I'm Still a relatively new user and loosing settings...
This has happened on my laptop and now my desktop.. and it's a pain in the tail.
I took my Edirol ( roland ) UM2 ex midi interface to use with laptop.  when I come back, cakewalk does not recognize it and when it does - all of my instrument set ups ( 2 midi ports with  16 channels defined on each one  ( meaning instrument sounds were assigned to channels when the track was defined for midi out playback ) - one a RD700GX ).  Now I have to define all of them over again.
 
This happened to me once before -  and it is a major headache.
 
What would cause this and how do I prevent it?..  I thought cakewalk saved all of these settings somewhere?
 
Thanks
Wayne

My guess would be that you are plugging your interface into a different port.
 
You could test that out.  Plug into a port and make sure your definitions for whatever are present.  Unplug interface, and then after about 30 seconds plug it back into the same port.  Hopefully, all your stuff should still be there.
 
Then, you could unplug again and plug into a different port and see if they go away.  You would at least know then that this is why that happens.
 
I always try to make sure I use the same ports for plugging things into the computer.  In the early days, some drivers were not smart enough to know they had been installed already and had just ended up in a different port.
 
Time for beddy bye.  I just dozed off and typed about 43 lines of the letter 'p'.
 
Nitey nite, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Bob,  yes, I probably did plug it into a different port.  Interesting information.
 
Does sonar remember my instrument configurations?..  for example if i had track one to be a piano on X brand of hardware set up in my midi instrument profile (correct term )? for outpot port and channel, etc.....  will that info transfer from my workstation to my laptop ( given that I take my hardware interface with me  - and using your suggestions,  plug it into the same port on each machine all the time. 
 
I've had trouble with the um2 being recognized before.  If no comment about this I  might make a new thread on that in hardware.
 
Thanks
Wayne

I think it more of a Windows quirk - please note I am not an expert with this topic, so I may be way off base here.
 
I think Windows assigns things in some kind of weird numeric way, with regard to USB devices getting plugged in, and I certainly recall that with the older Native Instruments Kore Controller 1 audio interface, it would want you to install drivers again if you simply switched ports from the one it had been plugged into when the drivers were first installed.
 
AND, Craig Anderton has posted some kind of way to get Windows to delete all the accumulated 'ghost devices' that occur because devices were over time plugged into a bunch of different USB ports.  At some point, if I recall correctly, some kind of list fills up, or something like that, and then his magic method of cleaning out that list can open up room for new 'entries'.
 
So, pardon my murky memory - I really try to be quite careful about which devices get plugged into which ports, so I just do not have any frequent experience with any of the stuff I talked about above, BUT it is possible that something from some of that may be contributing to YOUR issues - I am speculating.
 
Bob Bone
 

I am not sure that I understand the OP correctly, so please clarify if I miss the mark here. The inputs and outputs to SONAR are configured in preferences, and routing settings are saved within a project. When an existing project is opened and an input or output is not found, SONAR will prompt the user with a popup saying "X device is not found" and allow the user to reassign it to another existing device (if present) and things are happy. If a capable device is not found, and the user opens the project, the internal routings of the project may be broken since they go "no where." If such happens, first thing to do is not save the project, but immediately close it... if saved, they will remain broken until redefined.
 
At that point, close the project without a save, and immediately go into preferences and verify that you have audio/MIDI input and output devices listed and enabled. I do believe that Windows will reassign a device if it "sees" it differently as Bob mentioned with plugging into another USB port (Windows is trying to maintain configurations in the background as well). Once audio/MIDI ins and outs exist, the user should get a popup when the project opens to seamlessly shift from one "missing" input/output to a new one and the project will function normally.
 
If you are swapping projects between machines, it is good practice to use the same USB ports each time, but also to open SONAR itself (no project) initially and check preferences prior to opening any project to make sure that audio/MIDI is enabled properly.
 
FWIW, I have had similar occur to me just because I do not power on my MIDI controller "by default" so open projects requiring it and get broken connections from this. If I then power on the controller, SONAR will recognize and ask if I wish to use it, but it won't come online enabled. I typically just close SONAR and reopen it completely, but also have closed the project and enabled the MIDI in preferences (either seems to work).

The issue of missing or disabled midi ports is probably the number 1 issue with projects failing to load / getting stuck. 

The UM 2 has done this in the past with other computers - esp laptops in XP.   has to reload the drivers constantly.
Things were going pretty good in Win 7.
 
I'm going to take all of this into account, especially getting out of the program ( i thought i did).. 
 
thanks for all of the input/
W.

I just opened another project that was completed prior to this incident.  Sonar came up with UM2 missing, so I will
take a stab at the info from Mettleus and advise if his theory works.
 
I closed the project immediately and went to bed so I'll have a look at it this morning.  I assume I'll have to open a "new project " and check on the preferences.  I'm Thinking that they should be set from the last project that I just reset because Sonar specifically asks to "Save the settings for new projects".
 
If the above mentioned that project was completed before all this comes up "clueless" and missing UM2 drivers, then I'm not sure what the procedure would be to "recover" those preferences.   - or maybe Sonar will give me an option to reroute the UM-2 driver, since they are the only two in question, and all instruments ( in the project) point to instruments that are "again" hooked up and "were recognized" before I changed projects.
 
I'll send this to Tech support and post the results here, just in case no one has some thoughts on the subject or does a search on the same problems.
Wayne

To Follow up, I loaded a previous project which again came up with missing UM2 drivers.
 
I closed the project, opened a new project - "profile" - for example -
checked and all instruments were there from previous project.
 
So,  loaded previous project again and drivers not found, but gave me option to select UM-2 drivers
interesting - the ones missing were listed  3-UM2,and 4 Um2 ..  under drop down I could select  1-um2 and 2-um2 (example ) and these were the original numbers,  1, 2   not 3,4.
 
I selected them, and the ( previous saved ) project loaded and instruments were all there including the addition to midi ports I selected for the Audiophile  fire wire interface that was saved from the last configuration.
 
Conclusion:  Above procedure from "Mettelus" solved the issue :
 
as follows:
QUOTE:
If a capable device is not found, and the user opens the project, the internal routings of the project may be broken since they go "no where." If such happens, first thing to do is not save the project, but immediately close it... if saved, they will remain broken until redefined.
 
At that point, close the project without a save, and immediately go into preferences and verify that you have audio/MIDI input and output devices listed and enabled. I do believe that Windows will reassign a device if it "sees" it differently as Bob mentioned with plugging into another USB port (Windows is trying to maintain configurations in the background as well). Once audio/MIDI ins and outs exist, the user should get a popup when the project opens to seamlessly shift from one "missing" input/output to a new one and the project will function normally.
 
If you are swapping projects between machines, it is good practice to use the same USB ports each time, but also to open SONAR itself (no project) initially and check preferences prior to opening any project to make sure that audio/MIDI is enabled properly.
 
Thanks for all who offered the help.  I' m going to mix down to audio before I transfer to laptop!
 
Wayne