TranceCanada
Awesome I'll check those out. I still find it funny how the only time I do get it work though is when I open it through the Theme Editor and have headphones plugged in, without openning through the Theme Editor it doesn't even try to work
Your issue with launching Sonar, and it's sluggish performance could be a separate issue from the headphones problem.
Referring to your last comment about the headphones, that does sound strange. Actually it could be just a speaker mis-configuration. When I plug my headphones into my laptop, the Realtek HD Audio Manager pops up a dialogue to confirm what I just inserted. I get sound either way. You may want to look at Speaker Properties (right-click on taskbar speaker icon, select Playback devices), and ensure you have selected "Use this device (enabled)". I'm running ASIO4ALL on my laptop too. Do you now have, or have you ever installed any other audio devices besides the onboard Realtek audio and/or ASIO4ALL, that may have installed another driver?
Regarding performance troubleshooting, telecharge provided a link to the clean boot method. That is good. Because it seems that this discussion is assuming that you may have a software conflict somewhere. A clean boot would be a good thing to try next.
If the Autoruns appears overwhelming to you, and you are not comfortable mucking around in Windows, maybe it would be best to find a friend or computer guy to take a look for you.
The direct link to the how-to-geek page for Autoruns begins here: http://www.howtogeek.com/...internals-pro/lesson6/ Here's the quick TL/DR for Autoruns: Autoruns is really is just an advanced version of msconfig "System Configuration" shown in the clean boot tutorial. I find that Autoruns allows me to go beyond basics with drivers and such. The app opens up with the "Everything" tab showing. That is mind blowing, so you can skip that tab.
The only tabs in Autoruns to be currently concerned with are "Logon" (like Startup from Task Manager), "Scheduled Tasks", "Services", and sometimes "Drivers", as these are the main items that can load at startup. If there is a conflict and you determine that it isn't a startup program, it's probably time to be looking somewhere in the "Scheduled tasks", "Services", or "Drivers" area.
You can browse each of these categories. Every line item also displays the description and publisher name. As with the safe boot method,
do not turn anything from Microsoft off. Also use care with anything that looks like it might relate to your on-board PC hardware, or related to any Intel hardware support.
For
"Logon" you can start by turning off startup apps not related to your DAW. These were covered in the basics video and the Safe Boot tutorial, but also appear here. If you are not sure what an item does, you can Google it. Simply uncheck an item and you are set. Autoruns will not delete that entry, so you can return and re-enable anything. Reboot to update Windows with the changes you have selected.
If that doesn't help, then you can move on to
"Scheduled Tasks". I've never noticed anything here that can't be temporarily disabled, but to be safe, leave Microsoft alone.
Next up is the
"Services" and
"Drivers" tabs. I have learned that many hardware devices install both a service and a driver. By disabling the service, the driver is still free to load at boot. So if a driver is causing a conflict, you have two choices. You can uninstall the troublesome device driver. Or just uncheck it in autoruns and reboot. That will prevent it from loading into memory. Some devices also install a taskbar icon or control panel type app that launches with the startup apps. If you only turn that startup app off, the related services and drivers may still be loading at boot. Remember you can always Google anything you see if you have questions.
Best of luck!