I hope this is the right place to post this, please forgive me if this belongs somewhere else!
 
I'm a college student looking at completing my degree in the next semester or two. I'm trying to get myself set up with some hardware at home to be prepared for whatever may come in my near future. Sonar came highly recommended as I have a Windows-based computer at home.
 
My issue is that I cannot get the install to complete. It takes about ~20 minutes to get to the point of installation where it forces my computer to restart (Is that normal?) and then upon restarting.... nothing else happens. I can see that there are some items (mostly the VST plugins) that are correctly installed in their correct locations, as well as the SONARPDR.exe file, but when I try and open the file, a blank error box opens with the options "OK" and "Cancel". OK simply closes the .exe (as shown by Task Manager) and Cancel seems to copy some files, and then closes. I've tried following the Clean Install instructions, but when I go to uninstall using Windows Uninstall through Control Panel, Sonar is not listed. None of the registry keys exist, and using the "unins001.exe" gives an error that "unins001.msg" is missing. Clearly my installation is only half-completed, but why is this?

Some info about my setup:
Windows  7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel i7-3630QM
8 Gigs Ram
Nvidia GTX 660M
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6
 

Failed installation might be a privileges problem.
try installing "as administrator":
http://www.cakewalk.com/D...roubleshooting.02.html
 
If that does not work, try to remove and then do a clean install as administrator:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013371/SONAR-X3-Clean-Install-Instructions
 

Also make sure any anti-virus programs are turned off. They don't like programs that talk to the system.

slartabartfast
Failed installation might be a privileges problem.
try installing "as administrator":
 
 
If that does not work, try to remove and then do a clean install as administrator:
 
 

I have already tried this, sadly. My account is the administrator account, but I've even tried running it as an administrator (using right click + Run As Administrator)
 
Also, while I have removed what little it DOES install in an attempt to do a clean install, the program itself does NOT install, only the plugins and extra content, it seems.

Anderton
 
Also make sure any anti-virus programs are turned off. They don't like programs that talk to the system.

I use Kaspersky, but I've had it disabled during the installation process just to make sure, it hasn't made a difference.

Are you installing from the DVD's or the download? 
The download instructions are a bit more complicated, and you need to be sure all the files are present and in the location that the installer expects to find them. 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013359/SONAR-X3-Download-Installation-Instructions
 

slartabartfast
Are you installing from the DVD's or the download? 
The download instructions are a bit more complicated, and you need to be sure all the files are present and in the location that the installer expects to find them. 

 

I'm installing from the DVD :]

Su****ious for a corrupted or unreadable file on the DVD in that case. Sorry I forgot that the forum thinks the letters s.p.i.c. are a racial slur even when they are found inside a word.
An empty error box is never a good sign, and I do not recall an automatic restart with no warning during installation.
 
It is also possible that you are actually getting a BSOD that is causing the restart, and you do not see the Windows error message because your computer is set to reboot on a fatal error. I had a problem installing a large program some years ago that always failed when it reached a stage of copying a particular file to unpack. Sure sign of a bad file, right? Turns out that I had a bad memory chip with a bad bit so high in the address space that no program ever reached it until this installation, and always at the same point in the installation process.
 
Try this:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/automatic-restart-windows-7.htm
 

Try cloning the DVD to a blank DVD-R. I don't think there's anything special about it (i.e., copy protection), the authorization happens after the program is installed. Wouldn't be the first time there was media defecccct.

I had that problem when I tried installing Sonar X3, the culprit turned out to be a redistrib install that was happening in the background that froze, once I killed that through task manager, the installation continued smoothly...

And is there not something with the C+++ thing that if yu don't install the correct version Sonar might not install. 
 
Can the OP download Sonar from the store and use the serial number on the DVD? 
Another thing that just happened to me a few months ago was my DVD drive was causing things like this to happen. So see if you can swap out the drive.