I can try to open a X3 saved as Platinum or plain old Platinum project and get an immediate shutdown of Sonar. If I create a new project, or open a recent one that hasn't ever crashed, then I can close it and open one of the older "crashy" ones without a problem.
Go figure.

Grum.

 
If I were implementing a daw, I'd hate to let unknown plugin developers have access to my memory space.
That sounds like an impossible situation.  Is there no way to sandbox plugins ?
 
Glad to hear that the midi code is (mostly?) recent.  Old code is only bad if it's buried so far down that no one still around knows what it does or how it works.  The "assuming it was designed properly" may be a lot to ask of code that was written 30 years ago.

Paul P
If I were implementing a daw, I'd hate to let unknown plugin developers have access to my memory space.
That sounds like an impossible situation.  Is there no way to sandbox plugins ?

It is indeed possible, but Bitwig is the only DAW that has implemented this. 

I assign no blame, to DAW or Synth, host or parasite, woodland sprite or ghost in the machine, all I can say is that when I open an older S6 or X1 project and weird stuff starts to happen in SPLAT.....  (and no I am not going to spend a lot of time explaining or categorizing or discussing, I just want to move on and start recording again) I  immediately recognize the symptoms and start saving presets, deleting synths and then adding them back in.  After about 30 minutes to an hour an I am back up with a super stable project that does not scare me everytime it pauses a little bit 

I have thought the issues with "bloating" and instability with "older" or projects that have been worked on a lot, have to do with Sonar's memory management. It reminds me of coding in MS Access. (remember how bloated the .mdb files would get?) Over time the project just keeps getting larger. Every change, adding/removing tracks, adding/removing synths, adding/removing plugins, copying/pasting clips, seems to increase the size of the project. Even when you "Save As", Sonar never recovers the unused allocated memory. I wish there was a "Consolidate/Compact Project" option that would rebuild the project based only on the active tracks/synths/plugins/clips that are currently being used in the project.
While composing, I have worked on projects that may have had 30-40 tracks some with multiple takes, I tried dozens of synths and plugs before settling on the ones I liked. After bouncing and freezing, I would delete all unneeded synths, takes, and tracks to work on the "mix". Now down to 8-10 final tracks, 3-4 buses and only the plugs I will be using, the project is still larger than the last "Save As" and getting larger with each tweak.
I think with a robust "garbage collection" routine, we would see quite a few of these random "instabilities" go away.
Then again, what do I know?
 

Utilities > CWAF
 
Let it rattle over your hard drives.
It will find corrupt Sonar projects (if any).

Only Issue I get is the way a project "looks".
I'll open older projects and they are weird  but that is becuase the view has changed in PLAT compaired to older versions. But I've never had the any CWP not play of freeze. And I go back to Guitar Studio ( 5?) They open with a warning and old plug ins are noted but greyed out. So it's easy to see that it's a reverb or chorus that is now missing. 
Note: I've never used BUN. files. Even though it's been explained over and over that they should be stable, I still see posts with crashing etc issues and they are trying to open old BUN files. Alawys make back ups in different formats if you must. I always back up projects as MID. files. Most of your hard work, like drums, will be safe forever as a midi file. And easily opened in any DAW> 

Anderton
It is indeed possible, but Bitwig is the only DAW that has implemented this. 

Not true. Bitbridge is a sandbox albeit only for 32 bit plugins. Jbridge allows sandboxing even 64 bitplugins. The downside to sandboxing is obviously performance (and potentially other bugs). So there is no perfect solution today.

jatoth
I have thought the issues with "bloating" and instability with "older" or projects that have been worked on a lot, have to do with Sonar's memory management. It reminds me of coding in MS Access. (remember how bloated the .mdb files would get?) Over time the project just keeps getting larger. Every change, adding/removing tracks, adding/removing synths, adding/removing plugins, copying/pasting clips, seems to increase the size of the project. Even when you "Save As", Sonar never recovers the unused allocated memory. I wish there was a "Consolidate/Compact Project" option that would rebuild the project based only on the active tracks/synths/plugins/clips that are currently being used in the project.
While composing, I have worked on projects that may have had 30-40 tracks some with multiple takes, I tried dozens of synths and plugs before settling on the ones I liked. After bouncing and freezing, I would delete all unneeded synths, takes, and tracks to work on the "mix". Now down to 8-10 final tracks, 3-4 buses and only the plugs I will be using, the project is still larger than the last "Save As" and getting larger with each tweak.
I think with a robust "garbage collection" routine, we would see quite a few of these random "instabilities" go away.
Then again, what do I know?
 

Thats an incorrect speculation. You can load and save a project as many times you want and there is no bloat. If there is it would be considered a bug. There were some issues with Audiosnap a long time ago which could cause excessive markers. But with plugins there is no such issue of "bloat".

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Jbridge allows sandboxing even 64 bitplugins.

Thanks for the tip and I just discovered the option to use it in the Plug-in Manager.
I imagine this could be useful if one suspects a plugin to be the cause of problems.
 
[could you please fix the forum clock which is now 13 minutes fast ?]