This is not a formal plea for help.
I will submit one formally with the Bakers once I sort through what has transpired...
This is me venting...
I spent a week cleaning up my PC prior to install: uninstalling unused programs and plugins, doing clean installs of upgrades, clearing all drives, general maintenance.. everything running great.
Tried running command center to install Sonar Platinum, got a series of errors about missing drive designations/not specified path, 50% through install with no options to fix, and apparently it installed content on my audio only drive.
No one click cancel option (had to cancel everything as it installs one after another - and no simple on click uninstall so far (which I may have missed in my frustration), only to realize afterwards that I apparently didn;t set a restore point before this debacle.
Crap.
I will try to figure this mess out tomorrow once calm

Ouch, I am sorry that happened to you. There are enough CCC threads to "hint" at going the manual install route, but the CCC GUI doesn't make this even seem an option.

Iobit's Advanced System Care has a free version (with uninstaller) that is good at registry cleaning. If you canceled the installs you may need more manual work, but clean the registry afterwards anyway.

Going forward, be sure to create a restore point. Installing updates can reopen the same issues each month (until the CCC update resolves them). In the mean time, manual installs work for customizing, but the CCC still shows them all as red that way.

I'd be careful using Iobit's Advanced System Care. It was responsible for creating BSOD each time I wanted to use CCC - something to do with bitdefender conflict. I had to uninstall it before being able to use CCC. Haven't had any BS since doing so.

Sorry to hear that Rev.
It's sad. Four months into the release, the "standard" install method should NOT be failing regardless of your system.
Windows installers have been around now for 20 years. There is NO excuse for a broken install process. NONE.

I recently bought the CA2A plug in. There was no interaction with the Cake installer at all. It was just like old times, they send a D/L link and it's full on manual install. I was surprised that the new installer was completely bypassed since I thought that was the new way of doing business. Now I have a new bit of Cake that isn't seen by the installer and will have to be managed the old way.