Is there any single thing that has stayed exactly the same throughout the evolution of Sonar from XL to X1?
Perhaps a registry key like "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CakewalkProjectFile"? (that sounds like one that's been there forever)
 If something exists of that nature, I'd like to use it to be able to detect if Sonar is installed on a User's system.
Unfortunately, I can't find any information online so maybe one of you Sonar veterans can give me a clue.

 This is for an independant Mp3 encoder for Sonar...
My reasoning is:
If Sonar is not already installed on a User's system, the encoder is not allowed to install.
If Sonar is already installed on the User's system, the encoder is allowed to install.

Something that has remained constant throughout the life of Sonar over the years... hmmm...

Thank you very much if you can help me :)
Aaron Bewza

\Program Files\Cakewalk\<some sonar folders> has always been there.

Thank you, bitman :) ... But what if the User has installed Sonar elsewhere?
For instance: F:\My Testing Partition\Cakewalk\*

Not at my PC at the moment, but if you do a search on "Sonar" in regedit, the Key structure will be obvious. The basic structure hasn't changed since Sonar first came out.

That's great! Thank you MNorman.
So the registry key "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CakewalkProjectFile" has been there since the dawn of time.
Do you know anyone still using version XL or version 3? It would be awesome to verify 100% that way :)
 

Actually, was talking about the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software\Sonar*

Where the star refers to version information (in my case, "Sonar Producer").  You could do a search for any Key under Cakewalk Music Software that began with "Sonar".  That would do it, I'd think...

SOLVED!

I found a post online from Sept. 23rd 1996 (HERE) which absolutely confirms that the
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software" registry key has existed
since the 20th century.
Thank you very much again, MNorman, for pointing me out in this direction.
Aaron

If you want to discern if they've loaded Sonar, you have to look for that too, since all Cakewalk Software installations will go there, IIRC