Hello good people, I'm not sure if anyone else has this issue, but when I open Sonar Professional it takes roughly 6 minutes and 13 seconds to load. Does anyone else have this issue? In full disclosure, I have this same problem with Sonar X3, but I don't have this issue if I open the same project in X2. I've reached out to support, but I was told to download a patch in which I had already done before contacting them. If anyone has a solution, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 

Do you have mapped network drives or media devices with network discovery enabled? 
One reason for something like this is that for the first time it takes time to discover these. It could also be a very slow init from your audio interface.
To troubleshoot it unplug your computer from your network if you have one and also disable WIFI and see if the problem goes away. You can also try starting with your audio interface turned off.
 
If the problem goes a way this will at least point you in the right direction.

Thanks for the reply, I know that my wifi network is off when I run Sonar, I'll try to unplug my audio device to see if that works. Thanks! 

Sooo, I've tried all of the above and Sonar is still clocking in @ about 6.5 minutes to load. Any other suggestions? Also, I have deactivated all of my 3rd party VST's with the exception of my waves mercury bundle and Izotope bundle.

Do you have an antivirus running? This slows down my project load times significantly. If you do you can either disable the AV or add all the Sonar stuff to your AV's whitelist so it isn't scanning all the files and crap while opening the projects.
 
This has also minimized whitescreens at start up on my system.

Noel, my 64 bit plat takes 60 seconds from splash to main window. Always. For the first 45 seconds or so there is no disc activity as if Sonar is stuck waiting for something , then the expected flurry of disk reads as you would expect
for the last 15 seconds as Sonar loads. After that, she hums along nicely. It does this even if my CS is loaded or not.
 
The 32 bit version of plat jumps right up. So do the 64 bit versions of previous Sonars on the same machine, same OS (win 7 SP1)
 
Upon reading this thread. I disconnected all my mapped drives and turned off net dsicovery.
Nothing changed.
 ***** addendum! - then turning off my WiFi switch to disable my computer's internet reduced this delay to 20 seconds. *****
 
32 bit still does not suffer from this and has always been a good trooper. 
 
:Ron
 
 

No, I don't have any anti virus running while sonar is running.  The funny thing is as I've stated before, I can open X2  with absolutely no issues. X3 and professional takes forever to load though. I've even deleted some 3rd party VSTI's and that still has not helped. I'm confuzzled.  I've paid for something that I hate using and that's a very bad feeling. 

You don't have 'scan VST on startup' enabled (edit,preferences,Folder etc....) ?
 
could be a folder path related thing, would say somehow the settings for X3 are not ideal....your computer
is not finding or opening the wrong files / paths when opening Sonar.
 
Hope you get it fixed soon, then you could create a Sonar X3 icon in the taskbar on your desktop (drag X3 shortcut to taskbar)....that opens Sonar more quickly always I found.
good luck !

Wi-Fi adapters/drivers have PLAGUED Sonar uses for as far back as I remember, in all sorts of bizarre ways - usually with latency, but they have caused all manner of strangeness in Sonar.
 
MANY folks either turn off or disable their Wi-Fi right before launching Sonar, then turn it back on or enable it again after finishing their Sonar session.
 
Bob Bone
 

I've got a feeling that what's happening is that Sonar is checking to see if 64bit versions of your 32 bit plugins exist.
I made the move to 64 bit from 32 bit and had the same problem.
I did some housekeeping to separate my 32 bit plugins into two separate folders, "vstplugins-32" and "vstplugins-32 duped"
"vstplugins-32 duped" contains plugs that exist in 32 and 64 bit and that folder does not get scanned by Sonar x64 but it does get scanned by Sonar x86.
Doing this severely cut down my Sonar x64 start up time down to less than 20 seconds.