I'm on Win10 with RME FFUFX (firewire drivers) and when Sonar crashes (almost daily under heavy use) it refuses to release the drivers. Forcing a reboot (or waiting about 10 min) is the only way to re-start it.

orangesporanges
I have a question, Fabio. Is your interface USB?

Yes it is.

OK so it seems I'm certainly not alone, but the question is it inherent to USB interfaces in general or something in the way SONAR handles drivers? I'm curious if anyone using another DAW can tell me if they have this problem as well.

I have a Roland Duo-Capture EX UA-22 and it seemingly takes nothing to have it jam up after anything using it glitches or crashes. To avoid a restart, I power-down the UA-22, flip the hardware switch to another sample rate, power-up, power-down, flip back to the original sample rate and power-up. Sounds complicated, but takes just a few seconds in practice. It certainly beats a reboot. I don't know whether a similar routine will work for other Roland products or even other vendors' products.
 
I have a fair amount of Roland kit and all of the drivers seem unduly fragile, unfortunately.
 

Just a thought this issue has surfaced before about a driver not being released and it seemed that MOTUs and M-Audios devices including MIDI interfaces were the culprit.
BTW I have this issue also, where the Sonar Process remains resident and will not kill via usual and other apps (kill process), I used to be able to unplug a device at a time and try to successfully kill the sonar process and it worked, thats how i found it to be my MOTU midi express 128 as the culprit, but since migrating to win 10 those troubleshooting procedures dont work.
 

Ham N Egz
I used to be able to unplug a device at a time and try to successfully kill the sonar process and it worked, thats how i found it to be my MOTU midi express 128 as the culprit, but since migrating to win 10 those troubleshooting procedures dont work.

Yes, same problem here. I used to be able to unplug the device and then kill SONAR, but that no longer seems to be the case using Win 10 (or Windows 8.1 for that matter). A few others have reported weird solutions in order to get SONAR to release drivers (unplugging then changing sample rates, opening other DAW software, etc...) Next crash I get I'm going to throw the book at it and see if I can't force it into submission!

No problems here using a Focusrite 18i6 (USB) - the drivers literally never hang (knock on wood) leaving SONAR in the wind.   The only issue I do have opening the MixControl software when SONAR is already open - that almost always hangs up the unit, requiring that I disconnect/reconnect and/or power down.   So I simply don't that.    But otherwise it runs like a champ (Win7).
 

With the rare exception of a 32-bit program called Inspector, I am exclusively 64-bit.
 
I can't say for sure what triggers the lockup of Sonar and the crash of the Octa-Capture drivers, but it seems like a memory issue....long sessions, lots of editing, many plugins and software instruments open....
 
That being said it also crashed shortly after opening and working on a single stereo track with one plugin...possibly a cumulative crash....I have 12GB of RAM....
 
It crashed the least with Lexington...Jamaica the most....
 
I haven't been in the studio all week....if it continues without me figuring it out I'll back rev to Lexington....

Fabio Rubato

orangesporanges
I have a question, Fabio. Is your interface USB?

Yes it is.

Me too. RME UFX ASIO USB. I never have a crash where the drivers are not released immediately.

I used to have this issue a while back after purchasing a new interface (RME UFX), however after multiple conversations with Cakewalk and RME, both parties indicated it was an RME driver issue. 
 
A subsequent RME driver update seemed to resolve it and it's never recurred.  I assume you've got the latest Focusrite drivers?  Have you spoken to Focusrite about it?  That's where I'd focus given my RME experience.