I left the computer running all night and did everything I could think of to crash it so far this morning.  It won't crash.  Windows 10 appears to have made my computer problems disappear.  In Win 7, I could get Sonar to freeze by changing the Midi Input Ports and channel assignments, or dragging and renaming markers, or a host of other menial tasks, while the song was running, or not running.  Now I'm doing all that and everything else without so much as a hickup.  I am thrilled!
 
With all the things I tried over the last two months - New drives, new mixing board, new graphics card, tweeks, swapping USB ports, driver checks, Win 7 tweeks, you name it...it never once occurred to me that upgrading from 7 to 10 would solve everything.  I'm sure people mentioned it...certainly that they found things "more reliable" with Sonar with Windows 8.1, and 10, because I read them, especially one yesterday, somewhere.  I am so glad I did this...with time running out.  Many, many thanks to all of you.
 
I feel like a new man.
 
Result:  Windows 10 Approved

I am definitely against upgrading any OS, I always prefer to "nuke and pave" myself. 
 
That said, I would:
 
1) Scour every support site for Win 10 divers for your hardware. Win10 will put what IT thinks is best for hardware if there is no specific driver known. This could DEFINITELY be an issue on a DAW. The only reason I'm not on Win10 is because there are no Win10 drivers for ANY of my computer hardware and audio interface. So that will be a major expense when the time comes.
2) Get Classic Shell for Windows 10 ( http://www.classicshell.net/ ) if you prefer the old school (read XP, Vista, Win7) start menu. For a non touch-screen computer, tiles SUCK!
3) Use UEFI instead of Legacy BIOS for WIN10 if your board supports it. It will be a marked improvement in boot up time. (but it works in Legacy as well)
 
I look forward to a WIN10 DAW when the time is right with a Thunderbolt audio interface! :)
 
 
 
 

As of the latest Sonar Update my win7 would always crash after export on this one song that seems to tax Sonar with a StackHash crash I tried to fix but could not. Today I did that same with Windows 10 and it did not crash! So cool here too. :-)

If anyone remembers when W7 had gadgets they are now apps.  The weather one is nice. No click to a web page or download some spyware program.
 
When I upgraded a craptop to W8, I worked with it to look like W7.  You can do the same with 10 while it make not look like 7.  I don't like the color schemes, smaller icons in the taskbar and the color of the taskbar.  They also made the show desktop on the bottom right much smaller. 
 
 Legacy support is impressive.
 
 Interesting that no matter who runs Microsoft they still find ways to piss people off.  They offer a free OS upgrade but they made the behavior similar to malware or even ransomware.  Meanwhile Apple can charge a lot of money for their hardware and people will flock to it.  When something doesn't work on Windows users blame Microsoft, Mac users blame theirselves.  Few realize that Microsoft works hard on backwards compatibility and Apple doesn't. What does worry me with W10 is that it's an evolving OS which means the end user can suffer the same problems Mac users did with El Capitan.

I imagine the testing and stability checking at Cakewalk is focused on Win 10 and the rest of us stragglers can shoot their best shot. This is the way it should be anyway. Even though I'm on 10 now two days ago I was on 7 so I'm still a straggler.
 
I hope I can experience the same stability as it seems to have gotten worse the quicker they made Sonar in windows 7.

fitzj
A windows 10  upgrade will remove working programs from your computer  and put files into a folder called windows.old.

It depends how you upgrade. There are 3 options: (1) keep EVERYTHING (2) keep user files (3) keep nothing.
If MS deploy significant update, they again create windows.old. In any case, it is there to keep a possibility to revert update/upgrade. "Cleanup" has a special option to delete it.
 

It makes the excuse that they may  not work properly with Version 10.

I have upgraded Win8->Win8.1->Win10 WITHOUT loosing anything.
 

Some of the programs are  anti virus  systems and  Microsoft pushes its own  anti virus defender which will stop nothing.

That is like 5 years old news... But (a) most other anti-viruses are also not stopping anything (b) 2 other anti-viruses I was using before was way slower then defender (c) you can install another antivirus any time
 

Just be very careful with this update no matter what you hear on this forum.

That is a good advise
 

The big question why are Microsoft giving this away for free????

(1) Windows 10 is hardware locked, so sales are "safe"
(2) They had bad experience with waiting for users update there XP.... The have probably got better experience offering Win8 initially for cheap (upgrade from any other version) and see (3)
(3) Unlike (1) and (2) more a guess then fact, but... They are pushing the market with Win10 based tablets, probably Win10 phones are on the way. Unlike Apple and MS previous model, mobile devices are running BINARY THE SAME version of Windows. When all devices have the same OS, it is much simpler to organize smooth intercommunication and so better user experience then with multiple versions.
 

http://www.howtogeek.com/243581/windows-10-may-delete-your-programs-without-asking/
http://betanews.com/2015/11/24/windows-10-uninstalling-user-programs-without-permission/
Loads of other websites and I have encountered this  for many computers.
Just a warning be careful.

There can be several ways to declare your program "incompatible", just remember Roland drivers (they was binary ok, but self-declaring as incompatible). Most reports are about programs which work very close to hardware (and hardware ids, can be "false positives" or really problematic in respect to security).

I switched my old Terratec EWS88D from ASIO which I have run forever to WDM and it seems super stable under 10. <ThumbsUp>

I'm not very tech savvy and just a little over-cautious. I am running an audio computer from Sweetwater that I bought last year and using Win 8.1.
Can anyone venture a guess on how long Sonar will play nicely with Win 8.1??
 
Thanks
Ray

rspagnuolo
I'm not very tech savvy and just a little over-cautious. I am running an audio computer from Sweetwater that I bought last year and using Win 8.1.
Can anyone venture a guess on how long Sonar will play nicely with Win 8.1??
 
Thanks
Ray

Until Microsoft rolls out a C++ compiler (The thing they make SONAR with) that won't load on anything less than 10 and Cake uses it to make the next update  at that time. - make sense to ya?
 
That happened to xp users when X2a came out
That happened in May (If I recall) when sonar's install could not register it's updated library unless you we're running Win7 Service Pack 1. - An update and we were all good.
 
Microsoft would love it if we would all using 10 so they could focus on the present and the future.
To that end they may kill their children so to speak.
 
 

I upgraded to W10 about a month ago.  I figured if I hated it I would roll back to W7 and go on my merry way until I had to replace the computer.  I was pleasantly surprised when I rebooted after the upgrade, my desktop looked virtually the same.  I was relieved that I didn't have to learn to use the W8 style interface, at least not right now.  Other than having to re-pin a couple programs to the task bar (because only needing one click to open them instead of 2 is such a huge time saver) and reauthorizing one of my plug-ins for Sonar (Toontrack, I think) everything has just kind of worked.  The computer does boot much faster than it did with W7, but other than the fact that the task bar is now at the bottom of both monitors, rather than just the left one, the transition has been quite seamless so far.