I suspect you are not turning on the gear before you start Sonar. This is very important. Wait a bit before you load Sonar. This so all your hardware can initialize and is ready.  Than start Sonar. 

Mike - I don't recall anything you typed sounding angry with me - if it was, I missed it.  No worries :)
 
Sorry you had a rough day yesterday.
 
Bob Bone
 

I wonder if the USB-connected devices are being recognized in differing orders when they are either turned on after the computer boots, or not quite loaded/ready when computer is booted, and somehow Windows is building its little table of connected devices differently from session to session.
 
For the moment, if things DO appear to load correctly when those devices are turned on and completely powered up prior to booting computer, I would continue to do that and see if you get consistently good results doing that.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

robert_e_bone
I wonder if the USB-connected devices are being recognized in differing orders when they are either turned on after the computer boots...

 
That's why I suggested looking at the midi tracks' output drop-down menu. The items there are numbered in sequence with hardware followed by softsynths.

I have the same problem. My external hardware synths are always bumped to port 1.

I have a cakewalk usb 3 port midi interface connected to a roland xp60 keyboard on port 1 and ports 2 & 3 are connected to a two port roland sound canvas. Every time I open a project all midi patches formerly assigned to the sound canvas are assigned to midi port 1 and the xp60 keyboard. I gave to reassign them every time I open the project. They are still the same patch and bank, just the wrong port.

Hi Bob. Do you disconnect the the MIDI port at anytime? Is that the UM-3G? I have two of them hooked together for 6 ins and outs. Once I set up I have not had a problem ever with a change of assignments. This is true of all programs i use that access MIDI. 
 
 

I used to have the same problem, what I did to fix it, once I had all the ports and devices show up correctly in Sonar, I shut Sonar down and set aud.ini and ttsseq.ini to a read-only attribute.
If I ever add new devices, I remove the read-only attribute from both files, open Sonar, set it the way I want it, close Sonar and set both files to read-only again.
Hope this helps...

gustabo
I used to have the same problem, what I did to fix it, once I had all the ports and devices show up correctly in Sonar, I shut Sonar down and set aud.ini and ttsseq.ini to a read-only attribute.
If I ever add new devices, I remove the read-only attribute from both files, open Sonar, set it the way I want it, close Sonar and set both files to read-only again.
Hope this helps...

That's pretty clever...!

Thanks Craig,
My issue was with my faderport, sometimes I'd start playing a project and the fader would start moving back and forth real fast resulting in an unrecoverable crash a few seconds later because of migrating ports.
The read-only attribute was my solution.

I might try that read only trick.
 
To respond to John, I have a permanent set up in my studio. Things are connected and never get disconnected until the next change in my set up. MIDI port assignments do not retain themselves once the program is exited. I am using the Cakewalk UM-3G.
 
Port 1 in and out Roland XP-60 never disconnect it
Port 2 in and out  Roland Sound Canvas A side
Port 3 out only to Roland Sound Canvas B side