My PC still has Sonar versions back to 8.5 installed on it. In reviewing these versions, I notice that X1 starts up immediately, but later versions take much longer (e.g. 30 seconds to 1 minute ... I haven't timed it precisely). What changed with X2, and is there anything I can do to help this?

Not sure if this is what is slowing your system down or not, but the biggest part of my startup process was VST scan. I started paying attention to it and noticed that scans included multiple scans of certain plugins, in my case, Native Instruments ones Like Reaktor, Guitar Rig, etc. I realized that I was scanning folders that I included when I first bought these,"just to make sure I got them all" scanned on startup. I copied the ones I needed to another folder, and shortened the list of what to scan. It's in Preferences > VST, can't miss it. It shortened my startup time considerably once it wasn't scanning the same stuff twice(and in some cases three times)

I'm a noob, but i turned off the little welcome box with the choices for projects tutorials etc. It now comes right up and I open the "recent" project as it is the last one I was working on. That still takes a while, but I'm thinking of getting an SSD drive for the project folders, etc.Submit Post

orangeporanges:
 
Can I just move (copy, delete, paste) the VST .dll files to different folders as I please, without having to uninstall and reinstall them?

For tips click here.

I no longer know what's fast ... but the blank Platinum screen starts instantly.   Getting a whole project loaded is taking longer, but then I'm up to about 32 gigs of instruments loaded, so 3-4 minutes is a good time to start a pot of coffee.    Aside, does filling an SSD disk beyond a certain point begin to degrade its performance?  

I don't think read performance should be affected but the longevity of the disk can be compromised if you have less than 10 to 15 percent of free space. This is because each sector can only be written to a finite number of times and normally the write algorithm tries to spread writes evenly across the disk (since seek time is non-existent).
 
By the way the earlier Samsung EVO 840 disks had an issue where the read performance would degrade over a couple of months due to an imperfect write procedure. They released a utility to fix it, worth checking out if you have that disk (I do).

The VST scanner is a shared component, and the one with the "toast" appearance (green box in the lower right), is common to X3 (not sure about X2, since I rarely open X2 anymore). X1 still has the list in the middle of the screen.
 
I have noticed both X3/Platinum take about 5s to stabilize when first opened but that VST scan takes 12s or so to complete on both (using an SSD). This thread actually reminded me to change the VST scan to "Manual" since I do not shift VSTs much anymore at all.
 
Edit: I opened Platinum to set the VST scan to manual seeing the above times, then closed it and opened X3... took 3 seconds. Then closed X3 and opened Platinum again, took 2 seconds. I would need to reboot to verify the actual effect of that change though.

Sanderxpander, thanks for the info ... prompted me to look at my Samsung EVO 840 drive again ... and things like turning off Prefetch and Indexing and turning on Write Cache Buffer, and reducing the virtual memory settings seemed like good ideas.   Then of course I ordered another SSD, a Samsung PRO 850 which looks like a better even if more expensive option.    Since CW is busily filling up my 256 GB SSD partition for the system drive ...

on my Windows 7, Sonar start faster from an icon in the windows taskbar at bottom of screen....takes longer when I open Sonar elsewhere.
When I start computer Sonar takes maybe 30 seconds or so, after that Sonar opens in a second (the SSD drive on my computer then helps to open quickly, as SSD drives are there for working fast with big software programms)