pwal


this thread should be a sticky, as the 8.3/SFN functionality is an unstated system requirement

+1.  Vital.

Ok, I've got there at last!
Noel, I went back to one of your emails to me and tried one of your suggestions.
 
The second step is to copy the folder highlighted below, put it somewhere safe, in my case on my D: drive.  Delete the C: drive folder.  Cold boot.  (Not sure if that's necessary but I did so).  Copy the folder back from D: to its original location.  Open Sonar.  Force a rescan of plugins, and you should see that quick flicker centre screen showing something 'new' was found. Job done.

 
John
 

Yes turning the option back on only affects NEW files. Existing files on that drive would not have 8.3 names. So deleting and copying them back forces them to regenerate.
I think there may be a command to force windows to regenerate the 8.3 names but I don't recall how. 

Anyway glad you are back to normal. If you had lots of plugins It should sort out various other potential problems as well. Just make sure that all your existing projects load properly with no missing plugins now.  You should investigate how that option got turned off in the first place if you didn't do that manually, since Windows doesn't do that by default. Perhaps you ran some disk optimization software or some tweaks that changed this state. If you find what did it please post an update so others can avoid doing that. There was another user "rasure" that had identical symptoms so he most likely has the same issue. If you see this thread you should apply the same steps.

I've never run any PC optimisers that could have made that change.  I tend to leave well enough alone!

The only thing I can think of is that the PC is a specialist audiio one from a company here in the UK called Scan, one of their '3XS' range .  Part of the spec says that they 'optimise Windows' for audio applications, so perhaps that might have included resetting this file name flag.  I'll mention it on their forum. 

Yep that has to be it. They "optimized" it alright, just not for SONAR or any Cakewalk application :) Frankly Windows 7 doesn't really need any tweaking for it to work out of the box with most hardware configurations. 
With software optimization the golden rule is to optimize when you have a measurable problem, rather than implement a solution in search of a hypothetical problem. 

With software optimization the golden rule is to optimize when you have a measurable problem, rather than implement a solution in search of a hypothetical problem.

 
Now that is a great quote.  

Hey Everyone,

It looks like Noel and the rest of you have done a good job troubleshooting this.

With some help from Noel and Keith (thanks guys), I threw up a KB article that should hopefully help with anyone who runs into this behavior in the future.

A little while back I ran through this process very specifically on my own system (first breaking it intentionally and then repairing it)... multiple times. Do take care when going through the steps. It's not as scary as it seems, but if you miss a step (specifically the CUT/COPY/PASTE part of it) it won't work properly.

I hope this helps anyone who runs into it in the future. It's tagged in our Knowledge Base and of course can be accessed via this link at any time: http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013293

Best regards,

Hmmm... I'm going to sound like a complete noob now.

I went to my command prompt and typed in the above command. What I got back was this:-

"The FSUTIL utility requires that you have administrative privileges"

As far as I'm concerned I set my new account up as Administrator on this machine, and if I go to users in control panel and check my settings it says Administrator under my name.

What on earth have I done wrong now??

type cmd into the search bar, when it shows up in the list then right click and choose run as administrator. From the dos box run the fsutil command.

I wonder if you could fix the file name by copying to a FAT32 usb thumb drive and then back?
That should create an 8.3 file name, I think.