With a Windows 7 Pro system at the heart of my studio, and the end of the free upgrade offer approaching (July 29, 2016) I need to know how much longer my Sonar Platinum will run correctly if I don't upgrade.  There are, as you may know, still a large number of issues with Win 10 and I don't want to risk my system if I don't have to.  If it ain't broke...
 
So, can anyone say with any reasonable certainty whether there is an end in sight for Sonar Platinum on Windows 7?  I just bought the lifetime upgrades, and that would be wasted if Win 7 suddenly won't run Sonar any more.
 
Anyone?  Anyone from CW? 
 
thanks,
thom

I don't think Cakewalk would ever by choice kill SONAR on a particular OS, rather Microsoft dictates what OS their Visual C++ redistributable libraries will load on. Case in point x2 would load on xp, X2a not because cake updated to Microsoft's latest c++ compiler that had the multi-touch cake wanted to support, who's redistributable refused to load on xp for no other reason afaik,  just nope.
 
Microsoft is rumored to want to kill off 7 and 8.1 as well and just have this "Windows" (or win10)
 
For this reason I went against all I believe and updated my daw to 10 last week. Then promptly disabled the Windows Update Service.
 
 

A site I really trust puts it this way . . . "Microsoft will stop mainstream support on January 12, 2015. But the company will keep providing extended support until January 14, 2020."
That said, I would think Cakewalk would offer Windows 7 support as long as a reasonable amount of their users  are still using it, and will most likely go along with the Windows end of support dates. If you're system is never on the internet, and you have some spare parts, you could just keep using Windows 7 until eventually your hardware fails, or until you breakdown and simply must have the new toys offered by Cakewalk on the new hardware that only runs on Windows 10.

There's also a difference between "is supported" and "works on." IIRC at one point Cakewalk stopped support for Vista but you could still install SONAR on it, and when Cakewalk later updated the VST Scanner (which at that point didn't work on Vista), they updated it to work on Vista.  
 
That said, Windows 10 works fine here...better than Windows 7, and I was someone who stuck with W7 as long as I could. But Bitman nailed it; the question is what latitude Microsoft will allow. For example, if Cakewalk has to choose whether Platinum will support the updates for Windows 10 or Windows 7, not supporting the updates for Windows 10 would be a non-starter.

bitman
I don't think Cakewalk would ever by choice kill SONAR on a particular OS, rather Microsoft dictates what OS their Visual C++ redistributable libraries will load on. Case in point x2 would load on xp, X2a not because cake updated to Microsoft's latest c++ compiler that had the multi-touch cake wanted to support, who's redistributable refused to load on xp for no other reason afaik,  just nope.
 
Microsoft is rumored to want to kill off 7 and 8.1 as well and just have this "Windows" (or win10)
 
For this reason I went against all I believe and updated my daw to 10 last week. Then promptly disabled the Windows Update Service.
 
 

Hey bitman, now that's a good trick, please share how, but won't the next windows update just turn it back on again ?

noynekker

bitman
I don't think Cakewalk would ever by choice kill SONAR on a particular OS, rather Microsoft dictates what OS their Visual C++ redistributable libraries will load on. Case in point x2 would load on xp, X2a not because cake updated to Microsoft's latest c++ compiler that had the multi-touch cake wanted to support, who's redistributable refused to load on xp for no other reason afaik,  just nope.
 
Microsoft is rumored to want to kill off 7 and 8.1 as well and just have this "Windows" (or win10)
 
For this reason I went against all I believe and updated my daw to 10 last week. Then promptly disabled the Windows Update Service.
 
 

Hey bitman, now that's a good trick, please share how, but won't the next windows update just turn it back on again ?

With it disabled it can't and won't go get an update.
My wife who went for win10 on here laptop did this a long time ago and her computer has never
shown evidence of updating with the "Please wait will windows configures updates" or whatever that momentous interruptus says.
 
She's pretty - darn smart.
 

Where in Win 10 do you find this setting and does it apply to ALL flavours of Win 10?

I used this :

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Cheers,
J

Hi,
it´s also possible to disable the win 10 updates via
-computer management
-duties
-windows update 
-settings (disable it)
and yes,it it applies to all flavours of Win 10.
regards

How spooky - I just found the guts to upgrade from Win7 to Win10

I was running out of room on my 250gb SSD so upgraded to a 500gb SSD (Samsun Evo 850, which is great value & performance)

Her is my experience and the few wobble - but everything seems to have ended up well

First of all I cloned by existing C drive (with the win7 OS on it) to a new hard drive (connected via USB) using Macrium Reflect - a free utility that did an amazing job, even copying the hidden "restore" partition on my original hard drive

I then installed the new hard drive and made sure everything worked in Win7

I then upgraded to Win10 on the new hard drive (safe in the knowledge that if anything went wrong I could put the original hard drive back in and be where I started so it is a huge safety net to have - but as an added precaution I also created a disk image of my drives onto a separate external hard drive)

Everything went smoothly and here is a list of the "wobbles":

After installing the new hard drive Windows only saw it as the size of the old drive. This was easily overcome by "expanding the partition" in Disk Management so Windows now sees the whole drive

I needed to "re-authorise" my IK plugins (Amplitube etc.) as I was getting a regular "static sound" - this was easily done using IK's authorisation manager. I also needed to do the same for Addictive Drums 2, but this was also very easy

All other plugins (Waves, KOMPLETE Ultimate 10, Sonar etc. we're all fine and didn't need any attention at all)

The only other issue I had was that Win10 does not support the "KeepSafe" fingerprint protected folder I had on my hard drive - so I simply popped the old hard drive in, copied out the files I needed (as the PC was exactly as it was before the upgrade) and then went back to the new hard drive

I am very happy with the result and it is nice to know I am all "up to date"

I would say go for it but buy a new hard drive if you are using your PC for paid music work (as I am) because you can always get back to where you started by putting the original drive back in