At some point in working on projects,  "cut special" stops working.    The dialog no longer pops up, the action happens immediately as if it is a simple cut.    I've noticed this for a long time, but only recently realized it is a warning sign that if ignored indicates a crash is coming.  
 
Saving project, restarting sonar with exactly the same project somehow re-energizes "cut special" so it works again.  

There was a thread a few years ago about SONAR running best when saved frequently, and the speculation has long been that being related to the size/complexity of the undo history. This observation has merit, as most editing programs have a preference option of "# of undos to keep in history," especially when those undo's can be massive. I never went searching for such a setting in SONAR (so not sure if such exists).
 
I have not had SONAR ever belly up during a save, but the new SONAR has a "File->Save Copy As" as well. I have never used that, so not sure if it actually resets undo history or not.

The setting is in the "Edit-History" option from the menu. You have to have made at least one edit for "History" to be available.
It seems we are getting close to finding the source of "random" crashes while editing. I have had several crashed while doing a lot of copy and paste in staff view, I just changed the undo history settings. Let's see if that helps. But, being random in nature, it may be a while before I realize the crashes are gone.
 

good reminder of history, Mettelus  -- maybe, in fact, the two are related -- a project that has become fragmented into many many clips could possibly take up a great deal more space in the undo stack. 

jatoth
The setting is in the "Edit-History" option from the menu. You have to have made at least one edit for "History" to be available.
 

Thank you for that! I just opened a project and changed that # from 128->10, requiring an edit to do so. Closed without save, then opened another project to do a quick edit and check again, and the value was still at 10, so it is global (I hope, I didn't reboot the machine to test).
 
128 was a default I would never have expected, but that is indeed a massive number. Most graphical programs would belly up before ever hitting that one, but I am not sure of what SONAR considers an "undo" either. When I undo is usually the "last 3 things" max.
 
I will have to check out that undo history when I think of it sometime, as I can hardly envision a scenario of "Damn, I need to undo the last 73 items!" For me, I would just close it and revert to the last save from <10 minutes ago.
 
Edit: I did just get around to rebooting the machine to check the "Maximum Undo History" and it is indeed a global (and remembered) setting.

Things to undo can build up quickly --- I frequently undo maybe 30-40 little edits, which only took 30-40 seconds to make. 

Very interesting, I must have a look at that.
It may be what's causing a regular irritant.  When cutting or copying I sometimes find the paste doesn't work, for no apparent reason. I always check that I haven't somehow changed the track focus, making the paste turn up in the wrong track, but invariably find it's just failed. I try the copy/paste again only to find the paste just won't happen. I then save, close Sonar, re-open and all works as expected. 

sounds like this: http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3361422
 
there's something wrong with they way sonar tries to save a history step, it would explain a lot of the reported issues right now

Yes sir, I believe that the CNRL S thing/large edit sessions was my observation a few years ago (or at least someone else had the observation as myself and posted it) and I am happy to report that it still works today.  During editing MIDI tracks, adding the keystrokes of CNTL S (save) and doing it often, resets something avoiding the crash and a SONAR restart and all the editing tools work again as they should instantly.  Never got it confirmed that it was related to large UNDO buffers but I am still sticking with that theory until or if the bakers confirm.  If it is a large BUFFER, it would appear to be something that can be fixed in SONAR with larger allocations of memory for these sessions.
 
Just to add another behavior that gets fixed with frequent CNTL S is that the SPACE BAR stops acting as the START/STOP playback of your project... here to, CNTL S and the space bar works again.
 
So, just remember that CNTL S is your friend while doing MIDI editing and all will be OK.
 
Jim

Interesting...    I Ctrl+S fairly often out of sheer habit, and I rarely have many of the oddball issues experienced by others.   In hindsight, perhaps the connections being made in this thread are more than just coincidental...