I have had more than my share of Sonar issues over the past few years it seems, lots of crashes and unexpected problems and frustrations. In researching this idly last week I ran across someone who said the most foolproof thing would be to disconnect my DAW computer from the Internet entirely. This will enable me to also uninstall virus protection and any other software whose resource-heavy job is to protect you from the Internet's evils. Anything like downloading drivers or researching music on Spotify would be done on a completely different machine sitting nearby, and Flash drives would be used for installing Sonar updates, drivers, etc.
 
I have a laptop around I never use, and so I'm thinking about doing this. Has anyone here done that? Are there other things I'm not thinking of that I could delete or settings to change to take advantage of this change? I'm worried I'll do this and notice no improvement in stability or performance, and that will be because there are additional steps I need to take. Or maybe this is a bad idea? Advice?

I don't know about that. Mine is on the net all the time and it doesn't crash. I would look closely at hardware. Vista Win 7 and Win 8.1 were very stable OSs. 10 is turning out to be just as stable. Memory is a very likely area that should be checked. Than the motherboard and what chip sets it has. Another is the graphic card. All of these things have to work flawlessly for a system to be stable.  Sonar Platinum is very stable. Look up the crash reports on your event log and pinpoint what is causing these crashes. Of course the audio card or interface is vital too.
 
The internet is not in and of itself a reason for crashing.  

jkoseattle . . . I would echo what John has said, and the only time I feel like I need to disconnect the internet (Wi-Fi) on my system is when I'm doing an export to audio, or when I'm running a project at sample rate higher than 44.1k
 
Looking at your specs, it seems I have a similar audio card and midi hook-up to yours, and I can say that I rarely have any crashing, though you do have less RAM / CPU, and I wonder how much system resource "EastWest PLAY Symphonic Orchestra" uses up on your system ?
 
I use MS Security Essentials for virus protection, which has a very low system footprint.
 
Also, since upgrading to Sonar Platinum, there is a marked increase in my system efficiency.

jkoseattle
n researching this idly last week I ran across someone who said the most foolproof thing would be to disconnect my DAW computer from the Internet entirely. T

 
This was good advice, in 1999.
 
Nowadays it's actually worse if you disconnect off the internet. If you don't keep your software/firmware/drivers up to date they get out of sync with each other. Plus windows update does improve performance and reliability.
 
What you really need is a decent backup strategy. I recommend using an external hard drive and using software such as Acronis Trueimage.
 
Antivirus such as AVG works fine, you just need to set up exclusions in the area where Sonar needs to access.
 
When you are recording you can disable your network adapters if you like by right clicking on the adapter icon, this may save resources. Also periodically defrag.
 
There are also things you can do to fine tune your system like turn off windows services you won't need (use caution), disable startup programs and use latencymon/process monitor/process explorer to spot any problems.
 
Be careful with your automated tasks, for instance you don't want windows searching indexing or a defrag happening whilst you are working.
 
If you machine is littered with old apps consider a clean install of windows (7 or 10), note you can get windows 10 for free but you need to be sure your drivers will work. You may see some noticeable performance benefits on a dual-core as there is a smaller footprint. On more powerful machines it's difficult to spot.
 
Ta

I keep my music rig offline. Yesterday I installed Musescore on it, by using my other computer and an external drive. I think it's smart to do this, although obviously you're going to get differing views on this. It gives me a feeling of confidence. And privacy. Further, when online on my other computer, I use Linux Zorin 90% of the time. (Had to use Windows to download Musecore, but that's because my music machine has Windows 7). Linux, needless to say, is far safer than Windows. I think risk-reduction is a very good idea these days. Why wouldn't you?

I often disconnect from the net when using Sonar. It’s just a matter of pulling the plug and replacing when finished. It gives me peace of mind that there is no chance that I will get an interruption of that one perfect “take” that I would be disappointed with if it had a glitch in the middle that was caused by an errant system process.
I have also found that Windows 10, in particular, is very busy in the first 5 minutes or so of booting up and I wouldn’t even consider using Sonar in that time as there is a very good chance of an interruption. There seems to be a lot of calling home, and updating of live tiles (and ads) on the start menu.
I also have a 32bit system which requires me to be a bit more careful about my RAM usage. This is probably not such an issue for you, but there is still the chance that a process is going to start, or interrupt, your workflow when you least expect it, causing a crackle in “that take”, or at worse a crash that loses you some vital work.
I also stop my antivirus during recording, and although this won’t get you a virus or malware unless you’re visiting nefarious websites, it does stop it from checking every file you open that is not on your exceptions list.
In the end, if you’re worried, do some tests and check your resource monitor and logs. It will tell you if being connected to the net is causing your computer any grief.
Let us know if you find anything that is causing you issues, I for one would be interested to know. I guess I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart.

michael diemer
...Linux, needless to say, is far safer than Windows. ..

That may have been correct back when xp ruled the world.. Now there is a different story:
 
http://www.gfi.com/blog/most-vulnerable-operating-systems-and-applications-in-2014/
This is a list of os vulnerabilities in 2014... OS X leads the pack, then iOS, then Linux, and with a large margin afterwards, Windows. Several versions of windows are listed, but the same vulnerabilities affect different versions of windows, still, the total number of vulnerabilities was 68 for windows, while the Linux kernal had 119. That's not including the different "flavors" of Linux.
 
The main message when it comes to keeping your computer clean is to be very mindful of what you do on the net. Don't just click any link, but use common sense.  My DAW is connected to the net (via a hardware firewall) and has no virus scanner running. Haven't had issues on that machine up to now (I do an online scan from time to time to make sure). On the computers I use to surf the net, I do have a virus scanner, and even then I'm using my head when working on it. I don't install software I don't know (or trust), Mails are scrutinezed always. I read every message that appears on my computer before I click anything.
 
Been working with computers now for the past 35 years. Only had 2 viruses, and both were my own fault.
 
I can understand you like to use Linux, but please don't fuel the gossip. Windows is currently one of the most secure os you can install. One big "if" though... Don't switch off the built-in security, like UAC. On Linux, you don't switch it off either, so why would you on windows?

rebel007
I often disconnect from the net when using Sonar. It’s just a matter of pulling the plug and replacing when finished. 

If you right click and disable the network adapter whilst using Sonar you disable the network stack (you don't need to pull the plug), and you will see more of a performance benefit. If I were to do this (I don't) I would probably write a batch file or something so it's quick and easy to do, or just drag the adapter icons onto my desktop, thus creating a shortcut.

On a similar subject, if a laptop has a "Flight Mode" switch, would there be any benefit in turning that on, thus disconnecting from t'internet?

synkrotron
On a similar subject, if a laptop has a "Flight Mode" switch, would there be any benefit in turning that on, thus disconnecting from t'internet?

All "Flight mode" is basically disabling Wifi and 3G/4G (anything wireless) so yes.. You would have to check to see if it disables the adapters in Windows or not (it probably will). Personally I would continue as normal connected with the internet though, but if I started experiencing dropouts I would then resort to disabling the adapter. I would optimize with latencymon, update the drivers and BIOS first however.