Hi all
 
I suppose I'm one of the lucky ones, I jumped on the Sonar bandwagon at X1 (moving from Cubase) and have had a relatively problem free journey so far, couple of crashes and my own inadequacies causing problems only. However, I'm now struggling to open a project and am stumped.
 
By some of my other projects standards, it's not overly large. One guitar audio track with Waves RVerb on it, 1 BFD2 MIDI track with 4 audio tracks attached and 4 Miroslav Philharmonik tracks with 1 audio attached to each. However, when I open the track, I just get a spinny wheel. I've restarted the PC, tried opening from the folder, tried opening from quick start with no such luck. This latest attempt I opened at 13:15 and it is now 13:33 and still spinning.
 
Is this project lost??? 

restart the computer
try opening the project in safe mode

Does the project open if you wait more? After upgrading to Sonar Platinum, I noticed that the first project to open after a PC startup takes much longer. I had to wait more than 4 minutes on several occasions... 

Safe Mode. It is most likely a plug in, possibly a 32 bit. 

Try loading the project in Sonar's Safe Mode - When clicking to open the project, hold down the Shift Key, and that will take you through a special way of opening the project (Safe Mode).
 
In safe mode, you will be asked to load or skip each plugin for the project.  I would suggest starting by skipping all the plugin loads, just to see if the project itself will open.  Then, close without saving.  Open again in Safe Mode, and allow the 1st plugin to load and skip the rest, and see if that works.  Close, and repeat the opens in Safe Mode, allowing one more plugin each time, until you get to where it fails.  Then you know that last plugin you had allowed to load is somehow problematic.  Keep doing the Safe Mode loads, opening up to the one before the one that failed, skipping that one, and allowing the one after it to load.  See if THAT one works, and continue in this manner until you finish with all failing plugins identified.
 
You can then figure out what to do with each identified plugin that causes issue in this project, either swap them out or open for now without them and save with them skipped so they no longer try to load.
 
You could also PRIOR to doing all of the stuff above, try doing a Reset and a FULL SCAN of all of your plugins, to make sure all of that stuff is in proper shape, then try opening the project and see if it works better.  If not, then you could do the Safe Mode approach I describe above.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks for the advise guys! I left it for 30 minutes earlier and it still hadn't loaded! I've restarted the PC many times and the same result.
 
Thanks for the indepth explanation Bob, every day is a school day  Strangely enough, I opened the project in safe mode with 1 plug in/VST at a time and opened fine, in an instant. Bit the bullet and opened in safe mode again but with everything, again loaded in an instant. opened in normal mode and back to a spinning circle  
 
Think I'll open in safe mode, bounce all instruments down to audio tracks, delete instruments then save. I have a feeling it is probably Miroslav Philharmonik causing the error.

I'm sure this is not the first time Miroslav has been implicated in some strange behaviour within Sonar

And no doubt won't be the last!
 
As Safe mode doesn't use my project template, I bounced it all down to audio and started a new project, moving the files into the new one, all seems to be working fine now. Thanks all!! 

That's some pretty weird behavior, but at least you are beyond the issues.
 
Bob Bone