Hello
 
I was running Sonar 3 on my old XP computer, and it was very solid.
I recently bought a Windows 7 64-bit PC.  I installed Sonar X1 on it and it is crashing every hour or so.
I then installed 3 on it, and same problem. Both give the Sonar is not responding message  Both are legit copies.
 
I have a feeling this could be  hell to find out the problem.  No other problems on the PC, plenty of power to run Sonar, with the CPU meter barely registering.  But any ideas - where do you begin to look?  I have not tried a clean install yet. Maybe it would be best to upgrade to W10 now and hope that solves the issue?  I'd prefer not to if possible for the moment

FULL system spec please, plus details of your interface (make, model, driver etc)

ok thanks Jonesey this is what i have (hard disc partitioned to c: and d:, f: is an external, not sure why it has not detected the firewire card i installed.  it's quadcore cpu. My soundcard is TC Electronic konnekt live):
 
Item                      Details

Windows:                 Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (64-bit) Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Memory (RAM):          16329 MB
CPU Info:                  AMD A8-6600K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
CPU Speed:               3892.8 MHz
Sound Card:             Speakers (TC Near Audio) |
Realtek Digital Output (Realtek |

Display Adapters:      NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 | RDPDD Chained DD | RDP Encoder Mirror Driver | RDP Reflector Display Driver
Monitors:                 1x; Generic PnP Monitor |
Screen Resolution:    1600 X 900 - 32 bit
Network:                  Network Present
Network Adapters:    Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
CD / DVD Drives:      1x (E: | ) E: TSSTcorpCDDVDW SH-224DB
Ports:                      COM Ports NOT Present. LPT Port NOT Present.
Mouse:                    8 Button Wheel Mouse Present
Hard Disks:              C:  150.3GB | D:  781.0GB | F:  931.5GB
Hard Disks - Free:     C:  34.7GB | D:  229.3GB | F:  281.2GB
USB Controllers:       7 host controllers.
Firewire (1394):        Not Detected
Manufacturer *:        American Megatrends Inc.
Product Make *:        To be filled by O.E.M.
AC Power Status:      OnLine
BIOS Info:          |  |
Time Zone:             GMT Standard Time
Battery Status:       No Battery
Motherboard *:       Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. F2A55M-HD2
MAC Address:          74-D4-35-9D-BE-18
SM BIOS:                FE

any ideas, guys?

The one thing that leaps out at me is that you're using the onboard Realtek as an "interface".
 
The vast majority of users are using a dedicated USB or Firewire interface which performs light years better than the onboard chip.
 
I'm pretty sure if you could get hold of one your problems will (mostly) disappear.
 
If you want some advice on what to buy, it would be good to know what your intended use is - are you micing up drums, recording full bands or is it just you? how many simultaneous inputs/outputs would you need?

thanks, Jonesey.  I have a dedicated firewire PCi card installed, i'm not sure why it did not show up in the specs. I record mostly synth and vocal in through my soundcard.  But majority of work i do is editing, moving audio about and so on.  i've not had any problems with playback and recording, it's never crashed while recording audio, and i don't think it has crashed during playback (though i can be 100% sure)  . . but definitely the crash occurs while i'm editing, for example if a grab a piece of audio and move it.

any thoughts?
 
should i just go for Windows 10 and hope that resolves issues?

The Konnekt Live site specifically indicates that drivers for Windows 10 are NOT available.
 
I also saw some posts in various forums that spoke of the Windows 7 x64 drivers being rather flaky.
 
What is the Fire Wire chip set you have on your PCI card?
 
Also, for testing purposes, if you set your Windows Default Audio Device to be the interface, do song files (MP3, WMA) play properly in Windows Media Player?
 
And, if you are running with ASIO, you can cause conflicts if you have both Sonar running and Windows is also pointing to use the interface, so if you are in Sonar and some Windows sound plays, it can crash or lock up Sonar or your system.  I actually only point programs like Sonar at the ASIO drivers of my interface, and send regular Windows audio output through either another set of speakers, or I set it to the HDMI output on the computer to an HDTV - and that plays audio through the TV speakers.
 
Is your Windows completely up to date on all maintenance updates?  If not, this might cause issues.  I highly recommend keeping Windows maintenance up to date, as developers are writing their software on current-level Windows systems.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi Bob
 
thanks for response. i'll answer it more fully later.  I still have my old M-audio firewire soundcard, so do you think it is worth setting that up and seeing how i get along with Sonar?  I changed PC and soundcard at same time so it makes sense that either could be causing the problem