely remove old or corrupt Windows midi drivers. You need to uncheck a box when you run the utility to allow it to uninstall non-Korg drivers. I would recommend removing all of them and installing the UM1 and MidiSport fresh. I don't know for sure that this is at the root of your issue but it was definitely a pain for me until I figured it out.

what is the length of you midi cable extension?

"Next stop -- how do I get my Sonar tracks playing through sounds built into Sonar's internal synths?"
 
At the top click Insert>Soft Synths, select the synth you want to use.
A dialog box will appear with some options for you to select.
Since you already have MIDI tracks, uncheck 'Create MIDI Source Track'.
Once the synth is ready, just change the outputs of your MIDI tracks to the synth you just inserted. 
Some synths are multi-timbral and can have up to 16 MIDI tracks feeding them; others are not and can only send 1 MIDI track to them at a time.
Careful with the output levels of your synths, especially synthesizer synths (); some are very loud and can red-line your interface. Out of habit, I always reduce the synth output level before I hit play.

57Gregy
At the top click Insert>Soft Synths, select the synth you want to use.
A dialog box will appear with some options for you to select.
Since you already have MIDI tracks, uncheck 'Create MIDI Source Track'.
Once the synth is ready, just change the outputs of your MIDI tracks to the synth you just inserted. 
Some synths are multi-timbral and can have up to 16 MIDI tracks feeding them; others are not and can only send 1 MIDI track to them at a time.
Careful with the output levels of your synths, especially synthesizer synths (); some are very loud and can red-line your interface. Out of habit, I always reduce the synth output level before I hit play.

Trying this with TTS-1 brings a most solid gray window with the track title at the top, and beneath it shortcuts for "Insert soft synths and ReWire devices," etc. and a long thin blue space containing the synth name, "no preset", forward and back arrows, and a blank line starting with a squarish letter C (or extremely bold left-bracket).
 
Checking the track for the piece I'd opened (about a week old), the output was already set for the synth, but playing the track I don't hear anything. Haven't seen anywhere to select a sound, so I must have missed something big.
 
Trying it with the Roland GrooveSynth I managed to bring up a window for it in addition to the above (which now has a blue bar for the GrooveSynth below the TTS-1 one) and selected a sound -- "real strings" -- but still no sound, regardless of how I set the track's output. Synth's level is set at 105 -- is that its volume level?
 
Computer sound still working normally. You mentioned the interface -- assume you mean the UM1 just in case it was still plugged in? It's not needed for this, right? 
 
Remembering the other controls above the onscreen volume slider I set them for "Ch 1:Roland...", "8192 bank" and "PizzicatoStr" as no Real Strings was among the choices -- still nothing. Trying the Assign Instruments box, the Output/Channel box in it is empty. All the due diligence I can think of!

Doktor Avalanche
Bowing out of this thread as I'm just talking to myself.

Oops -- did I miss something you said? 

Rated, rabeach? 
 
Well well, it appears USB 3.0 is a disadvantage sometimes -- "Maximum length of USB active (repeater) cable":
http://www.yourcablestore.com/USB-Cable-Length-Limitations-And-How-To-Break-Them_ep_42-1.html
The ethernet idea mentioned there is wireless only, right? Anybody ever tried it?
 
Wow, what does this mean re SONAR X3 Producer -- "No USB dongle required"?   http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405702,00.asp