Hi, 
I wasn't sure where to post this kind of question.
I have a recent project that I just finished.  I'd spent loads of on a new song and had re-opened the same project many times on my way to finishing it.  Lastly I had bounced most of my instrument plugin tracks into to their own audio tracks within the project just in case sometime in the future the project failed to open due to old plugins not being available.
 
Only a few days later, I seem to be at that point.
My project file seems to hang SonarX3 when I try to open it.  I've even tried to open it in recovery mode (holding down the shift key) and answering "no" to every plugin before opening the project,  and even this approach results in a forever-spinning icon with Sonar never opening the project.
 
I'm desperately looking for some way to recover my project and get back to the point where I was before.   For some reason Sonar is not happy with my project file anymore.  Any advice is greatly appreciated!!
 
I'm using Sonar X3e  on a Windows 7 - 64-bit PC
 
Thanks, --Jim 

Make a copy of it, in any case.  It seems like it somehow got corrupted, if it won't even open in Sonar's Safe Mode.
 
No backup copy of it, by any chance?
 
Bob Bone
 

Robert, are you suggesting just making a copy of the project file right from File Explorer in Windows, or using some other way in Sonar.   I can't re-save to a new name within Sonar since I can't even open the project from Sonar any longer.
 
I didn't make any intermediate copies of the project along the way so I'm not sure if I can recover an older version.  I'm just wondering if something happened when I bounced some of the VST plugins into audio tracks of their own. This is something that I normally do anyway just to have raw audio versions of every track, and it's never been a problem before.   
 
I'll see if I can recover an older version of the project from my NAS, maybe the auto-back up software saved an intermediate version or something.
 
--Jim 

Wow, my Western Digital NAS saved my bacon!   I found an older version of the project file that still seems to open.  I have no idea how this project file became corrupted, but something clearly wen't wrong with it.  Luckily I can salvage my song and only re-store a few missing edits.  
 
This has me very concerned.  I'd no idea that these project files could become corrupted.  I'd just sent this song to a client that may ask for edits later.  I was freaking out that I'd lost the whole song that I'd spent weeks working on. 
 
Now I've turned on the feature in Sonar that does the auto-save with versions just in case this happens again.  
--Jim

I had been talking about making a copy of it outside of Sonar, just to create an additional copy.
 
VERY happy you found a version of it, it definitely sucks losing stuff.
 
Most of us here have built up some layers of scar tissue, from losing stuff for one reason or another, and it is always "JUST before I was going to back it up".
 
I URGE you to create and diligently follow some sort of backup process.  I don't myself happen to use the auto-save feature of Sonar, though I have not had any sort of issues with it, I just do my backups manually, and ever week, or when I am finished with any major block of work on a given project.
 
It is infrequent, but sometimes projects have issues - usually from some old plugin kind of thing, and Safe Mode almost always takes care of even that, but once in a while, for no particular reason, a project might have issues opening, and that's where backups come in - the are truly CRITICAL.  You may never be able to get a guitar player to nail some beautiful solo, and you should never put yourself in a position to where losing something could happen.  Myself and most others here have indeed been lazy and have paid DEARLY in the past for not having backed stuff up.
 
Bob Bone
 

I had a big problem with an almost finished  Sonar project recently. I even reinstalled Windows, Sonar x1 ...x3 etc. but that didn't fix the problem. A few days later I finally realized what was going one. Maybe this will help you:
 
I worked on a project a while using two monitors. VST's were placed on the right monitor, main Sonar window on the left.
A few days later I couldn't open the project decently, it opened but a lot of functionality was frozen. What was my solution: Sonar/windows didn't see I was working on one monitor again. Response windows on the right weren't visible, so the whole system seemed frozen, because I couldn't click these windows. 
 
So my tip is: have you made any changes in hardware configuration (like a second monitor added/ dropped)? If so: go back to the configuration you had when all worked well.
 
 
 
 

Its very rare that actual project files get corrupted. Most of the time its caused by plugins that fail to load their persistence. Sometimes it could be a plugin showing a message (eg, to load a sample library) that is hidden under the app. You can minimize Sonar to check for that. Another test besides safe mode is to try and open the project on a different computer, or to open the project with the audio folder temporarily renamed (so that it comes up with missing audio)
 
If you still have the version of the project that appears to hang send it as a bug report. If it actually is a problem it might be possible to work around it in SONAR. We are always adding defensive code to SONAR to load problem files so this can be useful. 

The thing that really saved me this time is the auto-backup software that I run on my DAW PC that automatically backs up all of my music projects to a NAS device on my network.  It runs in the background and makes regular backups of every file in every project.   It also saves multiple versions as they are created.
 
In this case it had placed a few versions of my project files onto the NAS so that I could just grab the older revision of the entire project folder and copy it back over to my DAW PC.  This allowed me to go back one revision of edits and start with a working project again.   So relieved!!
 
The lesson I'm learning in this is to keep using my NAS backup software as well as turning on the auto-save (with revisions) feature in Sonar so that it is automatically creating saved versions of my project just in case a problem like this happens again.
 
--Jim 

Glad to hear you actually had a back up plan in place. Too many people still have not learned their lesson as Bob said. Once burned. 
 
I always have at least 3 versions stored. I use a date system.  I even have my entire studio files back up off site. 

Backing up is like any insurance. When you pay for your insurance, you never seem to need it. It's only when you don't pay for insurance that you need it 
 
I agree with Noel that corruption in a project is very rare, and that most of the time the issue is plug-ins. I've been using SONAR since 2001 and have only had what appeared to be one corrupted project...but knowing what I know now, I'm not even sure it was actually corrupted.
 
Also remember that all storage media is subject to deterioration, which is why it's important to make more than just one backup.