Why doesn't it tell me where it thinks they should be? I don't understand why the program knows what it wants, but won't tell me where to comply to it's wishes... is there a way to attain this info? Thanks!

have you tried rescanning ?
Preferences/VST setting/Rescan.

+1 to the OP
 
 

so

bitman
+1 to the OP
 
 

+1 to what ?
im sorry I must be misunderstanding something.
is he opening a project and Sonar is saying "Plug ins are missing" ?
wouldn't a rescan be the first thing you would do ?

It's the user's responsibility to tell SONAR where to look for plug-ins. If SONAR just starts scanning your entire system and plug-ins aren't in a folder dedicated to plug-ins, I doubt that SONAR can differentiate between which .dlls are SONAR-compatible plug-ins and which serve other purposes. So you put your plug-ins in folders, and tell SONAR to look in those folders for plug-ins. Scanning those folders allows SONAR to build an inventory of compatible plug-ins.

I get all that, but if the plugins were in a location and it knows that location, why can't it say where it's looking? I can then fix anything easily.

You already know where it's looking, it's whatever folders you designated in Preferences as being in the scan path. However if SONAR says a plug-in is missing, then it can't know where it is because it's not where SONAR expected it to be. 
 
Maybe I'm not quite getting something about your question...

theres a little bit of dancing around the bush here. meaning, there is no straight examples given.
 
1- i open sonar and i receive a message "plug ins are missing"
2- i have plug ins installed to said directory.
3- i have told plug in manager to look in this directory for my plug ins.
 
see what i mean ? a little more info would not only help us understand exactly what you are talking about, but might even help you solve your problem. what plug ins and where are they ?

still no reply ?
if you leave steps, explain the problem you are having in detail im sure it can be solved by either doing a rescan, or looking for the plug ins and pointing plug in manager towards that folder.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, Chuck. In my humble opinion, since all these things are pretty much how the program works, I thought the facts were straightforward, sorry.