Has anyone found a workaround when Sonar crashes and closes and then you can't get it to open again until you reboot? I've tried going to task manager and ending the task for Sonar and that doesn't work. Maybe I'm not ending the task of the right process or processes that causes this. I know sometimes if you wait long enough, it will open again, but not always.
 
Any workarounds other than reboot?

This is often (90% of the time) related to Sonar holding a device driver hostage.
It used to happen to me every time I had a crash (I would have to reboot).
It was either my old soundcard or my M Audio Oxygen's drivers, never figured it out.
 
But what I did learn along the way (after waiting for reboot) was there had to be a better way.
And there is...
 
Rather than rebooting the PC, instead simply log out of windows (your given the option)
The pc doesn't reboot but instead waits for you/a different user to log in.
Simply enter your password and your good to go.
I've found this cuts the rebound time by 1/4.
 
 
I would also be looking for the culprit of the crash. Maybe an old plug in.

Hi. I had this issue some time back, and used to turn off/on my Audio Interface to get SONAR to start again.
All the best.

What I do is look for the little midi keyboard icon on the task bar. If it is still there then Sonar is not closed completely. Then I open task manager and tell it to end task. Always works. 

Most of the time, you'll find that there is an orphaned sonarpdr.exe still running. Rather than rebooting, kill that process via Task Manager. SONAR usually will run fine after that, and you'll usually be able to recover your project.

Excellent advice and tips from everyone. Most of my crashes are with V-Vocal. I've tried Melodyne but still like the control I have with V-Vocal, possibly I need the paid version of Melodyne. 
 
Thanks for the tip about it likely being the audio interface, because I think that may be correct. I have been using the latest software for my MOTU AVB Ultralite and just today discovered that it seems to work far better with older software with V-Vocal. I did some testing and didn't get a crash using V-Vocal 12x. So I'll continue testing with all soft synths disconnected  and see if that makes it not crash. 
 
Since Cakewalk/Sonar looked like it was possibly going to disappear I figured I might as well revert back to the most stable version, which was 2017.01. V-Vocal was at least workable with that version. So I've gone back to the software version I was using with that and it seems much better.
 
In the past most V-vocal crashes for me were due to me having several RAM hungry soft synths connected. Disconnecting them makes it less likely I'll get a crash with V-Vocal. It appears V-Vocal has a strange way of accessing memory and if it doesn't get it it crashes. My theory is my newer AVB software is likely using more RAM, thus making it more likely to crash V-Vocal and some newer versions of Platinum may use more RAM too.
 
If I get more crashes I have several new things to try before rebooting.

.

One of the things I dimly recall about using V-Vocal was that I would encounter FAR less crashes if I did smaller number of measures at a time with V-Vocal.  When I did longer stretches through it is when I had most of my issues when using it.
 
And, if memory serves (which is not very well these days), I think I also would commit a given stretch of audio that had been altered with V-Vocal, once I was happy with the changes, so that I wasn't having much running through V-Vocal at a time.
 
So, the overall approach was to use it, in small chunks at a time, and permanently apply the changes as soon as a small chunk's changes were satisfactorily made - that seemed to go a LONG way toward it all remaining more stable (less crashes in the first place).
 
And, you might want to try using each of the methods for getting resources freed up, as noted in the earlier posts, to see which seem the easiest to perform and have the highest success rate to allow you to recover from a crash without having to reboot.  Anything that causes Windows to kill the 'hold' on resources preventing Sonar from restarting seems to do the trick.
 
My own practice was usually to just turn off the audio interface and turn it back on again.  For folks with audio interfaces that required disconnecting and reconnecting a cable, the other methods would work better for them.
 
Best of luck to you, 
 
Bob Bone
 

robert_e_bone
One of the things I dimly recall about using V-Vocal was that I would encounter FAR less crashes if I did smaller number of measures at a time with V-Vocal.  When I did longer stretches through it is when I had most of my issues when using it.
 
And, if memory serves (which is not very well these days), I think I also would commit a given stretch of audio that had been altered with V-Vocal, once I was happy with the changes, so that I wasn't having much running through V-Vocal at a time.
 
So, the overall approach was to use it, in small chunks at a time, and permanently apply the changes as soon as a small chunk's changes were satisfactorily made - that seemed to go a LONG way toward it all remaining more stable (less crashes in the first place).
 
And, you might want to try using each of the methods for getting resources freed up, as noted in the earlier posts, to see which seem the easiest to perform and have the highest success rate to allow you to recover from a crash without having to reboot.  Anything that causes Windows to kill the 'hold' on resources preventing Sonar from restarting seems to do the trick.
 
My own practice was usually to just turn off the audio interface and turn it back on again.  For folks with audio interfaces that required disconnecting and reconnecting a cable, the other methods would work better for them.
 
Best of luck to you, 
 
Bob Bone
 

 

Thanks Bob. Yes I use small sections, 1 or 2 vocal phrases, then bounce to track. I usually archive most tracks and just have vocal tracks and 1 stereo mix of the instruments. 
 
Right now during my new testing period using the older Ultralite software, I'm disconnecting all soft synths. Even though I have 16 gigs of Ram and am only using around 4 gigs. It seems that V-Vocal is so old that it maybe assuming I'm 32 bit and only using 4 gigs of RAM.
 
AS far as turning off my Ultralie audio interface, it has a long boot up period that's about the same time as rebooting my computer which has a fast SSD HD. Yet do you think I can just unplug it's USB cable and plug it back in? 

gmp
 
Yet do you think I can just unplug it's USB cable and plug it back in? 

Probably not. That won't reset the interface, but might cause it to hang, requiring a reboot anyway.
 
One trick that works on MY interface (which doesn't mean it'll work on yours) is to change the buffer size. That seems to reset the interface and bring it back to life if it ever goes silent on me.