Went through the same here, starting in June, and watched as others posted the same experience. It was intermittent, and I couldn't pin it down. I assume that's why the terminology in preferences, for sharing drivers with other programs, was changed. One of the things I loved about Sonar is that it didn't choke when I had other programs open. I could look up a tutorial or play something through the Windows Media Player while I ate lunch and didn't have to shut Sonar down.
After the terminology changed, I could no longer even use Chrome without going back into Sonar and having a ton of dropouts and an eventual crash. Also, the screen went from a smooth scroll to a herky-jerky tug with the music not matching what was on the screen along with generally buggy behavior. Using Windows Media Player resulted in a crash 100% of the time. I've had the same set up, running different version of Sonar for the past six years, and never saw this kind of behavior. I own several other daws, and all of them continued to work as normal.
Last Thursday, after doing the Windows update, I decided to look around my computer and see if anything needed to be updated. I keep up on my Windows updates, and my Lynx Two card hasn't had an updated driver in a couple of years. I ran the Radeon check for my card and was behind on updates for the video driver. I updated the driver, and my smooth interface scrolling returned. The mouse wasn't hanging after I pressed buttons. Sonar started as soon as I pressed play instead of pausing. But, I still can't use any other program that might access the audio driver without it introducing instability or a crash in Sonar.
Before I updated my Radeon drivers, I did install the Windows update:
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64 (KB3186497)
Installation date: 8/4/2017 1:48 AM
Installation status: Successful
Update type: Recommended
The Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7 is a highly compatible, in-place update for all the previous versions of .NET Framework 4.X. After you install this update, you may have to restart your computer.
So, I don't know if this Windows update, the updated Radeon drivers, or both that seemed to solve a lot of the instability I was seeing. But, the program still seems to grind to a halt eventually if I open any other Audio program.
On Windows 7 Pro, fully updated.