As many of you know, I'm now back with SONAR 100% and am still learning and getting acclimated to all the new things, especially Platinum.
 
The other day I made a template in Platinum and named it. Sometime later I was looking through my old SONAR files and saw a song we recorded a few years ago. I clicked on it, and it opened in 8.5. I played the tracks that came up in 8.5, and solo'd some to isolate them and to hear different tracks, and everything worked fine. I even tried several other of the 8.5 functions and commands and they worked fine, too.
 
How is that possible? I don't even have 8.5 on my machine. We just wiped the hard drive clean and started fresh, did some system upgrades, and there aren't many programs on it. Jim Roseberry did the tech work, so I know it was done right and we never even mentioned 8.5.
 
The next weird thing is that when I closed it out, it had converted my new Platinum template to an 8.5 template. My desktop Platinum icon for the template then looked like 8.5. I tried to convert it back to Platinum but never could, so I finally deleted the template and made another one.
 
If 8.5 is not installed on that computer, how in the world could it open a song in 8.5?
 
Thanks! I can't wait to hear the replies to this weird one!
DS

This sounds like a call to Jim is in order. Is it possible you installed Sonar 8.5 when you thought you were installing Platinum? 
 
Try DLing Command Center and having it install your Sonar. I know it wont install 8.5. 
 
 

John, if 8.5 is on the computer wouldn't it show up in a conventional search, or couldn't I find it in a SONAR folder or a program folder?
 
The funny thing is I've been going through lots of old stuff and I found my disk copy of 8.5 that I bought years ago when every thing still came in boxes. I had set it right there on my studio desk, so maybe it installed itself through osmosis! haha It was interesting to see my old 8.5 program again, but just how primitive it looks compared to today's slick and classy Platinum.
 
Thanks for the reply, John.
DS

Sounds like it was just a bad dream. Go check again. It'll be fine. 

Clearly something did not get wiped. The not-so-quick and dirty solution would be to search all of "This PC" for SONARPDR.EXE (assuming 8.5 was the Producer version). Also it sounds like you might need to make sure your template files are CWT rather than TPL files (not sure when that changed), and that all Cakewalk file type associations are to SONARPLT.EXE 

Another way to find where 8.5 is installed, open the task manager while 8.5 is running, right-click the SONARPRD.exe (or whatever version is running) on the processes tab and select "Open file location."

I do know that it seems if you open a CWP icon in Windows Explorer. and even with Plat running, it will open the original version you had installed. For me this is X3 studio which is still installed. Funny thing is it sometimes takes me a while to even notice the difference.  
So you must still have 8.5 installed.

The weird just got weirder. Maybe it was just a bad dream, as suggested above, because now I can't find anything about 8.5 on the machine. I've done searches, I've looked through program files, I've looked through old folders with earlier Sonar recordings, I've look in the trash bin...I've look every where I know to look, and I can't see a trace of 8.5.
 
The only other thing I can think of is I probably had an external hard drive hooked to the machine, looking for old recordings on it. Still, I can't see how something saved as an 8.5 file on a hard drive would open as 8.5 unless the program was installed. And I deleted the template that converted to 8.5 and it's not in the trash bin.
 
Oh well...
DS

Told you! 

I finally found an old trial version of SONAR 8 but could never get it to work. However the old SONAR icon was showing again on the old files.